Cats

Hi!

No, not the musical, the family pets that we've had longer than any of the others. I've written about the dogs, the snake, and the roaches. Our cats are Cowboy and Lucky. Before I get to them, though, I'd be remiss if I didn't give a recap of our family history with cats. I put off this post for a long as I did not because I love the cats any less, but because there's so much more to write about them...

Sheba

Sheba was first. She, a Siamese, was Brandi's cat when we met and had been Brandi's cat since the beginning of her teenage years. When Brandi left her parents' house to live with me, she brought Sheba.



Bear & Tiger

Bear, who is all brown, is Sheba's daughter and Tiger, who is grey with stripes, is Bear's son. They were also living with Brandi when she and I met, but they didn't come to live with us right away. When Brandi's parents decided to divorce, we took in Bear and Tiger. Bear had been the outdoor cat in the family and had to be declawed (front only) before she came to live with us. We didn't want her to be an outdoor cat. Tiger soon became "my cat" while Sheba was still very much "Brandi's cat." Bear was a bit of a loaner but would occasionally come to us when she wanted attention.





Dexter

Shortly after Brandi and I got married in October of 1998, there was a news story in the Phoenix area about a woman who had literally hundreds of cats in her house. (Seriously, is it ever a man who does this?) Anyway, according to the story, the shelters were about to be overrun with cats and anyone considering adopting should do so right away. Well, we had three cats and I thought it'd be fun to have a kitten, so we adopted Dexter. He was named Dexter because I was wearing Dexter shoes at the time and he started playing with the laces.



Dexter was a wonderful cat and my first real pet. All the others were *technically* someone else's. As a kid, the pets were really Mom's since she cared for them, even my hamsters were more beholden to her care than to me. The other cats were acquired via Brandi and didn't really count. Dexter was the first animal who was mine. I really felt responsible for him.



My use of the past tense should tell you something bad happened. Well, Dexter disappeared in May of 2005, around Friday the 13th. He was declawed, but still fiercely protective of our property. We figure he was probably killed in a fight or by a cat-hating neighbor, but we'll never know for sure. Jacqueline bears a scar on her left hand from a nip he gave her when she tried to "ride him like a horse" as a toddler. I think of Dex whenever I see that scar, or any other orange cat.

Cowboy & Lucky

In late June, we decided to adopt a kitten for each kid to ease the loss of Dexter. Joshua wanted a black kitten and Jacqueline just wanted a cute kitten. We went to the shelter and found a litter that had one black cat and three grayish ones. The black cat was good enough for Josh and I grabbed one of the others for Jacq.

Cowboy got his name as a result of the Woody (from "Toy Story") costume Joshua was wearing that day. (We joke that if he'd been wearing his Buzz Lightyear costume, the cat would probably be named "Spaceman.") Jacqueline agreed that her cat was "lucky" because I could have grabbed any of the three. Here are pictures of the kids with their kittens shortly after getting them home:





From 5 to 2

Within a few months of getting the dogs, Bear and Tiger disappeared. Bear was still an outdoor cat at heart and would often be gone for a day or so. When it stretched into three, we knew something was wrong. Tiger would be gone for a day or so, then back for a bit, then gone for a bit, and so forth. We tried keeping them trapped in the house, but a determined cat is going to get out if he or she really wants to. I still see cats around that remind me of Bear and Tiger, but can never get close enough to know for sure. Unlike Dexter, who we're pretty sure was killed, we like to think that Bear and Tiger just found dog-free homes and are living happily. It saddens us that they chose not to stay...since Brandi had a dog (albeit a small one), we figured they'd get used to them. Maybe if they had their front claws...we didn't have Cowboy or Lucky declawed at all.

Sheba's health had been an issue for a while. She had kidney problems that prevented her from being comfortable in a litter box. The vet told Brandi that she couldn't be cured, only made comfortable. Last December, right before Christmas, Brandi made the difficult decision to have Sheba put down. I was home with the kids and can't imagine what she went through. Sheba had been with her through junior high school, high school, college, a decade of marriage, and the birth of two children.



Here are pictures I took of Cowboy and Lucky last night:





We're now a two cat family and that's how we'll stay. I hope Joshua and Jacqueline are lucky enough to have with their cats the kind of relationship that Brandi had with Sheba...

Thanks,
Matt