Anyone else with four cats?

[ebethmom]

We're up to four cats now. We've had three indoor cats for 6 years, and the fourth cat just joined inside after our move. Here is our crew: Noire (21 year old female), Hobbes (7 year old male), Diego (6 year old male), Hurt Paw Kitty (2 year old male).

Hurt Paw Kitty is the sweetest cat! He's a gorgeous Siamese who found us two years ago. He had a hurt left paw when he first came. Ds was 2 then, and named him Hurt Paw Kitty. The paw healed, but the name stuck. We think it sounds kind of Native American.

The indoor cats are adjusting to having Hurt Paw Kitty inside, but there is still a bit of hissing. Hobbes has the hardest time getting used to Hurt Paw Kitty. He's a big chicken cat - 17 pounds of quivering cat. Poor guy. Hobbes is also very affectionate, and he had a difficult time adjusting to life with babies.

Tell me your cat stories! I like them almost as well as baby/kid stories.

[julbug]

Well, we have five. That might seem overwhelming to some people but we love it. They have their own cat door and go outside to go to the bathroom so we don't have to worry about a litterbox. We have twelve acres and no neighbors within sight so there's no worries about traffic. We have automatic self-feeders and self-waterers(?) which we only have to fill about once every two weeks or so. They've got the perfect life, for a cat anyway.

They're all so great, each with a distinct personality of their own. The first was Angel. I was seventeen or eighteen, working as a hostess in a restaurant. Part of my job was to open the door to patrons entering or leaving. So I was at my post when this little pinkish-orangish cat walked up to me. I picked her up and (I'm not kidding) she put one paw on either side of my neck and hugged me! This was a heavy traffic area, many stores, restaurants, a mall, no houses around that she could have come from. It was not a hot day so I put her in my car with some water for the twenty minutes until my shift was over. It was a long twenty minutes, I couldn't wait to get out of there. And we went to the SPCA to see if anyone had reported her lost. Their policy was to keep her for a week to see if anyone claimed her and if not then she was available for adoption. The long week passed and I brought her home. :grin

I'll give Eevee's story tomorrow, right now, I must be going to bed!

[boonpnutsmom]

I have three indoor ones and one at my office, she is our mouser. We have not had an rodents at all in the 3 years she has decided to live with us there. Our 3 indoor ones are extensions of our children and have absolutely no restrictions placed on them other than they can't go outside. Noel is our newest addition I got her as a Christmas present. She was barely five weeks old. DH and I were just talking and saying the hissing and fighting has finally stopped and this is now almost July. Our other two are brother and sister and have been with each other for 10 years, no fighting there. Miss Priss at the office is only now, after three years letting me pet her, we still have a long way to go with her.

[domesticzookeeper]

We have four cats; three are strictly indoors, and one is indoor/outdoor.

The indoor/outdoor cat is our oldest at nearly 16. Quite a remarkable age for a former feral to reach, but she's our "miracle kitty". When I was five years old, I prayed and prayed for a little black kitten. Every night for months I would pray to God to give me a kitten (had to be black). And one night, while my dad is out behind the house, he hears a little "mew" :eek Lo and behold, a black kitten! (we named her "Beeper" for the short, beep-like meows she makes)

She was probably 6 or 7 months old, and part of a feral colony in our area. She had already been spayed and re-released, and a feral cat choosing to approach a strange person is nothing short of miraculous. She was wary of us at first, would only eat under the house, and wouldn't let us hold her for too long. It was probably a year before she felt comfortable in the house, but she still liked to escape to the outdoors. It was another 13 years before she became really social :giggle

So now she sleeps in the kids rooms (she loves them), and spends most of her days roaming her domain, aka, our backyard ;) In a lot of ways, she's still a cantankerous anti-social ex-feral. But she can also be a mushy lovebucket, so it works out well :D

How we came to have the three other cats is another interesting story. Last August, I was stopping by the post office for something, and heard a strange sound coming from the bushes across the parking lot. Upon investigation, I found a little orange tabby cat. Who was starving, flea infested, and very pregnant :doh So I did what any rational person would do and brought her home :shifty

We got her cleaned up, vet checked, and bought all the necessary food and supplies. Being a petite, vocal redhead, we named her Scully ;). One week later, Scully had her kittens! Two boys, two girls, all different colors (made guessing who the dad was a little difficult :P) Single-handedly the best summer vacation our family has had yet. The kittens were an amazing experience, and I cherished every moment of their growing up.

When they were 12 weeks old, our boys, Anderson and Prince John, went to their new homes (we still get pictures and updates :grin). Being unable to find a home for our two girls, Miko and Stephanie stayed with us! Miko is the stereotypical crazy tortoiseshell, a total laidback mushball, and is built like a teddy bear :giggle Stephanie is a grey and orange tortoiseshell-tabby about half her size (runt), body like a cheetah, with lungs like a Siamese. Both sisters are now 10 months old. And since we kept the girls, we kept mom too. Scully, now over a year old, has become a sleek and healthy cat who seems to be making up for a lost childhood (we think she was abused, then kicked out; she got pregnant at only 7 months).

So those are all my girls, from the matriarch, to the Peter Pan-complex, to the diametrically different sisters. I am crazy in love with all of them :hearts

[ebethmom]

I do love cat stories! I like hearing how cats find their humans. Of the four we have now, two found us and we found two.

Noire came to me first. I was in grad school and my neighbor brought her cat from home, which was against her lease. Her landlord said "either you or the cat goes," so Noire came to live with me. After I graduated, I moved back to my hometown to start my doctorate. My Mom apartment hunted for me, and couldn't find one that was liveable AND took cats. So Noire went to live with my Dad. After he remarried, Noire became his office cat. My true kitty love had found me in the meanwhile. When he was tragically killed by a car, Noire came back to live with my husband and myself.

She is 21 years old now, and still rules the household. All of the kitty boys cut her a wide berth! She probably only weighs 9 pounds now - Hobbes is double her weight. But she is the Queen.

In her younger days, she talked all day long - big, long 8 - 9 syllable meows. She would carry on a conversation if you asked her the right questions. "Really? Is that so? I can't believe it!" Now she sleeps on our bed most of the day, and comes down to demand her food.

She still purrs like a lawnmower, though!

[UltraMother]

I have half that many cats. Last year, dh drove our 7yo cat all the way to AZ from MI, and then lost her :cry. I immediately got a new one (b&w long hair), who thinks she's a puppy dog. She follows me around everywhere. She likes to be petted, but is not a lap cat at all. A few months ago I got an orange tabby shorthair, who loves to sit on a lap and purr (until she gets hungry). They hate each other. Both of mine are from cat foster homes. The b&w is named Hobbes (of course), and the orange one is Heidegger. Dh, who only puts up with them because I like them, insisted on naming them. :shrug

[julbug]

Eevee's story:

I was walking to a convenience store with a friend, because my car had just died. We were coming up from behind it around the corner, when we heard a tiny noise. From the dumpster behind the store, out walked a tiny fluffy kitten, who came right up to us and gave her best meow, which was pitiful to say the least. My heart just broke. I forgot what I had come to the store for, instead I gave my friend my money and instructions to go in and buy milk and cat food while I sat with her so she wouldn't get scared and run off. We sat out on the sidewalk and arranged a little picnic for her, which she promptly scarfed down and looked for more.

She came home with me and I called another animal lover friend who was getting off of work to come over "because there was someone I wanted her to meet." When she arrived, we began making plans, she ran back out to get some supplies and we made an appointment at the vet. We gave her a bath with flea shampoo. I have never seen so much dirt or so many fleas come off of one tiny animal in all my life. At the vet, he found some kind of infestation in her ears which I treated with drops for the next three weeks. He said she was approximately three months old. Now she's been with me for seven years.

[J3K]

we had four at one point. Moses , Miriam , Milton and Maggie. Maggie was a feral beast , but with love and attention became one of the snuggliest kitties I ever had. Maggie was run over a few months ago. We suspect that it was me who ran her over , but I don't recall doing it. My dd found her. It was very traumatic for her.

Milton was Miriam's baby. I kept him because he was a tuxedo cat. I love tuxedo cats. He sadly ran away when he hit four months old.

We still have Moses and Miriam. We have a kitten from Miriam's latest litter. His name is Sam. Sam has something growing out of his tummy ( coming from the inside out) and it smells gross and is really tender. He has a vet appt for Tuesday. I don't know that we'll be bringing Sam back home.

we also have two dogs. Daisy and Murray.

[ebethmom]

I'm so sorry to hear about your Maggie, Jennifer. I've lost several cats to cars - the last loss was the worst. I found my kitty love, VanGogh lying by the road across from our house.

Diego is our tuxedo cat. He's a funny cat! He's a sleek, super soft-furred lean cat. He likes to walk on high ledges (like the top of a door), but he doesn't care for jumping. He's the only one of our cats that likes to sleep with the baby. He has his corner of her crib, and she has the rest. She likes waking up and finding a "dih dat" in her bed.

Diego actually found my friend. Hobbes and Noire had been with us for a year, and Hobbes was just torturing Noire. So dh declared that we needed a kitten for Hobbes to play with. So I called my friend to tell her that we were going to the shelter the next day to look for a playmate. When she said, "A stray kitten found us this week," I said we'd be right over! She had already hit her four cat maximum.

Diego is very affectionate, but on his own terms. He has a soft purr that he only turns on when HE chooses. He never has forgotten his days outside, and he tries to escape whenever he gets the chance (and he's FAST!).

I was just thinking of the friend who found Diego - she moved to New Mexico three years ago. I have yet to meet her two girls introduce her to our daughter.