Okay, I’ll admit it: I’m one of those people who searches the Internet for cat videos and cute pictures of cats. Needless to say, I’m a cat person. Weird, that. I am, of course referring to the saying “Needless to say”, which is a common enough expression but it’s followed by the thing that doesn’t need to be said. It’s kind of like saying, “No offence,” before and/or after insulting someone and offending them.
Anyway, I thought I’d make this post about the history of the cats and kittens I’ve had. If you’re strictly a dog person, then… Sorry.
The Family Cat
This is Misha. I snapped this photo quickly before being forced out of the door to go to a barbeque. Misha had a stroke while we were at said barbeque. She was put down a week later when her condition worsened. Misha was our family cat and we’d had her for 14 years. She was super grumpy but I still miss her and think about her sometimes.
Tessa
This is Tessa. I got her in late 2007 as kitten. She was the only black kitten in her litter. Tess went on to have 3 litters of her own. 3 in the first lot, all black. Their names were Adria, Rameses and Joe. Her second litter consisted of 4 boys, all tabby-coloured. There was a fifth kitten but she was already dead when my mum found them. Names were Hercules, Ba’al, Kovu and Scarab. With Tessa’s third litter, she had 7, mostly all black but some with white patches. Tessa did a really gross thing and ate 2 of them. The names I remember are Black Shak’l, Tatiana and Ishtar. Tessa then abandoned them for the wild in 2009 and left my brother’s cat, also on her third litter, to feed all 9 kittens in the house. One of which we kept for my younger brother. Her name was Chelsea, after the Chelsea football team in the UK and she died in mid-late 2010 by a car the day after her owner got back from the UK. But… he had jet lag so he didn’t find out until he woke up. It was pretty sad, actually.
Phoenix
This is Phoenix. He was the only tom in a litter of 3 to my friend’s cat. Out of all my cats, I think that Phoenix had the biggest attitude and personality. He died aged at about 3 months. My boyfriend at the time and I decided to go out for dinner and as we left to cross the street outside our apartment, I heard him meow and turned to see that he was following us. We had always let him roam around outside. Cats need to be outside. Still, I knew he couldn’t cross the road so I started walking back across it myself. I was going to take him indoors. I was only a few steps across the road when a car came screeching around the corner. I froze, of course. My boyfriend was half-yelling half-talking, saying, “No, no, no, no , no, no, no”.
Phoenix obviously got scared. He pounced upward, you know how cats do, and caught the metal bit at the front of the car. Then he sort of rolled in mid air, over and over again. Then he hit the ground and rolled into the side of the road, between the tarmac and the curb. I suppose the driver stopped when he saw us running across the road. He got out and walked toward us, laughing. He asked us if that was our cat. I screamed that it was my kitten. He stopped smiling and when I looked back down again, I saw that Phoenix’s little chest was still heaving. But he was unresponsive. I think he must have gone unconscious upon impact and that’s what I like to believe, anyway. Still, he couldn’t go on to suffer and we all knew what had to be done. We got a trowel and I handed it to this guy. He put his hands up in a defensive gesture and said that he wasn’t go to do it. But with a little scathing insistency from me, he did. And then we buried him. Of course, this was a country town and I saw this douche bag often enough, not to mention the fact that he lived around the corner from me.
Then I got Nitari. She was given to me by my neighbours in the next apartment. She was only about 4 weeks old and so we had to get her special milk. Then we discovered that she had, not only fleas, but ringworm. So, we had to get cream for her too. But my boyfriend’s family were visiting and a few of them got ringworm. In the end, we couldn’t afford to keep her so we gave her away to someone who could. There, she was passed on to someone else.
Next came Sapphire Selena Azura Sphinx. aka, Selena. Not too much I can say about Selena, really. She was the daughter of a massive fluffy grey cat that roamed the apartment block screwing every female feline around, and of a house cat. Selena was also very fluffy and a dark grey. She was very floppy and had weird traits, such as eating sushi nori and drinking Mediterranean Leaf Tea. I had some trouble trying to find a name for her. I just couldn’t decide on one so I picked all of the ones that I liked. She used to sit on my shoulder and jump from it to furniture. She was the runt of the litter and stayed quite small. After about 4 months, she was stolen. By my housemate. Well, I was visiting my parents in the south and we’d had trouble with my housemate prior to this and so my boyfriend took it upon himself to kick her out. He’d been talking about it for awhile up to that point , about 6 weeks but I was conscious that she had nowhere to go. Regardless, my boyfriend brought his family and friends around to pack up all of her things. This is what she came home to. Anyway, because my housemate and I were in an open ‘feud’, she thought I was behind it all and nobody argued with her. As revenge, she took my cat. I haven’t seen her since. I mean, I know I’ve moved 7 or 8 times since then, but still. I’ve always felt pretty confident that she would have been looked after by this particular person, as Selena was much loved by her.
Osiris
Osiris came next. He was rather an impromptu decision. I just sort of got up from the couch out the front (I know, I was cool) and went to a house I knew had kittens (same place Selena was from – they were siblings but from different litters) and chose him. He was super adorable. Anyway, when I came home with him, my boyfriend was annoyed at first and then suddenly stated that he was going to go and get one as well. He chose a girl, Isis.
Isis
Osiris and Isis
Osiris and Isis were twins, brother and sister, and they played very well together. I spent more time with Osi, admittedly but Isis just didn’t get enough attention. She was very anti-social and used to stare at her litter box. Unfortunately, Osi and Isis’ 2 siblings didn’t do so well with their new owners. One was forced into being stoned by having marijuana smoke blown into her face until she just stared at a wall for hours and hours. The other also had similar treatment but his resulted in him falling off the bed and breaking his leg.
When my boyfriend and I broke up in 2011, Osiris and Isis were separated and given to new owners. Osiris on a farm, where he has apparently gone wild but is very happy hunting. And Isis to a place with 2 dogs, a baby, and a pair of stoners.
So that’s the story of all of my cats and kittens… So far.
Some of the demises were ugly. One of Tessa’s litters and also of my brother’s cat’s were placed somewhere and left to fend for themselves. I didn’t find out until about a month later. It was on the way to the cat haven/vet that they were dumped in the woods. Poor things. Anyway, I don’t know what became of them, or of Tessa. But I’ve always liked to believe that they survived and are alive today.
Thanks for reading,
StephAndAllThat
StephAndAllThat 