Cat People

My husband and I didn’t start out to be “cat people”. Well, maybe I did. I have always loved cats. I like dogs too. But I “love” cats. Cats have unique personalities. You have to “earn” their love. My husband, Dan, was and is definitely a dog person. He never even considered owning a cat. When we met, I had four cats. We are down to three now. They are siblings, two females and a male. The “girls” look like twin Holstein cows. White with black spots and black tails. One has a pink nose, and the other a black nose; hence the names “Pinky and Blacky”. The male is a large cat, about 16 pounds. He is gray and white, part Maine Coon. His name is “Big Gray”. We didn’t plan the names, it was just a way to tell them apart when they were first born. There was a fourth kitten in the litter, which we gave away to a friend of my daughter. It broke our hearts to say goodbye to this kitten, so we decided to keep the rest. That was about 10 years ago.

Over the years we have had several stray cats adopt our family. There was “Whitey” and “Goldie”. Others have come and gone, but the original 3 live in our back yard and run in the house whenever they have an opportunity. They like to try the indoor food to see if it’s better than the outdoor food. We have a cat door to the house, but had to board it up due to other species coming in to also try the indoor food. I once had a rabbit in the house which the others “played” with until I mercifully set it free.

Every evening Dan and I go for a walk in out neighborhood. We try to sneak out the front door so that the cats don’t hear us. But they almost always do hear us and they want to walk along. So there we go down the street with 3 cats tagging along. They stop to chase bugs and birds and other cats and run across the street playing “chicken” with cars that go by. We’ve had to stop traffic and steer them around the cats in order to keep them from getting smushed. I’ve almost thrown myself in front of cars in order to protect them from certain death. Hence the name “cat people”, which is what the neighbors call us. Dan loves our cats now, almost as much as he would a dog. Big Gray adores him and climbs on his lap whenever he sits down. He wraps his cat “arms” around his belly and hugs him as he purrs. We are definitely cat people now.