We had next door neighbors at the time who had cats, and they let them live in the bushes in the front yard. Their idea of feeding them was to dump a bag of cheap cat food on the sidwalk twice a week, and let them go mousing the rest of the time. Totally irresponsible. The mama cat adopted my wife as a small kitten, and she'd sit on the window air conditioner in my wife's little office. My wife eventually made sure that our dogs weren't in the room, and she'd close her door and open the window to let the cat in. The mama cat's mother thought I was Satan Incarnate for some reason and would hiss at me, but she got along fine with my wife. Eventually, mama cat started living on our porch, because it was bigger and was covered. The dogs couldn't get to her because they had a dog door to the back yard only, which was fenced in. About six or eight months later, mama cat got pregnant and downloaded the gaggle we have now. Now we had a whole nest of them on the porch. About two or three months later, lightning hit our house and gutted it. Our doxies got trapped in the bedroom and suffocated, but the cats, being outside, all took off. A day or so later the mama cat and the all but two kittens reappeared. Now we're stuck with the dilemma of what to do with all of these felines. We were both still in shock over losing he house and dogs, and my family came down from PA/MD to help us try to salvage what little we could from the inside, which wasn't much. My niece, who was seven at the time, wanted to take a kitten home with her, so I told my brother-in-law to go for it. Idea time! Tell the neighbors, free cats! We unloaded two more, and ended up with Mama and three kittens. This is where it gets funny. The granny cat noticed that my wife was gone, but so were the dogs, so she started coming in the dog door in back and sleeping on the kitchen counter. It was burned black, but she stayed there, and my wife discovered her a few days after we'd found some temporary digs to live in. So, she started going by every day, putting down bowls of food and water inside, and playing with her. This went on for a few weeks, and I'd already told her that before we buy a new house, all of the existing house rats were to be spayed or neutered. And
no more cats! But, she'd already named the granny cat after her late mother, and with tears in her eyes and lower lip aquiver, she said "We just can't leave her behind!" *sigh* OK, go get her. But, THAT IS IT. I'm thinking jeez, she already crossed the Crazy Cat Lady threshold, and now she wants to up the ante. And neither of us ever owned a cat before, so we had to get a primer in
Felis catus 101 PDQ.
All I wanted was a dog. *chuckle* That was seven years ago. Granny cat and I came an understanding. She's asleep in my window, sunning herself as I type this. She also knows I'm an easy target for mooching if I put my dinner plate on my desk. Oh, and the kitten that my niece got? I saved his life twice: once, when a historically violent hailstorm hit and he got trapped in the brambles beside the driveway, getting pummeled my hailstones the size of baseballs. I had to put a steel sauce pan on my head like a helmet to go out and grab him. (I was sore for days afterwards.) Then I saved him again when he had the misfortune of trying to explore the yard behind the fence and one of our dogs cornered him. I gotta admit, he worked some pretty amazing Cat Fu on the dog and kept him back until I could chase him in the house. And that little SOB cat just hissed at me afterwards. To this day he still hisses at me. I should have just let the damn dog eat him. LOL My wife uses some sort of high octane kitty litter, so there's no aroma in the house. That was another part of the deal: I'll help feed them, water them, even sweep up after them because I'll be damned if my name's on the mortgage and I have to swim in a sea of cat hair, but YOU are cleaning the litter boxes!