Cats' Ownership

We were adopted a couple of weeks ago. One afternoon, as Nelson was walking in the door after work, two cats walked in with him. They arrived like they had reservations. They barged in like family that's driven 40 hours to get to you. The first night we cuddled and made over them. They had obviously been around people, because they were friendly--no skiddishness whatsoever! They even let Asher pick them up and drag them around. At bedtime they went back out because we had no cat box.

The next morning they were at the door. I had fed them people tuna and gave them milk the first night. They got more of the same the second day. That is, until I went to the Dollar Store and bought some cheapo dry cat food and a littler box (open and cheap). It appeared that they had decided to stay--cats own people, not the other way around, so I began to think about names.

One of the cats is larger. He has a coarse coat. He is mostly black with white tipped front mittens and mitten paws. He's polydactyl, meaning he has extra toes. His back legs are white up to the joint so it looks like he has on white tube socks. White socks. White Sox. Famous White Sox: Shoeless Joe Jackson. Appropriate name: Jackson.

The other kitty is a kitten. She's a tiger. She barely ever stops purring. Her name is Purrkins. She has the sweetest disposition, but is pure playfulness as well. She has singlehandedly broken half the purple glass ornaments on my little white tree in the living room. Good thing she's adorable...and I didn't pay hardly anything for the ornaments!

Friday, Jackson was determined to get cuddled while I was equally determined to do some writing. I decided Jackson needed a timeout, so he was reintroduced to the outdoors. He didn't come back in. Later in the day our houseguest and I heard a thumping and mews from the crawlspace. Jackson must have decided to try rentry the hard way. Nelson was sick on Friday. He wanted to go to bed early. He was just putting his CPAP mask on when the bumping and mewing started up again. The cat was back and right under the bedrooms. My beloved got dressed and we went out to the crawl space with one of his shop lights. He crawled under the house and guess who was nowhere to be found? Dumb cat. I had been outside the access making sure the cord didn't unplug again. Nelson decided we could have a garage sale with all the junk under the house--I'm not pulling it out of there!

We covered the access back up and decided it would be awful if the cat died under the house or worse yet in the duct work, but it was late, we were cold, and nothing was getting solved that night. We came in the house and Nelson went to back to bed.

Beth showed up a couple hours later to pick up Asher, who had thankfully decided to take a late nap and slept through the entire crawl space escapade. We visited and then she readied to leave. I had to go to the bathroom. As she was walking out the door, guess who ran in? And without even a word of apology, Jackson was back and playing with Purrkins.

Cats!

Want to also report that they are eating a better quality of cat food. This was in direct response to Jackson's nasty gaseous release habit--it'll run you out of the room! We also purchased a dome covered cat box and multiple cat cat litter. Next stop vet. Being owned by a cat is quite expensive!