I Do Not Like Mondays

Well, I guess that does it. We are

Crazy
Cat
People.

See, after we lost our great and irreplaceable furry friend, the incredible T. Gray, back on June 21, 2021, it was only my wife, daughter, and I in the house, with no pets of any kind. Didn’t take that long to feel like something was missing.

So, mainly at the prompting of my wife, we decided to adopt some more felines. At a local shelter, we found these two boys “Therman” and “Eclair,” who we ended up taking home with us.

Respectively, they became Leo, our lion-like orange fella who we like to say is “liquid cat” — you can just drape him over you and he just wants to cuddle — and Ash/ Ashton, who we named that because he’s mostly white with some offsetting marks the color of ash wood.

Leo rules the roost. He wants to be the most special and loved of all non-humans in the house, and he’s very dominant. He also, as I mentioned, just wants to cuddle up with you all the time, and he’s very curious and welcoming of new visitors. Just like an orange, though, he earns his stereotyped reputation of being a troublemaker and can really get up to no good sometimes.

But when he’s a good boy, he’s really a very good boy.

Now Ash, on the other hand, is very different, very introverted. Ash, I often say, was somewhat feral when we got him and wasn’t all that domesticated. You still can’t quite pick him up and hold him after we’ve had him now for several years, but he’ll sit in your lap and he’s *very* affectionate with my wife, who’s his favorite of us humans. He’s pretty affectionate with the rest of us as well.

Yet, Ash is a tricky one. He’s come a very long way since he was initially when we brought him home, but he still needs work and TLC. Ash had a rough and traumatic time with humans when he was just little — his “owner” or whoever it was taped up him and his siblings in a box and tossed it on the side of the road. He ended up at the rescue shelter, but was understandably very distrustful of people.

Anyway, the dynamic of just Ash and Leo eventually left us wanting for something else to balance things out. Even though Leo and Ash were getting along pretty well, there was still some tension and the situation just felt like it needed something — something to be added to it.

Next thing you know, we ended up adopting not one but two little girl kittens — gray tigresses. This time it was also at the prompting of my wife, but with me kind of saying “let’s do it” at one particular moment.

I had been thinking of getting only one more, but these two sold us once we got to meet them and won our hearts. They came as a matched pair, and their names then were Brooklyn and Carmen.

They’re not quite twins, but especially when they were young (and sometimes still), it can be difficult to tell which is which.

Brooklyn, who was the shier of the two kittens — though neither of them was very shy at all, really — would become Fiona. She’s our somewhat portly little pineapple of a kitty and, if you pick her up and get close to her, she will lick your nose.

Fiona is very, very sweet and loves to be held. She has these big Disney eyes that are like too big for her head, so she’s really a cutie. Personality wise, she’s very soft-tempered and friendly, although if we try to put her in the den or something for the night, if you happen to shoo her along with your foot, she will attack and eat on your foot. She’s ridiculous.

And then there is the one who was called Carmen. She has now become Ivy, and she’s a favorite of mine; I just find her very regal and beautiful. She has a much more serious (austere?) look to her than our little Fiona, with her big mane and eyes that, when you look in them, can look back and tell you something very deep is going on in there. She’s very intelligent.

So they are all special in their own ways, all have unique qualities both positive and not-so-positive, but oh man, was I worried what it’d be like having four cats in the house. I figured we were really pushing it with this one.

And at first, it *was* kind of a lot. There are a lot of mouths to feed, a lot of litter boxes to keep clean, dry food feeders to keep filled, specialized adult/ kitten morning and evening wet food feedings to do, water reservoirs to keep full and fresh, etc. There are a lot of hairball horph-ups to clean up, and a lot of cat brushings necessary.

It’s a considerable responsibility, in addition to our young daughter and all she requires, our jobs, and the rest of the daily chore-y stuff that needs doing.

And yes, of course you do get those times when the felines decide to go nuts and fly around chasing each other, leaping through the kitchen and tearing into and through the bedrooms after one another, leaving all manner of chaos in their wake.

If you’ve got a vase of flowers or something on the table, heaven help you.

So there’s definitely a bunch of things to keep up with, things that need doing, and it all takes time and energy — which, if you are a working adult yourself, you may understand there’s sometimes not all that much left of those things. Only so many hours in the day.

But all that said, things are indeed leveling out for us, and we’re one, big(ger), happy family, all seven of us. Some of us are hairier than others, like yours truly, who really has to keep at it to keep a clean shave. Ha.

And there is indeed greater balance in The Force that’s been emerging for us with these two relatively new additions. We adopted the girls last fall, and now have had them about seven months. They turn one year old at the end of July, I believe it is, so they’re really just still kittens/ very young adults.

And yeah, we are

Crazy
Cat
People

And we kind of like it that way. We love doggies and all kinds of other animals, too, but we like our setup we have going, and things is good; things is good.

Peace. 🤟😎👍