Our Cats
We own six cats and our fostering a seventh. All of our cats are indoor cats - they do not go outside. In fact, most of them are scared of the outdoors. More pics are coming soon. They are displayed in the order of age.
Madonna
Madonna is our oldest animal at about eighteen. Julie first adopted her from a shelter in 1994 for a group home for two mentally disabled men. Later, after the men left her out on the balcony, she jumped off. The staff wasn't caring for her, and neither were the men, so when Julie left the job, she took Madonna with her (with Smokey, below).
The first picture is an old one, but she still looks very similar. The second one's with Simba. She is a Calico. Madonna was unsocial when Julie first got her, and kept herself hidden, but, over time, she mellowed out and became a great cat. A few years ago, she developed a bad skin condition, and we tried all sorts of treatments. None of them worked, and we had considered putting her down, since she was in pain, but we thought that perhaps she was doing it to herself. Finally, after several months at our new house, she recovered. We're glad we gave her time to recover on her own.
Madonna's kind of a demanding, willful cat. She wants the tap run when we go into the bathroom. She cries for us to pick her up. We'll shoo her away from sitting where we sit when we work, but if we get up for five minutes, we'll find her laying there again. That said, she's a very loving cat, and we wouldn't want her any other way. Of all of the cats, I'd say she's taken to daddy the most. She always sleeps next to me, usually likes to be in the same room as I am if she's not sleeping, and she always wants Brian time. :-)
Smokey (aka. Doo Doo Man)
Smokey, or as we call him, "Doo Doo Man", is our second oldest, and our oldest male. He is about fifteen. My wife, Julie, got Doo Doo from the same shelter that Madonna was adopted from, and was the first cat Julie adopted, also for the group home. He was a four month old kitten when he was adopted. The patients and caregivers started abusing and neglecting him. One day, Julie got a call from another tenant, after he was crying. A staff worker threw him out of the apartment, and he was lost on the 4th floor.
He's usually the quietest animal in the house, and has to sit and cuddle with you at least once every day. When he does, he kisses you. He loves to greet you with a head butt, and if you pick him up, he will wrap his paws around you and give you a hug. Doo Doo is very laid back, and is as sweet as he was when he was a kitten. Julie and I disagree about what kind of cat he is. I think he's an British shorthair. Like Madonnna, Doo Doo likes to drink out of the shower tap. He usually can make me smile, although he sometimes wants affection at the most inopportune times and he has a tendancy of being under foot. I've stepped on him more than once (didn't hurt him, though).
Simba
Simba used to be our most skittish cat, and in some ways, still is. He has quite a story.
Julie went to a local kill shelter's outside drop off area (after hours), looking for a lost dog that she had owned that ran away. Simba was found in a cage with another cat left in the drop off area. When Julie opened the cage, Simba bolted out, and was later found in a ditch. Simba was, at the time, the size of a hamster, and was in very bad shape. It was a very cold night, so Julie decided to take him home, thinking he wouldn't survive the cold. Once she got him home, she noticed something was very wrong. One of his back legs was twisted the opposite way and was hanging, and his tail was broken in three places and tucked between his legs. She took him to the vet, and the vet had to re-break the leg, and his tail was unsalvageable and had to be amputated. The vet couldn't determine if his wounds were a birth defect or due to trauma. It was a long, slow recovery. He was in a splint for two months, and he was not yet weened. Julie was fostering a cat that had just given birth to kittens, and the cat let Simba nurse from her. Once he recovered, he became very mobile, though his leg sits at an angle.
Simba has always been very skittish, due to his injuries, and has had a tendency to hide. Once, he hid himself so well that he hid in a heating duct for three days. Julie has been the only one that can handle him. When Julie and I first got together, I made the mistake of trying to get him out of the attic. He went into a frightful rage, and bit me 10 times. I ended up with a hand that puffed up three times its normal size. Recently, he's learned to trust me, and has become a lovable cat, and spends much of his time out. He used to be invisible most of the time, but now spends most of the time in the same room with us.
Simba, as you can see, is a beautiful pure white long haired cat, with bright gold eyes. However, he gets matted and has a tendency to develop "cling ons", if you know what I mean, and doesn't let us clean him up until it gets bad. He has a strong affection for our dogs, especially Buster (our Pitbull mix), and will literally throw himself at Buster and makes out with him as often as he can. Despite being skittish, he has developed a personality. He's known to play with toys, and likes to sing when he's found a toy mouse.
Misty
What can we say about our lovable, sensitive Misty? She's a beautiful cat with a kitten's face. We think she's a Siamese tabby mix. When Julie got her as a kitten, she looked very Siamese, with a cream colored coat and those beautiful blue eyes, but later she grew into a more Tabby look. Misty answers you when you call her name. She also doesn't like it when she thinks we are arguing, although she also reacts to carrying around and laughter. She's our most social cat. She's not shy with strangers, and always greets them when they come inside the house. Misty likes to lay on you, and she'll knead on you for ten minutes or so before she'll sit on you. Misty was adopted from a shelter in Lima when Julie was passing through her old neighborhood. Misty reached for Julie from the cage. Julie picked her up, and the rest is history. She's our only cat that has been de-clawed. She was adopted that way. She's about eight years old.
Xena
Xena's quite a character. Xena came to us after a local rescue group asked if we could do them a favor. She was caged at Petsmart, about fourteen months old, and was not doing well there. We took her home as a foster. It was quickly discovered that Xena is a chatterbox, and will answer you whenever you speak to her, earning her the nickname "Squawk". When we got her home, she was bullied by the other cats, and was showing why she had the name of the "warrior princess", but got bested by Simba and Misty one too many times, and became very scared of them. We decided to keep her upstairs only. Xena's favorite place is snuggling next to Julie's head, book she's trying to read, or, as in the picture, Julie's laptop. After many months of caring for her, we finally decided to adopt her. Xena's about three and a half now.
Loverboy
Loverboy's our latest permanent edition to our family, although it wasn't planned that way. He came to Julie one day in the rain. She heard a car skid away from the park, and Loverboy crying at the top of his lungs outside, so loudly that Julie heard him from inside the house. We don't know if Loverboy was left there by the people in the car or if that was coincidental, but with some of the riff raff that hung out at the park, it's anyone's guess. He was scared at first, but she enticed him over with some cat food. He was in BAD shape. Loverboy's our biggest cat in stature, longer and taller than any of the other cats, but he weighed only seven pounds soaking wet. His fur was all matted and he was an absolute mess. We started fostering him in an isolated room. He had worms when we first took him in, and he got very sick within the first week, but he recovered and gained weight... which he's still doing!
Loverboy got his name because he was VERY affectionate to us, especially to Julie, and he still is to this day, even more so in fact. He's always appreciated us rescuing him. However, when he was first introduced to the other cats, he fought with them a lot, and it got to the point that we really didn't want to keep him any longer. One day, Julie got mad and took him outside, as if to say stop it or you're out of here! Well, I don't know if that taught him a lesson or if it was just coincidence, but he almost overnight started getting along better with the other cats. In fact, he started spending a lot of time with his former foe, Misty, and now they are like an old married couple! He shows a lot of character, with his funny faces when you pet him, to his cooing noises, to his catterwalling when Julie goes upstairs and he forgets I am still downstairs. Eventually, he got into our hearts to the point that we decided to keep him. At this point, I couldn't imagine not having him!
I have to find a more recent picture of him. The first was a couple of weeks after we rescued him, when we started noticing how beautiful his fur was after he started to recover. The second one was a few months later, with a little more meat on him, getting into mischief. Today, he's BIG! I wouldn't call him fat, but he's just really big.
Jasmine (Foster)
Jasmine's our only foster. We found Jasmine a couple of blocks away from my office, as a stray. She had some health problems when we first got her. She had worms and she was also pregnant. Jasmine was so small, we originally thought she was a kitten herself, but after we got her looked at, she is actually quite a bit older. The animal rescue organization had a policy to spay all cats, even if they are pregnant, so we didn't raise any kittens with her. Jasmine's very shy. She doesn't show herself to me much, only to Julie, and she doesn't get along too well with the other cats or dogs. She basically keeps to herself. As such, though we've had her for over a year, we've never thought very seriously about keeping her, although it may come to that.
