Thursday Thirteen #7

Thirteen of My Favorite Cats:

I've had a hard time keeping up with everyone this last week, and this week. My Cats on Tuesday story was late yesterday, I didn't even get to Wordless Wednesday today, how hard was that, and it took me all day today to think of something that has enough thirteen's in it to post tonight, Wednesday, so I can be out there with the rest of the group who have already posted Thursday on Wednesday. Take a breath! Okay! I've come up with thirteen cats that were my favorites over the years. In the thirty-nine years since I've been married I think I've had at least sixteen or so, if I count some of the babies from some of the mommies and some of the strays that have wandered in and out of our lives.

1. Sherry: A dark tortie female that I had for about three or four years, before she got run over on a freeway overpass behind our house in California. She had two litters. I adored her and she was closer to me than any I've had since.

2. Muffin: A pale calico long haired female that my children saved from a dog's mouth when she was just a tiny kitten. She was a lover, but also and inside/outside cat and about a year later she didn't come home one morning. I worked nights at that time and she was always outside the door waiting for me to come home at seven in the morning. She was hugger and I miss that cat for that reason. She actually put her paws around my neck when I picked her up and hugged me like a child would.

3. Flocon de niege: A pale Siamese female. We moved out into the country shortly after Muffin disappeared and there we had a number of cats, most of which I can't remember their names. We had a gopher getter that was the best in the business of gopher getting. She was actually my third daughter's cat. But hey, what mother doesn't take full responsibility for the care and feeding of their child's animal? We lived on a small mini farm of our making and so she had several litters of kittens there, some we kept and some we gave away. But this very pretty pale cat had to have her first litter of kittens in the wee hours of the morning on my lap. If I moved she'd follow and that got messy. So I sat down on the kitchen floor with her on my lap, on an old Navy wool coat of my husbands, and there the two of us had her kittens.

4. Black Cat: a male black cat that I really hated to leave behind when we moved from California. He was so good-natured, loved water and people. We lived in the middle of walnut orchards and in the summer the farmers flooded their orchards as a means of irrigation. Floclon de neige had a litter that was now about six or seven weeks old. We had a really bad hot spell one day and the kittens were suffering, so my children decided that it would be a good thing to toss the kittens in the flooded orchard, about three inches of water, and cool them off. Of course, the kitten's skeedaddled as soon as they hit the water, all except this black one. He just stood there, loving the refreshing coolness. We kept him, of course, and the others we found homes for. He would follow the girls down to the irrigation canal and go swimming with them, he loved water that much. Since he was a male and we were keeping him, we had him neutered at the same time we had our colt gilded. The vet just gave him a shot and put him to sleep. He told us after he'd performed the ten second neutering job, to put him in a nice quite place until he woke up. You've all seen the cartoons where a startled cat shoots straight up in the air and hangs by his claws from the ceiling. Well, when this cat woke up, the pain he was in shocked him so badly that he literally shot straight up, screeched and ran off to hide somewhere for the rest of the day.

5. Radar: A little black and white male kitten that we got after we had to leave California and moved to Illinois. He was a good kitty that fell of things a lot and ran into things. Hence the name Radar. We had him and other's that I can't remember their names, all my girl's cats, of course, until he got sick with a kidney problem.

6. We had a gray and white mother cat for sometime after we lost Radar, but for the life of me I cannot remember her name. I even have her pictured with the girls. So if one of my daughters reads this Thirteen and remembers her name, let me know. That was also at the time that we had guinea pigs, a humongous Irish Setter and a killer rabbit.

7. Bo: A beautiful large blue-gray male, already neutered and front paws declawed. He was a heavy sucker. He was my ex-sister-in-law's cat. She had had him for maybe two years from a kitten. She hated to give him up but she had moved into a tiny apartment from a big house and was gone nearly day and night. So we took him. We had a lot of room and he loved it with us. But then life changes and we ended up moving, our children gone by now, and living in a tiny place. We worked day and night and he was once again lonely. We had some friends at the time that had a spayed female identical to him and asked if they could have him. I knew he'd happier with them, and this female cat. He was. We got regular reports for a while about all the cavorting going on between a neutered male and a spayed female that absolutely loved each other.

8. Pumpkin: An orange and white-what we thought was female, but was male. This little guy I've written about on Cat Tuesdays. He was born under our shed, the first of umpteen-dozen litters form this mousey colored cat that had a litter of kittens under just about all of our neighbors sheds for the next seven years. Pumpkin was the runt of the litter, we brought it in and fattened it up and decided to keep her/him. We ended up loosing him several years later and three days after he got out, another identical male cat to him came adopted us briefly, but he had all his claws and his male appendages so we knew he wasn't our Pumpkin. I named him Scrungy, the books I've written are because of him.

9. Blacky: A solid black male with a dash of white on his chest. My number four daughter had come to stay a few months with me so I could have my back surgery and for my birthday, because she thought I missed Pumpkin too much, she found a farm down the road with free kitties and brought one home for me. A short time later we acquired another kitty, Jasmine.

10. Jasmine: A silvery gray and white female. My birthday was is in early October. Blacky came to us that first week, a week or two later, my husband found this little gray and white kitten about the same age as Blacky, cold and shivering in the woods near our house and brought him home. Now after back surgery, I'm at home in bed with two very young, needy kittens climbing all over me while I'm confined to a hospital bed. My daughter left for home a few weeks after I'm on my feet and I was left me to manage the kitties. Thank goodness for loving husband that loves animals, especially kitties. He had the litter box duty for a long time. Blacky and Jasmine are in the Scrungy stories. Blacky got run over on the highway first, then Jasmine in our yard a few months later, after she had a litter of sickly kittens. They didn't make it either.

11. Boo Boo Kitty: A solid black male cat. Medium long hair. It was a very hot, hot, summer day and daughter number three was on her way to work on the hottest day we'd had, and in the middle of this country road, lay this black kitten not more than five weeks old. She thought it was dead and stopped the car to remove it from the road. She discovered he was breathing, just barely, so she took him to work with her. That afternoon she brought him home to me and I sat the rest of the afternoon in the air conditioned house, with this limp little kitty in my lap, hanging on for dear life, squeezing water from an eye dropper into his mouth every few minutes. In the evening he just bounced back to life, like he'd never been near death, and was the most lovable, gentlest kitty we'd ever seen. My grandson raised him. But later Boo Boo Kitty adopted several homes in our neighborhood. But always remained faithful to us…his first family.

12. Preylor: A large, all white, neutered and declawed male. I think he was two years old when we got him and I've also told his story on Cats on Tuesday. He was named after the king in the Scrungy stories. He's the one who chewed on wooden clothespins and got sick and died.

13. Gretchen: I'm not sure really what she's called. A pale tortie, with white bib and booties? Anyway you all know her, she has her own blog site, Gretchen's Paw Prattle. She's my answer to a prayer kitty.

Whew! I'm long winded for someone who thought she had nothing to right about.

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