"Never wear anything that panics a cat."
Sometimes, when nothing else is more interesting to photograph, the cats become my subject matter. No, I am not some crazy cat lady. I am just photographically bored and need something to photography. It is only accidentally ended up with 3 cats. The fact that I am married helps my "I am not a crazy cat lady" case.
(Warning***** this is a long story. Stop now if you don't care.)
The story behind my collection of cats began when Jason moved in with me, bringing his seemingly innocent cat, Baxter- spawn of satan, with him. After a year, we moved from an apartment to a house. Upon which time my mother calls and says Lily (one of the two kittens I got in high school) was driving her insane. Since Baxter turned out to be devil kitty, fully devoted to Jason, I was wild about having my own cat back. Lily is just a little annoying with her constant need to be rustling things and knocking objects off any ledge.
After settling in our rental home, we realized that we had a surplus of stray cats living on our block, two of which seemed to have our house staked as their "territory". One cat turned out to be Mama cat and the other obviously was Daddy when the kittens were born under our house. 6 kittens were born, all but one found a home and we brought her in and named her Mona.
Over the course of the year, Cadillac (the mama- named from a dream I had about naming her) and Buddy (Daddy cat- named by really not naming him. Had to call him something when trying to pet him) and Mona (adopted daughter) all had their sterilization surgeries and all the appropriate shots. Turned out Cadillac was only 4 months old when she became pregnant- her uteras said so. Then I graduated college and had decided to move back to Fort Wayne.
What was I going to do with these outdoor cat? I would feel to guilty leaving them after being responsible for feeding them for the last year but the indoor kitties (especially Satan kitty) didn't like the outdoor kitties. The solution became my mom. She had a large florida room that could harbor Cadillac and Buddy while they became used to her backyard. Unfortunently, what we thought was a mouth infection in Buddy, was actually feline leukemia and cat AIDS. All his nights of defending his territory had left him with contagious diseases. We had to seperate Cadillac into the house and leave Buddy in the Florida room by himself (which was a shame since he was the most affectionate cat I had ever met). Luckily, the diseases seemed to only attack his gum line and he was otherwise healthy.
Meanwhile, Cadillac was not getting along with my mom's other cat, Fern. Fern is a doormat that says "attack me". There was talk of my mom's boyfriend's daughter looking to adopt a kitten. Well, why pay all that money for a kitten when you can adopt a cat that is less than 2 years old, has all her shots and is spayed. Off Cadillac went. She is a very happy house cat now.
Eventually, Buddy became too sick to eat and we had to put him down. Very sad, even now.
That is how I ended up with a plentiful amount of cats. I am not a crazy cat lady, I do not wander the streets looking for stray cats to feed. I just have a soft heart for animals. I even cry and can't watch animal shows that show animals attacking each other.
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