My Furbabies

Here's Natasha Baddenuf. She's a long-hair red German Shepard. She's a bit aggressive about protecting the house and the children. I'm not sure if her previous owners trained her that way, or if it was just a natural instinct for her. When hubby or I invite someone into the house, though, she knows the "stranger" is welcome-- it's sort of like that vampire rule where vampires can't enter the house unless they are invited in!

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This is Voodoo. "She" is Razzy's sister (Razzy's picture is below). "She" is actually male, but thinks she's a girl, probably making her the world's only transgender cat (shh, don't tell-- "she" would be heartbroken)! She also has a problem . . . she's addicted to straws. She will tip over the garbage can if she sees a McDonald's wrapper in it (because the kids always get drinks with their happy meals). She will leave the food (not that the other cats complain) but rummage through all the spilled garbage looking for straws. So I guess she's just your everyday 25-lb transgender straw-addicted cat! She and her brother Razzy are the only pets that we actually went in search of (I decided I wanted a kitten, so we answered an ad in the paper). I couldn't decide which one to get, so I held each of them for a while. My hubby (who at that time thought he didn't like cats), finally got impatient and said, "Pick one, will you!" So I picked Voodoo. I found out, however, that while I was waffling back and forth between the two kittens, he had grown attached to Razzy. So we ended up bringing both of them home!

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This is Razzy (Rasputin). He's a Sterling Persian Angora. Why he ended up getting all the Persian/Angora genes, I don't know. You can see that Voo (his sister/brother) looks neither Persian nor Angora . . . and he didn't inherit the "straw-addiction" gene, either. He and Voo have lived with us the longest amount of time, so Razzy considers himself "King of the Pride" (Voodoo considers herself queen and mommy to all the others).

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This is Powwow. She was in a household with almost 30 other cats and spent most of the first year-and-a-half of her life in a crate. She was so shy when we brought her home that she would hide in the cupboards (life in the open, after so long in the confines of a crate, was more than she could stand). Now she is friendly and well-adjusted, though she still prefers to sleep face down (with her face pressed into the couch) so that she still feels the "comfort" of being in a crate.

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This is Chandler Pooka Bing (I just call him Pooka-- my oldest daughter is the one who added "Chandler Bing" to his name). My hubby found him wandering around at the industrial site he works at. It was the dead of winter, and Pooka was a mess. He was barely old enough to be away from his mom, his little toes were frostbit, he was bloated from hunger, and had meowed so much for his lost mom that he went hoarse. For the first few days, he didn't meow-- he quacked. My hubby looked for the little guy's mom, but they couldn't find her. Most likely she had been hit by a car (it happens a lot around there). Now he's healthy, though he seems a little . . . well, the cold may have stunted him emotionally and physically. He's the tiniest of our cats, and he's also the clingiest (he truly thinks I am his mommy-- and that's okay, because he's my special little guy). Oh, and he's afraid of the dark (what a great feral tomcat he would have made).

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This is Princess Bratina (Brat, for short). She followed my daughter home . . . from the lake (grin). Actually, we were camping in our usual spot and a cat followed my oldest daughter from the playground to our site. She collected it and took it down to the office to find out who owned it, and it turned out that the thing had been hanging around for over a week, annoying the campers, but no one had come forward to claim her or report a cat missing. The whole four days that we were there, she hung around, and still no owner. She slept in the tent with us at night, and would unzip the tent to let herself out to go to the bathroom. She's a poly, which means she has extra toes on her paws (in this picture, you can see one of her "thumbs" fairly clearly).

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This is Bitty. His owners used to live across the street from us. They were an elderly couple, and both ended up passing away within just a few months of each other. He was painfully shy, and I was worried about him being older and set in his ways, so a stint at the humane society might be rough for him. So we took him in. He's very friendly now (he loves to hop up into your lap and share a small bite of whatever you might be eating-- even if you don't want to share!)

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This is Grimalkin. We found him while checking out hubby's deer hunting area in October. It was cold, but there wasn't any snow yet. So when this little white kitten bounded out of the grass, he was really easy to see! We don't know how he got there (we were miles from any houses, and he was VERY young-- almost too young to be without his mother). And he was bloated from hunger (which was VERY yucky-- nothing worse than a kitten with chronic gas)! I'm including two pictures here, so you can see how he has changed. The first picture is about two months after we got him. The second picture is him now, at about two years old.

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This is Whiskers. He is one of two kittens that were given to us by one of hubby's friends. They had gotten the kittens and then found out that their apartment complex didn't allow cats, so they had to get rid of them. My eleven-year-old adopted him and gave him the name "Whiskers" because he has a strange little mustache and goatee.

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This is Peaches. He is the second of the two kittens that were given to us by hubby's friend. My nine-year-old adopted him and gave him the name "Peaches" because he's an unusual faded orange (instead of the bright orange of most cats).

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This is Jellybean, and her previous owners gave her up because they didn't want her anymore. She's ten years old, and a little bit of a curmudgeon. She hates other cats and dogs (I'm not even sure if she considers herself a cat), so she spends most of her time in my bedroom away from the rest of the pride members. Her original name was Lena, which I hate, but I was afraid to change it because that had been her name for eight years. So we did it gradually: Lena, to Lena-Bean, to Jellybean. And now she accepts it as her name! It was hard to even get a picture of her because as soon as she sees you, she rolls over on her back and starts kneading the air wanting you to pet her.

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This is Bishop (named after the good droid in the Aliens series-- my daughter is a big fan). She was a stray and we adopted her at the same time we adopted Jellybean. The Humane Society wouldn't let me touch her when we first arrived (they said she was vicious). The night I adopted I her, I fell asleep with her beside me on my pillow, her soft little paws patting my face all night as she kneaded from happiness.

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This is Seigfried, and he was my oldest daughter's cat. All the time she lived with us, she bitched about my insane standards of litterbox cleanliness (Like most people, I hate the smell of cat pee; and with this many cats, the litterboxes have to be kept very clean and bleached very often if you don't want a cat pee smelling house). She vowed that when she moved out on her own, she would never, EVER have any pets. Well, one of her friends had a cat she had to get rid of, so my daughter took it. Then my daughter and her boyfriend lost their jobs (they both worked at the same place), and moved to the big city for better opportunities. Of course, their new apartment wouldn't allow cats. After bouncing around with some of her other friends, the cat finally came to live with me.

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This is Pavlov. Although he looks a lot like Razzy (right down to a crinkled ear), they are as different as night and day. Razzy thinks he's king, Pavlov couldn't care less. He was abandoned by his previous owners. He's very laid-back (someone who knew his prior owners says that they were pot-heads, so that might explain why Pavlov always looks like he's high).

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This is the newest baby. We haven't decided on a name for him yet. He's another rescue from hubby's work (another feral tom, ha ha). My pajama pants are in the picture because I can't get the cat to NOT touch me-- if I'm in the room, he wants in my lap. I think we've narrowed it down to two names: Niles or Quark.

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