(35) Cats

I think Animal Planet must be my new favorite station, because I find recently that I'm always watching it. I never used to though, I used to think it was really boring. Maybe there's just a good streak of new TV shows on that I'm finding interesting on AP, but so far I love watching Animal Planet (even if some of the shows are terrifying).

Cats 101 is on right now, and it really makes me miss my cats back home :(

I love cats. I don't know what is is about them, especially since they're often considered to be boring, unfriendly, and "stuck-up" when it comes to domesticated animals. But I disagree. I grew up with cats my whole life, and all the cats I've ever had were really friendly. But, naturally there was an exception.

Let me tell you the tale of Snow and Dallas.
Snow was a stray cat. We got her when she was a little kitten, and one of my elementary/middle school friends, Jaquese, was going door-to-door asking if we knew who it belonged to, or if we wanted it. Our old cat Mr. Bojangles had just died, and we're the type of people who say "We're not getting any more cats", only to wind up with a new one within the next few weeks/months. And here we go!
A brand new, beautiful white kitten, and we named her Snow. Boring name, yes. but I was around 13 and unoriginal and I got to name her.

So after awhile, maybe a month or so, we decided that she probably needed a little friend around since she was so little and full of energy. Unlike adult cats, little kittens aren't so independent and don't usually like to hang out alone. So we took off to the Humane Society and got a new cat, named Dallas.
If you can picture a cat with a personality, think of someone who never leaves their house, and is probably people-phobic; but at the same time, tremendously curious of every little thing that takes place around her. This is what Dallas was like. Sure she was nice, but she usually ran away and hid somewhere whenever we tried to go near her.
Anyway, Snow HATED this cat from the beginning. It's probably because Snow was there first, declared herself the dominant feline, and Dallas was the #1 threat to her royalty.
They got into some nasty cat-fights, and they both started "marking their territory" all over the house. Dallas wound up getting really skinny, and Snow got huge because she was eating all of Dallas' food.

Eventually, we had to get rid of both of them. They were causing too much drama and were ruining all the furniture. They weren't even friendly anymore. It was not a pretty place anymore for kitty-cats :(

So we decided to get rid of them, and took them both to the Humane Society and had to make excuses like "We're moving". The Humane Society likes to ask personal questions to try to talk you out of getting rid of your pets, and moving doesn't really slide as a good excuse these days. But it worked, because we certainly couldn't tell them why we were really getting rid of them, otherwise we were afraid no one would want them... Even though we thought the public deserved to know Snow (specifically), wasn't really house-broken.

I know that kittens born from or raised by domesticated cats can be easily house-broken since the mother teaches them everything, so that's how we learned that stray cats are a much different story. With Tigger and Harley Quinn however, we took in Harley as a stray that some of Jimmy's friend's were giving away, and because Tigger was the older, thus "dominant" one in the household, she wasn't threatened a bit by puny little Harley Quinn. Was she pissed that Harley was there? You betcha, but it certainly wasn't a Snow & Dallas case.

At the time, it was after Snow and Dallas that my dad put his foot down and declared "No more cats!"
About a year later we adopted "Honey Cat", now known as Toby. He lives at my dad's house, and he absolutely loves attention. Its hilarious. He knows his name so that he'll come when you call him.... actually, if you even look at him he'll come over and start begging for attention.

I Love Cats.

The End