Reply to post #15 (show post):
Yours sound like true personalities one and all and, yes, cats certainly do make a house a home!

(hide spoiler) To post a picture from Photobucket, you have to actually use the image address itself; just copying the URL won't work (been there, done that). From earlier incarnations, I think this may be the image you want to post: http://i1076.photobucket.com/albums/w446/Lyndaj91/c0f668fac89476b8d6d278ebf9ecaabf.jpg ...?(show spoiler)

Reply to post #16 (show post):
Oh, KatyCat's is another heartbreaking story ... Mine are indoor cats as well; I've never lived in neighborhoods where I would have felt safe enough letting them outside, and no, they clearly don't miss it. Gypsy had no desire ever to be outside again after having been rescued from being abandoned once; Holly is happy enough sitting on my balcony in summer as long as a human is near her but can't be bothered to step even this far outside in winter, and Tiger -- otherwise the boldest of the three -- decided after one terrifying venture down the staircase of a building we were formerly living in that apartment doors were clearly a boundary best not crossed!

The ladies who kept the kennel at Grand Canyon told me at the time that it's not just summer visitors who abandon their pets in the park, but often enough, summer workers as well! Imagine that -- they bring their pets, or even get new pets while working at the park, and when they leave again at the end of the summer they suddenly don't know what to do with them and leave them behind. Isn't that awful?!

But I'm not done yet. So after the heartbreak of Katy, I decided no more cats. Besides, I was traveling at the time, and was only home on weekends. But Richard, who was decidedly a Not Cat Person had been turned by Katy. She made him decidedly a Cat Person.

I didn't become a cat person until I met Bill, a fuzzy yellow fur ball who was hiding under a table skirt one Friday evening on my return home. This time we decided to do it right and make Bill a bonafide housecat. So he needed a friend. We found an orange and white fur ball, lounging about in the litterbox with his brothers and sisters. I have since discovered this to be a truism -- if you are searching for a furever friend and they prefer to use the litter box as a bed, you should maybe think twice about adopting that one. We never did succeed in completely training Ted to use the box. But I loved him anyway. One midnight, ten years later, I was treating all the creatures, and I shook the Pounces bag, Ted came bounding across the floor, and collapsed halfway, panting for breath and struggling to get up.

I called the vet who told me to go to the emergency vet clinic, the only place open that time of night. It was forty minutes away. I bundled Ted in a towel, and got in the car. I was trying to hold him to my chest but he was struggling to breathe and pawing his way out of the towel and across the seat and onto the floor, and I drove as fast as possible, but it wasn't fast enough. Just as I was pulling into the parking lot I heard him gasp has last. I rushed in with him anyway, hoping . . .

The vet tech took him in her arms and hurried to the back, calling over her shoulder that she would be right back to get me. But, no. He really was gone. They kept him for autopsy, and the next day our vet contacted us to say it was a heart attack. Really unusual for a cat. After that we had a kind of spate of bad luck with creatures. We had informally adopted three cats who had come with our new house, all youngish and all female. Shortly after having them spayed, all of them came down with strange things: one was a red blood cell disorder, one developed kidney failure, and one died of leukemia (ok that wasn't strange, just sad.)

And then, our six year old dog, Molly, also died, also of kidney failure. By then we only had Aggie the dog and Bill the cat. It was at this point that I asked our vet if we were doing something wrong. He assured us that we were not. But that was the 90s, and we were feeding Science Diet. I think there were issues.

Do any of you all have feeding preferences or concerns? I have read a whole bunch of stuff online about the advantages of feeding a raw diet, a wet diet, a homemade diet, a grainless diet. I hope we are feeding right, but there are so many unknowns.

Reply to post 18. (Themis-Athena: Pets abandoned at Park) it is terrible. I volunteer at a shelter, and people surrender their pets with, sometimes, the weirdest excuses. Some people should definitely not have creatures.

Currently there are heartbreaking stories of people who bring in their pets because they can no longer afford to care for them properly, or pets belonging to people who died. I could tell many stories, but won't unless any of you are interested. Because their are good stories too.

That is one thing that I hope to be able to control somewhat, is that at the end of my life, I don't leave behind any creatures with no place to go. There is no one I know, family or friends, to leave my creatures with. Either no one wants house pets, or they already have a more than sufficient number of them.

Reply to #15, Books, Hockey . . . Re moving overseas.

We had two opportunities to move overseas, and argued about the creatures. I was determined that ours would go with us, but that was before I knew about the lengthy quarantine periods. That is a lot to put a cat or dog through.

We ended up staying put.

And reply to #11 Murder By Death re moving to Australia with cats. Commendable and courageous. How did it work, actually. And everyone is fine now?

And I seem to currently have that condition know as mouth diarrhea, so if you get tired of me monopolizing the site, tell me to quit.

But I haven't talked about Bill yet. He was an adorable orange tabby, who played fetch, chirped at you when he felt like having a conversation, and did a growly chittering thing with narrowed eyes and slashing tail whenever he spotted birds at the window. He loved to be a shoulder rider, and he gave you hugs when you asked for them. He was always the best cat, except for this one time when he escaped into the garage. When I went to retrieve him he let me know in no uncertain terms that he was not ready to leave. I picked him up and he let out a loud and unearthly yowl,his head turned 180 degrees and his eyed glowed red. Richard, way out in the back yard, rushed in to see what was going on. I must admit, that day, Bill made me ever so slightly nervous.

Bill was kind of prone to urinary tract infections, and the standard medication at the time was Baytril. Bill was one of the first cats to develop blindness as a side effect, and made it into one of the science journals as a result.

Blindness didn't bother him much; he could still play fetch. We had to make a move once, afterward and we were worried about how it would affect him, but it didn't take him long to become accustomed to the new arrangement of furniture and floor plan.

We did find another companion cat for him. Hidey was a gorgeous but shy white and yellow tuxedo cat. She was our first experience with feline obesity. When we rescued her she was about a year old and her litter of kittens had just been adopted away from her. She was lean and lithe, and she hid her face in my shoulder. I thought that meant that she trusted me, but later came to understand that she just liked to hide. When we brought her home she disappeared into a closet for three weeks, coming out only, presumably, at night to eat. She must have experienced hunger, maybe even starvation in her previous life, because she is the only cat we ever owned who didn't self-regulate her feeding portions. It wasn't long before our little Hidey cat was a hefty twenty pounder. But such a sweet cat. She loved brushings and tummy rubs.

We have since lost both Hidey and Bill. Bill developed throat cancer at the age of 12. He had surgery to remove it, but only ten weeks later it was back. So we lost him in 2001, and Hidey only a couple of years later when she developed kidney failure.

Also our twelve year old Great Pyrenees, Aggie, had died in 1997 of lung cancer.

We hadn't yet switched from Science Diet, but is wasn't long after that the Pet Food Scare happened.

Well, I'll say one thing, you're making me feel decidedly better about posting such a long story as well! :)

Thank you for sharing so many of your cat-related stories. Such a lot of heartbreak -- but joy, too. And yes, the notion of pets being left behind because people die or don't have the means of caring for them any longer is truly sad also!

MbD: Moving to Australia with cats must have been quite an adventure indeed. My trio's move from California to Germany was a minor adventure already, but I imagine taking cats all the way to Australia is any- and everything we had to go through, squared!

Years ago before we had cats, some new people moved in across the street. They had two beautiful cats. A ginger called Watson, and a tuxedo cat called Mycroft (we assumed there must have been a Sherlock at one point).

The owners were an English couple who had moved to the States for three years and had returned to the UK. They had got the cats while they were over there and assumed that when the time came to leave, they would give the cats to friends. Of course that just wasn't going to happen and the cats came with them. This was in the days when animals were quarantined for six months, so it must have cost them a fortune. But obviously totally worth it.

Oh Themis, sorry, I forgot the detail that you took creatures from California to Germany. Sorry! Because that must have also been traumatic.

I know I have taken up too much room already, and I haven't even started on my current crop of lovelies. But maybe those will be stories for another day.

Books Hockey, so quarantines are no longer required? That would make things so much better.

I'm not sure what the current rules are. I think if the animal is chipped and/or has a 'pet passport' they maybe a little more relaxed.

I have two cats right now. Matty/Fat Fat Matty Cat/FiFi Sparkles is my almost 8 year old diluted calico with a serious attitude problem that only makes me love her more. I've had her since she was 4 weeks old when we fostered her from an overrun shelter in town. I'm pretty sure that she hates all of us, so when she finally deems us worthy for a few minutes of lap time (once or twice a year), we just quit whatever we are doing so she won't move.

My other cat is a recent adoptee, a tabby named Roxy Timebomb (after the husband's favorite band). When we brought her home, I'm almost positive that FiFi considered running away but decided that no longer having a letterbox wouldn't be worth the trouble. Little Timebomb is still getting into the swing of things around here, as living with 3 kids, a dog, and a psychotic cat is a big change for her, lol. She does like to ride around the house on people's shoulders, parrot style though. She's odd.

I also volunteer at a local cat rescue and regularly get attached to the different cats that come through there until the get adopted. If anyone ever steals my phone, they are going to think that I live with hundreds of cats..

Reply to post #23 (show post):
Well, moving the cats to Australia was certainly a bigger event than moving me! lol. I knew I'd found the right man when he just took it as read that the cats were coming with me - it was never really up for discussion - he just started researching what needed to be done. I'd have left them with someone if there was *anyone* I thought would love them and take as good care of them as I tried to, but there really wasn't anyone.

The current rules require 6 months quarantine, for pets coming into AU, but luckily they'll let you do 5 months of that in your own home (you keep them inside and have blood tests confirming the lack of rabies, etc.) We did have to keep them in a quarantine here in Melbourne for 30 days and I hated every minute of it - we were allowed to visit them 2 days a week, and they were in very large runs, but it still killed me. The trip was particularly hard on Boris and he showed me his back for most of his quarantine, but once we brought them both home, they fell right into their new environment and adjusted beautifully. Best of all, they and DH's cat met each other and integrated without so much as a hiss. I was astounded.

Christmas, as I mentioned, passed away due to complications of surgery trying to remove kidney stones that were causing blockages. Boris passed away at 15 from heart failure.

Currently, I have 3 cats. Itchy (Korat) and Scratchy (Tuxedo) were my husbands before I met him. At the time, I had Simba who I believe was part Manecoon. When my husband asked me to move in with him a month after we met, I said only if Simba comes with me. And so are car family merged. Simba was a Beautiful cat. Unfortunately we had to euthanize him when he was six because he had kidney problems. A month or two after Simba died, we got Merlyn (from Jack White series) who is an Orange tabby. So I definitely love cats!! Growing up, My sister and I had two cats. Dusky, a grey tabby and Daphne a grey long haired. I've never had a dog, but want to have one at some point.

We have only the one cat at the moment, and Belinda is likely to stay an "only child," as she does not tolerate other cats very well. If we had raised her with another cat, it might have been another story; but she'd probably be a handful anyway.