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Happy Birthday Annie

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Happy Birthday Annie 2007

Annie on Top of the Fridge – 2007

Today is a bit sad in our house, because our beloved brown tabby cat Annie would have been 20 years old today. Cats can live to this age and beyond, and Annie was a healthy girl until she succumbed to what we believe was cancer at the age of 17.

She was the first pet we had together, and the only pet to live in our apartment. When we moved, Annie ruled the house with an iron paw, a declawed force to be reckoned with. (At one time it was common to have cats declawed and altered at the same time. We no longer put our cats through the former procedure, known as Onychectomy. All of our current felines have their claws). Annie let any new addition know that she was queen of the castle. The dogs feared her, and the other cats aspired to be her.

She had attitude when she was a baby; I remember fighting a little tiger to put drops in her ears to treat her for mites when we got her. Annie was three years old when we brought home a new kitten we named Ozzy. We thought a kitten might awaken her maternal instincts, but we couldn’t have been more wrong. The first night at home she hissed at her new baby brother and swatted him down a step into the family room. Little did she know that he would grow to be bigger than her, and become an instigator. He would do everything possible to aggravate her to incite a hiss, growl, or swat. He played his own version of “I’m not touching you,” and then stand there, ears back, as she unleashed on him. He rarely fought back. They were together 14 years, and they played this game for the duration of their time together.

Annie tolerated, if didn’t care for, any other pet that came after her. She spent all her time from her invisible throne atop our tall entertainment center. She liked to be up high, surveying her kingdom. The problem with this was that she spent too much time away from the other animals. When she did come down, she was such a novelty to them that they bothered her, causing her to retreat to her wooden tower.

One day the gigantic tube television was replaced by a sleeker model, and gone with it was the old entertainment center. Annie now had to relocate to another safe space, and she chose the top of the refrigerator. We outfitted her new digs befitting a queen, complete with a cat bed beneath a body heat reflecting mat. Her majesty even took her meals up there, and there was not enough room for another cat to comfortably join her. Rarely did one of the others attempt to intrude. It was understood that this was her space from which she could observe daily life. She still sits in her bed atop the fridge, and her brothers and sister still respect her special spot, although she is no longer here to defend it. Happy Birthday Annie, we love and miss you.

Happy Birthday Annie 2005

Ozzy and Annie Standoff – 2005

Meet Tiger

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Meet Tiger (1)

Waiting for a New Family

By now you know that I have two Italian Greyhounds which I adore. I also share my home with four rescued indoor cats. I’ve previously written about the two latest additions, Barnabas Collins and Vlad. In this post I will introduce you to the first cat I adopted through my volunteer job.

We already had two cats when I started volunteering for the shelter approximately 15 years ago. They were acquired as kittens, the products of what I call “oops” litters. Annie was a brown tabby, perhaps mixed with a little Siamese, and Ozzy was a gray marble tabby (and the best cat in the universe), whose mother was Russian Blue. Sadly, we lost both of them exactly a year apart on June 2, 2015 and June 2, 2016.

There was an orange tabby in the adoption center. He was an adult cat who just wanted to lay around, and he didn’t stand out among the other cats looking for forever homes. I’m not sure why because he is a very handsome cat.

Week after week we developed a routine. I would lay my coat on the bench and he would curl up in it. I would come in for my shift and if he was already out of his cage, he would look to me for my coat, and I always obliged him. Since no one had showed any interest in him, and we had a bit of a bond, Tiger became cat #3 in 2009.

Fast forward nine years later, and guess what? He still lays around. That’s ok, now he has a much bigger space to lay around. I’ve heard that orange male tabbies are some of the friendliest cats. (Did you know that the majority of orange cats are male?) I have to admit that this isn’t accurate when it comes to Tiger. He is the least friendly of our felines. This is not to say that he is mean, but if you pet him too long, he will reward your effort with teeth marks. However, he is a cat’s cat, affectionate on his terms. He will head butt for attention, and climb into an available lap when the mood strikes him. Sometimes Tiger will even lay close to his humans in bed.

He likes to carry his toy mouse around and meow loudly, delivering us his latest “kill.” For this we heap tons of praise on him. He is the hunter of the group, and the only cat of the four who does this.

We call Tiger Pass-Out Cat, because he likes to sleep face planted. It really is adorable. If he’s really cold, he will burrow under the covers on the bed. If you see a lump, you know there’s an orange kitty under there. Again, he’s the only cat of ours to do this.

Tiger may not be a cat thrilled with kisses and cuddles, but we love him just the same.

Meet Tiger (2)

Pass-Out Cat