this post might end up being rather long as i'd like to share the stories for all of my current cats. i have four of them, as you can probably guess, and their names are Romeo, Willow, Ruby, and Beeb. Along with these kitties i'm also the owner of a betta, a rabbit, and a little crested gecko who all live in my room where felines are not allowed.
i'll go in order from the cat i've had for the most time to the cat that was most recently brought into my home. that means i'm starting with Beeb. Beeb's real name was originally Minime, but over time it's obviously been completely forgotten and replaced with a new nickname. Beeb has actually been with us her whole life - back when she was born no one in my family besides me really cared when her mom would run out the door every chance she got. her mom's name was Mittens - very original, i know. i don't think i was the one who named her though. she was brought home one day by my oldest brother when he found her near a water tower on the streets and decided to just take her. i don't know how old she was but i think she was old enough to live on her own which was probably a sign already that he shouldn't have taken her back to his house to live with him. if he was going to take her he should've taken her to the vet to get her spayed and then released her again. but, as stated before, no one in my family during this time knew anything about cats.
long story short, Mittens came back pregnant one day. her tummy region slowly grew larger and my family quickly suspected what was going to happen. the day finally came when my brother awoke in the early morning to alert my mom to the newborn kitties. she sped into his room, excited, and i followed. we peered into the comfy bed we made for her aaaand...
no kittens. no Mittens in labor.
the same thing happened the next day, but this time my brother was sure that there were little babies in there. my mom crawled out of bed, not expecting anything, but to her surprise there were actually kittens in the box. Mittens was still in labor but we had to get ready for school so my mom sent us off. when we arrived home from school that day there were 3 little kittens to see, and we fell in love. of course, my dad is my dad, so we were only allowed to keep one.
that kitty was Beeb.
we no longer have Mittens due to my brother still being an irresponsible cat owner when he moved out, but Beeb today is much different than when she was a kitten. she's now very grumpy, but she's still super cute and she loves to be pet.
moving on...Romeo.
Romeo was my cat from the day we got him, and my family already established that, but little "Homie" knew it, too. he still loves to cuddle with me at night, but you wouldn't guess it because he acts like a huge brat all day. in the daytime when he's not in my room (i only let him in because he tends to be fairly good with my other animals), he likes to run away from everybody when they approach him. he can't be seen being pet! that would be embarrassing for him.
Romeo came from outdoors just like Mittens had, but his story is very different. my dad discovered kittens in the neighbor's yard and, despite my mother's warnings for what would happen if he said anything, he said something. me and both of my brothers sat outside for hours, but eventually left the oldest brother out to do the kitten catching. he caught two kittens, but one escaped as the back of the carrier he was using had a gaping hole in it. "Homie" was the one he brought inside. it took hours of begging, but my dad finally said yes and i spent the rest of the night bonding with my new best friend. for the second time, we had no idea what was wrong with bringing in a cat from outside.
next comes Willow. she's by far the weirdest cat i've ever seen in my life. she doesn't ever seem happy, or sad, or even mad - the only emotion she has is "wacky." that sentence doesn't make much sense, but basically after only a few days of owning her she was dubbed "wacky willow" and my family still occasionally calls her that.
i've been saying "she" and "her" this entire time, but i'll say right now that everyone in my house is starting to think Willow is actually a guy. I don't know what kind of vets they use for aging and sexing cats over at that shelter, but obviously they're not very good ones. The shelter tells us she's a six year-old female, but the vet papers they gave us say that she's a 2 year-old female... and now when we look at her underside, we see nothing that says she's even a girl. whatever, on with the story.
i've said 2 times now that my dad is reluctant to let us get new pets EVER, right? well, Willow was actually suggested by my dad. he actually brought up the idea of getting a new cat. funny, isn't it? when we got to the shelter, we looked at some of the sick or unfriendly cats, but knew we couldn't get any of them. it was just to check them out. we went to the females room after where we found around 7 or 8 different females, including the one we had spied online. she was a bit more overweight than we had anticipated.
some of the cats crowded around us - one of them was Willow - while the others stayed in their comfy spots and watched us from where they were. i took a special liking to this one, and to this one, but not Willow. not right away, at least.
we looked in the male room next. there were only 2 cats in there, and one of them, we were told, was already adopted and just had to be picked up. the other one's name was Lenny. he was almost exactly like Romeo, and everyone in my family wanted to get him. I liked him, too, but i wanted to get one of the females. Lenny was bound to get adopted by someone else, my mom told me later, because of his awesome personality. this made me feel better about my decision later on.
when we returned to the female room i set the carrier down and both Willow (i forgot to mention her name while she was here was "Kitty," which is a crazy unique name, never heard that one before) and her smaller look-a-like were tugging at my carrier as if asking to go in. this is what convinced me that she was the one we HAD to get. i took a special liking to her in particular because she was older and she seemed like a lap cat (another thing i forgot to mention is that my dad was the one who was supposed to be picking the cat, but he really didn't care which one we got). we eventually picked her and when the guy went into the room to get her into our carrier, she walked in on her own. i was in love already.
finally, there's Ruby. i think she has some congenital spinal defect because she's probably close to a year old now and she's still really, really small, not to mention she hates having her back, which is also arched all the time, touched. she's a pretty goofy little cat. she's very vocal and her pupils are always huge. my oldest brother once came to visit and he was completely convinced that she had some level of kitty autism, which i'm not sure is even possible, but i did research it. there was nothing i could find that said it was a real thing that cats could be diagnosed with having, but some people on forums and similar places said their cat was autistic, and this is what they act like, and apparently Ruby probably wouldn't have survived if we'd picked a different cat. anyways, on to her story.
Ruby's actually Romeo's niece. she was birthed by Romeo's sibling, who we saw all over our neighborhood. our first encounter with her and her siblings was late one night when my dad came home from work. he was angry, rambling on about some dumb cat in our driveway. we later guessed she was about to leave to get food for the kittens when my dad drove up.
we ignored it for a while until we went out into the garage again, which now had a closed door, and saw one lone kitten on top of a tire on one of our cars. Ruby.
she actually came out and we set some food under the car for her to eat. for a long time we thought she was the only one in there.
nope.
later, after my mom had gone back inside for a little while, i spotted two more kittens who had crawled out to eat some of the food. around this time i also could lure out little Ruby with a toy, but after a few seconds she would dart back under the car.
to save your time and mine, dad said no, we can't take one. but he had (slightly) promised that if we saw them again, we could take one, so a few days later when we spotted the kittens and their mom next door, we spent the whole night trying to lure our favorite to the house. Ruby was the one we somehow managed to get. it was pitch black outside and all we had was my mom's phone flashlight, but we got her. i picked her up after we couldn't manage to lure her over and we headed to the house.
once again, none of us had any idea what we were doing, bringing in some random cat from outdoors to keep it. it's preventing future litters, but it's also introducing the possibility of disease for our existing cats. is it even a good idea in the sense that you're taking a cat away from her mother? i'm not sure.
well, this thing is huge. if you've made it this far, well done. i'm here to learn as much as i can about cats and to ask questions i might have. there's always more to learn about any pet.
i'll go in order from the cat i've had for the most time to the cat that was most recently brought into my home. that means i'm starting with Beeb. Beeb's real name was originally Minime, but over time it's obviously been completely forgotten and replaced with a new nickname. Beeb has actually been with us her whole life - back when she was born no one in my family besides me really cared when her mom would run out the door every chance she got. her mom's name was Mittens - very original, i know. i don't think i was the one who named her though. she was brought home one day by my oldest brother when he found her near a water tower on the streets and decided to just take her. i don't know how old she was but i think she was old enough to live on her own which was probably a sign already that he shouldn't have taken her back to his house to live with him. if he was going to take her he should've taken her to the vet to get her spayed and then released her again. but, as stated before, no one in my family during this time knew anything about cats.
long story short, Mittens came back pregnant one day. her tummy region slowly grew larger and my family quickly suspected what was going to happen. the day finally came when my brother awoke in the early morning to alert my mom to the newborn kitties. she sped into his room, excited, and i followed. we peered into the comfy bed we made for her aaaand...
no kittens. no Mittens in labor.
the same thing happened the next day, but this time my brother was sure that there were little babies in there. my mom crawled out of bed, not expecting anything, but to her surprise there were actually kittens in the box. Mittens was still in labor but we had to get ready for school so my mom sent us off. when we arrived home from school that day there were 3 little kittens to see, and we fell in love. of course, my dad is my dad, so we were only allowed to keep one.
that kitty was Beeb.
we no longer have Mittens due to my brother still being an irresponsible cat owner when he moved out, but Beeb today is much different than when she was a kitten. she's now very grumpy, but she's still super cute and she loves to be pet.
moving on...Romeo.
Romeo was my cat from the day we got him, and my family already established that, but little "Homie" knew it, too. he still loves to cuddle with me at night, but you wouldn't guess it because he acts like a huge brat all day. in the daytime when he's not in my room (i only let him in because he tends to be fairly good with my other animals), he likes to run away from everybody when they approach him. he can't be seen being pet! that would be embarrassing for him.
Romeo came from outdoors just like Mittens had, but his story is very different. my dad discovered kittens in the neighbor's yard and, despite my mother's warnings for what would happen if he said anything, he said something. me and both of my brothers sat outside for hours, but eventually left the oldest brother out to do the kitten catching. he caught two kittens, but one escaped as the back of the carrier he was using had a gaping hole in it. "Homie" was the one he brought inside. it took hours of begging, but my dad finally said yes and i spent the rest of the night bonding with my new best friend. for the second time, we had no idea what was wrong with bringing in a cat from outside.
next comes Willow. she's by far the weirdest cat i've ever seen in my life. she doesn't ever seem happy, or sad, or even mad - the only emotion she has is "wacky." that sentence doesn't make much sense, but basically after only a few days of owning her she was dubbed "wacky willow" and my family still occasionally calls her that.
i've been saying "she" and "her" this entire time, but i'll say right now that everyone in my house is starting to think Willow is actually a guy. I don't know what kind of vets they use for aging and sexing cats over at that shelter, but obviously they're not very good ones. The shelter tells us she's a six year-old female, but the vet papers they gave us say that she's a 2 year-old female... and now when we look at her underside, we see nothing that says she's even a girl. whatever, on with the story.
i've said 2 times now that my dad is reluctant to let us get new pets EVER, right? well, Willow was actually suggested by my dad. he actually brought up the idea of getting a new cat. funny, isn't it? when we got to the shelter, we looked at some of the sick or unfriendly cats, but knew we couldn't get any of them. it was just to check them out. we went to the females room after where we found around 7 or 8 different females, including the one we had spied online. she was a bit more overweight than we had anticipated.
some of the cats crowded around us - one of them was Willow - while the others stayed in their comfy spots and watched us from where they were. i took a special liking to this one, and to this one, but not Willow. not right away, at least.
we looked in the male room next. there were only 2 cats in there, and one of them, we were told, was already adopted and just had to be picked up. the other one's name was Lenny. he was almost exactly like Romeo, and everyone in my family wanted to get him. I liked him, too, but i wanted to get one of the females. Lenny was bound to get adopted by someone else, my mom told me later, because of his awesome personality. this made me feel better about my decision later on.
when we returned to the female room i set the carrier down and both Willow (i forgot to mention her name while she was here was "Kitty," which is a crazy unique name, never heard that one before) and her smaller look-a-like were tugging at my carrier as if asking to go in. this is what convinced me that she was the one we HAD to get. i took a special liking to her in particular because she was older and she seemed like a lap cat (another thing i forgot to mention is that my dad was the one who was supposed to be picking the cat, but he really didn't care which one we got). we eventually picked her and when the guy went into the room to get her into our carrier, she walked in on her own. i was in love already.
finally, there's Ruby. i think she has some congenital spinal defect because she's probably close to a year old now and she's still really, really small, not to mention she hates having her back, which is also arched all the time, touched. she's a pretty goofy little cat. she's very vocal and her pupils are always huge. my oldest brother once came to visit and he was completely convinced that she had some level of kitty autism, which i'm not sure is even possible, but i did research it. there was nothing i could find that said it was a real thing that cats could be diagnosed with having, but some people on forums and similar places said their cat was autistic, and this is what they act like, and apparently Ruby probably wouldn't have survived if we'd picked a different cat. anyways, on to her story.
Ruby's actually Romeo's niece. she was birthed by Romeo's sibling, who we saw all over our neighborhood. our first encounter with her and her siblings was late one night when my dad came home from work. he was angry, rambling on about some dumb cat in our driveway. we later guessed she was about to leave to get food for the kittens when my dad drove up.
we ignored it for a while until we went out into the garage again, which now had a closed door, and saw one lone kitten on top of a tire on one of our cars. Ruby.
she actually came out and we set some food under the car for her to eat. for a long time we thought she was the only one in there.
nope.
later, after my mom had gone back inside for a little while, i spotted two more kittens who had crawled out to eat some of the food. around this time i also could lure out little Ruby with a toy, but after a few seconds she would dart back under the car.
to save your time and mine, dad said no, we can't take one. but he had (slightly) promised that if we saw them again, we could take one, so a few days later when we spotted the kittens and their mom next door, we spent the whole night trying to lure our favorite to the house. Ruby was the one we somehow managed to get. it was pitch black outside and all we had was my mom's phone flashlight, but we got her. i picked her up after we couldn't manage to lure her over and we headed to the house.
once again, none of us had any idea what we were doing, bringing in some random cat from outdoors to keep it. it's preventing future litters, but it's also introducing the possibility of disease for our existing cats. is it even a good idea in the sense that you're taking a cat away from her mother? i'm not sure.
well, this thing is huge. if you've made it this far, well done. i'm here to learn as much as i can about cats and to ask questions i might have. there's always more to learn about any pet.
