Tuesday, August 16, 2005

A Little Afternoon Cat Blogging

I've always wanted to cat blog, but I never got around to scanning my photos of my cats.

Until now.

The following three photos are of my old cats, taken when they were considerably younger (by probably a decade or more).



This is Samantha, about age one. She's fourteen now. She's gorgeous, but she's got a prickly attitude and a bad habit of hacking up hairballs on my sofa. She can be a big sweetie when she wants to, though.




Tess is fifteen now. She was probably two here. Tess was a rescue from the place where I worked several years ago. A feral mother cat kept having kittens behind the house that served as our office. I trapped three kittens; one died within a couple of days of distemper, another ran away when he was a little under a year old (probably heard me talking about having him neutered), and Tess is the only one left. I've tamed other feral kittens, but for whatever reason, Tess never fully tamed. My mother's had a lot more luck with her than I have, actually. Tess lets my mother manhandle her like she's a sack of grain, but she gets skittish and jumps down from my lap if I so much as flex a muscle.



This is Chunk. Best. Cat. Ever. She was three in this photo; she's sixteen now. I adopted her from an animal adoption place not far from where I worked at the time, right after a stray kitten I'd rescued had to be euthanized because of feline leukemia. Chunk was about six weeks old, a fat little lump of a kitten with a sweet disposition. I called her Chunk as a temporary name until I could find the right one for her. Turned out Chunk was the right name. She was always a heavy cat, but in the past few years, she's shed a lot of weight because of a thyroid condition. We had surgery done to remove the most diseased gland, but the other one has gone bad on her now, so we're keeping her thyroid levels regulated with medication now.

Chunk loves drinking water from a running tap, lazing around the back deck pretending she's the queen of the world and ingratiating herself with anyone who glances her way. She's sweet natured, good with other animals and with children, and the loudest purrer I've ever heard. Love that old cat.

4 comments:

Shesawriter said...

Cutie pies, all of them. :-) But I think I'm partial to Tess. She just looks so darned cool, ya know? (g)

Tanya

MJFredrick said...

Aww, Paula!

I'm a cat person, too. I'd say we've probably had 10 cats altogether in the 18 years we've been married. For almost a year we only had 2. Now we're back to three, all rescues.

Paula said...

Tanya,

You can't tell it from this picture, but Tess's eyes are actually blue-green—a very striking color that photos never seem to do justice to. She's a very sweet cat but she's skittish as all get out.

Mary,

We have cats running out our ears since my sister (and her kids) and I moved in with my mom after my dad died. I had four cats at the time (poor Simi has since passed on), Patty had three cats and my mom had two cats at the time (one of those has since passed on as well).

Plus, a couple of years ago while we were cleaning out a rental property, we found three tiny feral kittens had taken up residence in the house, apparently getting in through a back door left open when someone broke into the house. We had to shut the door back up when we left, so we couldn't leave the kittens behind because their mother couldn't get to them. We had to take them home.

They were completely wild, but one of them tamed quickly. As it turned out, he did so because he was sick--he had feline leukemia and we had to have him euthanized. The other two kittens were leukemia free, however, and they tamed beautifully. I need to get pictures of them--Sophie and Toby are gorgeous cats. Sophie's a tortoiseshell and Toby's a buff tabby with dark gold eyes. Sweet, funny cats.

We also have a couple of dogs--both strays, of course, as seems to be our lot. My mother says if God sees a stray animal, he sends them our way because we're such suckers. ;)

Another reason why I'm a big proponent of spaying and neutering.

Paula

Dixie Belle said...

Hey Paula,
I love your cats. They are so pretty!! Hope you have a great weekend! Patricia