The Cats

Chases White Rabbits ("Chases")

Birthdate: July, 1993
Gender: male
Color: black & white ("tuxedo")
Weight: around 12 pounds
Favorite activity: napping in laps

Chases is clearly the top cat around the house. Bill and I acquired Chases when he was about 3 months old from our landlord, who had decided that a kitten and a three-year-old son didn't mix well. Bill and I found him wandering outdoors on the one-year anniversary of our first "official" date, and I fed him some of my Pepperidge Farm beef stick. Little did I know, he was ours forever. He was very wild as a young cat, and we were forced to have his front paws declawed to keep our legs intact, but as it turned out, he was just lonely. As soon as we got another cat, he calmed right down. Now, he's a wonderful lap cat who gets very annoyed when we are doing anything other than petting him. He also loves a good fight with the other cats, although his pouncing is pretty poor.

Lady Amalthea ("Thea")

Birthdate: August, 1994
Gender: female
Color: white
Weight: around 7 pounds (and that's mostly fur)
Favorite activity: being admired

Thea was a stray born in my father's garage. She was a teeny little things, all white fur and huge blue eyes. I fell in love with her immediately. Bill and I took her home with us when she was only five weeks old. She soon grew into a beautiful, angel-white cat with long fur. As an adult, she barely weighs 7 pounds, and I swear that most of it is fur. Don't be deceived by outward appearances. Thea (also called "Princess" and "Lady Droopy Whiskers") is the most evil of the lot. She'll steal your pork chops right off your plate, and she's a fiend for eggnog. She hates to be held, but she loves to be petted and admired, and she will accost anyone that walks in the door demanding food and attention.

Our departed friends

Smudge

Birthdate: May, 1995
Passed Away: April 7, 2003
Gender: female
Color: tortoise-shell tabby
Weight: around 12 pounds
Favorite activity: pouncing

Smudge was rescued from the "slammer" in the fall of 1995. Bill made the mistake of taking me to the Pound in effort to cheer me up after a recent car wreck, and we ended up with yet another cat. She was a gorgeous long-haired, smudgey, tortoise-shell tabby with stripes on her back and spots on her belly. At about 12 pounds, she looked deceptively slow and sluggish, but she was actually lightning fast with her paws. Her very favorite toys were scraps of paper, twist-ties from loaves of bread, and the plastic things from milk jugs.

She had a tendency to come knead our chests in the morning, while licking at the same time. This left behind a rather large, wet smudge on the blankets (hence her name). I think that she had a bad experience before we got her, because she was frightened of being held and screamed pitifully if she felt confined, even though she was actually a sweet loving cat. As she got older, she seemed to be gradually outgrowing that, though, and would actually let us hold her for about 20 or 30 seconds before she cried. She even occasionally perched on a knee now and again.

When we moved to the new house in November of 2002, she and Wilfred started fighting over the food bowl. Eventually, she stopped eating. She kept getting weaker and weaker, until finally she passed away. We never learned exactly why, but we suspect that she had some sort of internal problem, as she faded quickly right at the end.

Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe ("Wilfred")

Birthdate: December, 1998
Moved in with "Grandma": March, 2003
Gender: male
Color: white
Weight: about 14 pounds
Favorite activity: eating

It was a few days after Christmas in 2001, and we had just moved into a new house a few days before. We woke up that morning to pitiful crying on the front porch. Imagine our surprise to see a ripped-up cat, bleeding and painfully thin. Apparently, word is out on the street that we are suckers for strays. So, we took him to the vet, who declared that a fight with a dog had put him in this condition. We had him neutered, and took him home to nurse and love. Sadly, things didn't turn out well. Oh, Wilfred recovered alright; in fact, he more than recovered. We couldn't get him to stop eating. Ever.

Anyway, it was the other cats. They hated him from the start. A year and half later, we decided that enough was enough. Chases and Thea were constantly fighting from the tension, and Smudge had lost 4-5 pounds because she would literally rather starve herself to death than go to the food bowl (i.e., go near Wilfred; notice his Favorite Activity above). Poor Wilfred was in turn very unhappy, as he was so cowardly and terrorized by the others that he would only emerge from under the furniture to eat. Which he did. Frequently :-) Unfortunately, this was all he got to do so he put on tons of weight and was never allowed out even to be petted or loved. So, Mom agreed in March of 2003 to take him. They seem to have gotten along famously so far. Wilfred eventually won the fight with Mom about sleeping on the bed, and he's even managed to re-program her keyboard.

Waif

Birthdate: April, 1997
Passed Away: August, 1997
Gender: female
Color: gray and white tabby
Weight: about a pound
Favorite activity: napping

Poor little Waif - doomed from the beginning. She wandered into our yard in spring of 1997 - a filthy little gray and white tabby. She had ring worm, she was crawling in fleas, she had worms, and everything else that you can imagine. She was so small (only about five weeks old, I imagine), that I couldn't turn her away. We kept in her the garage at first, and then in the sewing room when it got too hot outside. My mother was wonderful and helped to pay for her vet bills. I had to bathe her once a week in sulfur (poor little thing) in order to get rid of the ringworm. Once she was cleaned up, she was adorable, she loved to fight and tussle, and she would curl up on my chest for hours at a time and purr. All-in-all, though, she was the perfect cat. In August '97, while we were gone off for the weekend, she passed away unexpectedly. Apparently, she had Feline Infectious Peritonitis, and we didn't know it. Even more sadly, we never took a single picture of her!