My sister just called me from the parking lot of Wal-Mart. She saw a cat---a kitten really—and wouldn’t I like to have it? No! I said no more cats, but I will admit to seriously thinking about it for the briefest of moments. We have 4 cats already and all of them were strays. Gracie, the ginger cat, is actually one of my sister’s previous Wal-Mart rescues that she did talk me into keeping.

I’ve had cats as pets all my life, but not until I was an adult did I have cats living indoors and found out that one can get awfully attached to these furry creatures. My mother felt that animals of all kinds should stay outside and so that’s where our numerous generations of cats stayed.

I suppose it was a good thing that I married a man who loves cats too. When I first met my DH he had 2 all-white, male cats named Hot and Heavy. The fact that he named them those names showed me that he had a sense of humor, but when I found out how he had come to be “daddy” to Hot and Heavy I was a goner. He had found the tiny newborn kittens abandoned underneath the porch of his house. The rest of the litter had been moved, but these two were left behind. We learned later that is a common thing for a mother cat to do with albino kittens. They were so small they looked like mice and he had to feed them with a tear dropper and rub their bellies to make them pee. He even took them to his mother’s house so she could feed them when he had to go to work. (she has corroborated this story and I’ve seen pictures too!) And so our life together began with cats.

Twenty-seven years and many felines later, there are now 4 cats trying to train us to do their bidding and I think pretty much they’ve succeeded with me because I am the “primary care--I mean food-- giver”.  So how many cats is too many---I guess it just depends on who shows up at the back door hungry and pitiful ready to touch our hearts.