Here Kitty Kitty

I have had a cat growing up all my life and so has my wife. Right now I have a house with 11, yes eleven cats in it, so let me explain how we got to 11.

Where we boarded our horses, there was a bunch of indiscriminate breeding going on with the barn cats. I mean there were kittens everywhere, so most of the boarders were trying to help. We were fostering the kittens until they could be adopted out and we were TNRing (Trap-Neuter-Return) the female barn cats (we did the male later). My family ended up fostering four separate litters. The first litter had five cute little kittens and my daughter took on the responsibility of playing mother to them. They lived in her bedroom and she hand-raised them to include around-the-clock feedings. Of those five, we adopted two and we found homes for the other three. Of the two we adopted one was Tobie (my daughter’s cat) and one was Allie (my wife’s cat). The second litter was three little long hairs, one a calico and two were peach/orange. We were able to quickly find homes for them as well.

The third little was three plus one (three from one litter and a rogue kitten that just showed up one day, all around the same age. I named this batch and I selected names from Peanuts characters, Lucie, Linus, Peppermint Pattie, and Sallie (the rogue one). Sally turned out to be a boy so we shortened it to Sal. My wife fell in love with Linus (who is the king of the cat clan, only because no one else wants it), and well he fell in love with her. So we adopted him, my daughter wanted Patty (the wife and caretaker of Tobie, she is the nurse of the clan) and my Mother-in-law wanted Sal (Toothless – from How to Train Your Dragon, as he is as black as black can be), so that left little Lucie (our special needs kitty). Lucie is a little slow, she is somewhere on the autistic scale and really needs to be around her brother who did just about everything for her as a baby. So we adopted her and I made her my cat. This clan is very close and after four years still sleeps together and grooms each other.

Then came the fourth litter, which was four kittens. We had known the mother was pregnant and she was the last one to get altered once she had the litter. So we were able to help provide this litter with better nutrition and prenatal care. This showed that the babies were much bigger than the previous litter. We tried everything to unload this litter and in the end, they all became “foster fails” and we ended up adopting them all. That makes Emmie (the shy one who really doesn’t know how to cat), Lille (the pretty Princess), Dottie (my ESA and buddy), Callie (the spicy red-head who loves to fight)

My mother-in-law took one of them so Sal had a playmate. When my mother-in-law was no longer able to take care of them, they came back to us, so there were 10 of the 11 cats.

This is where Denver comes into play, he came to use by way of a friend of our daughter’s who has been living with us for a while. Denver is her cat, but he is staying in our house, so that makes 11.