Challenge,  Fun Stuff

The Need For Cat Pictures

September 18, 2020 /

Especially Today…

I normally hate Fridays for a ton of historical reasons, but today I hate this Friday even more. 2020 sucks and today it just got worse. So instead of dwelling on death and politics and pandemic, I figure it was just better to do cats.

So this first picture is of Kris and her heart cat Moose. Moose was a polydactyl and Kris rescued her when she was a tiny kitten, on the edge of death, and had to be bottle fed.

Moose, when she was small, got in the habit of sleeping in Kris’s hair and did that every night for 14 years. Not kidding. After Moose left us, Kris spent years sleeping with her arms against the top of her head, she was so used to having Moose there. Moose put up with me, but only barely, and usually when Kris was gone for more than a few days traveling.

The next picture was of my heart cat Spike. He was an imp and I got him as a kitten and he stayed with us for 13 or so years. Originally he was supposed to be Kris’s cat with Moose, but my other cat Doc didn’t like the two white cats Thorne Smith and Ash (short for Clark Ashton Smith) that I had gotten, so we switched. She took Thorne and Ash and I took Spike, and then two years later they all moved in together anyway.

The last picture is of Grubby. Yes, Grubby was as fat as he appears in this picture. Little short legs, stomach never got off the ground.

When Kris and I moved in together, we brought her cats, my cats, and the people who had the place before us abandoned cats. One abandoned cat we called Misty Slut. She was starving as all of the abandoned cats were, and had a single baby we found in a clump of brush beside the house. That baby was bright orange and the size of my thumb and how it survived was anyone’s guess. So Kris called it Grub, because that was what he looked like there in the brush.

And Grubby had no off switch when it came to eating because he had been so starved when he was born. And he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier either for the same reason. But he was a love. He had short little stubby legs and he looked like a moving blob of orange when he walked or ran. He was too big to clean himself, so every week we had to take him to a groomer, which he loved. Even at that weight and initial birth problems, he lasted over ten years with us.

11 Comments

        • dwsmith

          September 19, 2020 at 3:49 pm

          Yes, the world is an emptier place today without that towering legal mind and what she did for women’s rights over her decades before and during her time on the court.

          The sf and fantasy world is smaller today as well with the passing of Terry Goodkind.

          And over 200,000 people who had family and friends now gone as well thanks to this pandemic and the incompetence of the US government. Yeah, it was time for cat pictures.

  • Annie Reed

    September 19, 2020 at 5:29 am

    Tonight is a good night for cats. Thank you for sharing those pics and memories with us. Was Moose the kitty you used to tell stories about when you and Kris moved her to the west coast? I remember stories about how a polydactyl cat “helped” you and Kris during the drive.

  • tony

    September 19, 2020 at 6:32 am

    Thanks for a brief respite. Grub kinda reminds me of our family’s cat Bob, who himself brought to mind Bustopher Jones: “a 25 pounder, or I am a bounder…”, who even at 24 pounds hung on the screen on the kitchen door when it wasn’t open for him.
    Thanks for the trip!

  • Kate Pavelle

    September 19, 2020 at 8:30 am

    Your cats are wonderful! My first cat was Rumcajs, a stray my neighbor in Prague begged my mother to adopt (her dad was a cat-hater), so my mom said yes, but only if it’s a boy. She checked… no nipples were found, so I had a kitten! Back then there were no official indoor cat supplies, so Rumcajs did his business in a shoebox half-filled with my playground sand until he grew old enough to go outside. He was a manly cat, as befit a fierce feline named after a famous children’s book robber.
    Then Rumcajs took to walking the rooftops and patrolling his neighborhoods, growing into strength and surprising girth. He was patient with my efforts to dress him up in my doll’s clothing and nestle him in a baby carriage, and he never once scratched me.
    He did, however, sneaked into my mom’s clothes drawer and gave birth to a litter of four kittens.
    In my first-ever experience in having to adjust to using a different personal pronoun for a person I knew and loved, I also gave her a gender-appropriate name: Rumcajska.

  • Philip

    September 19, 2020 at 9:38 am

    That big fat cat is the best. I’ve had one cat in my life, and he was awesome. His name was Figaro because he looked like the cat from Pinocchio—mostly black but white paws on some white under his chin/neck. My mom convinced my dad we should get him because we had our second mouse problem in the house. Well, not only was Figaro a phenomenal mouser, but I was in second grade when we got him and he lived until I was in my second year of law school! What a great run.

  • Mark Kuhn

    September 19, 2020 at 10:55 am

    The picture of Kris holding Moose started me crying for about an hour. My wife had two cats when we first met and I had a Siberian Husky dog. We were told to keep them separated because Huskies have a special hatred of cats. Three months later they were inseparable friends. One of the cats was a big, black one named Amy and she was a purring machine. I came home after a bad day once and held her just like Kris is holding Moose. I discovered then that holding a purring cat is the single greatest stress reliever in the universe.