Post a Pic of Your Cat

mindflipper · Post by **mindflipper** » Dec Sat 05, 2009 10:43 pm

Telling this one tale in multiple parts:

PART ONE: CAT ON THE ROOF

Have you ever heard a sound in your house that worries you? Noises from ceiling above. Something was running around in attic crawl area above the ceiling. The exterminator verified it wasn't rats in the attic. And yet,I could hear the running noise every morning. One morning, when leaving I found this:

Yes, it's a cat. A cat running around on my roof driving me up the wall thinking I had rats in my attic. No joking! It took an hour to get her down, and then she ran away. But she returned. It turned out she was starving:

This tiny little kitten/cat loved Friskies, so we named her Friskette ("Frisk" from Friskies plus "ette" the french suffix for small). This cat could eat 4 cans of Friskies a day!!! And then she would lay around sometimes waiting for the next can:

Now, if you look closely as she lays there, you can see her stomach. See those dark rings around her nipples? See here better:

Well, I discovered from my co-worker who fosters cat for adoptions that those dark rings meant the cat is nursing, which also explained her incredible appetite. She ate four cans a day, at 7 AM, at 9 AM, at 11 AM, and at 1 PM. My co-worker estimated that given her small size that if she had a litter it would be two or three kittens.

Now began the great search for the secret hiding place of Friskette's litter..

mindflipper · Post by **mindflipper** » Dec Sun 06, 2009 10:39 pm

Telling this one tale in multiple parts:

PART TWO: ON THE TRAIL OF THE TAIL

First, I started by befriending Friskette. It wasn't easy at first, but for food she was willing to let me scractch her behind the head. Eventually, she became used to it and enjoyed it too:

However, it wasn't enough to gain her trust to get her to lead me to her litter. So I began to follow when she left the house. The crafty cat would weave in and out of houses and eventually loose me. When I finally found her hiding spot, which was the backyard of house another street over, the sneaky cat changed locations, and I started all over again. I found her new place, which was under the deck of the home of the president of our homeowner's association. I talked to the homeowner and got his permission to be able to go into his backyard until I could get the kittens into a cat adoption agency. I began taking kitten chow there in the morning:

Then, when she felt like it was okay, she went to the edge of the backyard deck and let out a meow. The next thing I know - there's kittens out of nowhere! It turned out there was three kittens after all!

So while a foster home was being located, I continued to feed bother mother and kids. Then there came an additional wrinkle. Turns out the kittens were crafty, and I got suckered into thinking there was only black/white cat, but after three days I made a discovery when I took this picture:

If you note under the chair, it's TWO black/white kittens, which raised the total for the litter to FOUR. With the mother, that's five in total to find a foster home...

to be continued...

Mousekedude · Post by **Mousekedude** » Dec Mon 07, 2009 10:25 am

Wow, this is great! Can't wait to see the next installment. Hope it has a happy ending.

withspirit · Post by **withspirit** » Dec Tue 08, 2009 6:00 pm

This is "Magic", the cat who owns us. She was adopted at 6-7 weeks old after a fine manipulation performance by our youngest son. Magic's mom is a rather small domestic shorthair, her dad was some sneaky neighborhood cat who didn't leave his name, breed or papers! Magic has several traits of the Bombay breed except her eyes, blue in this picture, are now green.

She decided to stay even if the cat bed was way too big!

She bacame a "daddy's girl" one thanksgiving night when my wife was away on a shopping trip and I was home alone with the cat. She meowed outside the door until I let her into the bedroom and she curled up at my feet. Now she sleeps behind my knees on any cool night. She is very skittish around people she doesn't know, but very affectionate with her family.

Here she is being a little "wild child".

She is very much the queen of the house. I read that in ancient Egypt people worshipped cats, Magic has never forgotten that!

She got her name because she TOLD me that Magic is her name. I am sure some of you know what that means!

Here she is using her magic to force her brother to adopt the same pose as she.

She is now 7+ years old and 13 lbs. I think she was just trying to grow into that cat bed she never uses now.

Thanks for this "post a picture of your cat" idea.
Happy Landings!

mindflipper · Post by **mindflipper** » Dec Tue 08, 2009 6:48 pm

Magic was soooooo cute as a kitten. I never got to see my cat at the age; she didn't come into our lives until she was about 6 months old....

It is amazing how cats with 'tudes can capture our hearts. My cat is very close with me, but she doesn't want to be treated as a child. If you talk down to here, like parents do with really small children, or even talk babyish to her, she will ignore you. She wants to be spoken to like an adult and treated like an adult. She has made it clear none of us are her parents, but that she's equal part of the family. She makes it clear she definitely is an "equal" in what goes on around the house, and gets upset when not consulted.

hockeygirl · Post by **hockeygirl** » Dec Wed 09, 2009 2:55 am

I feel so left out... I don't have a cat. My friends down south have 2 very annoying cats. 1 that barfs all the time and 1 that has NO BRAINS (it's a bengal...) Does that count?

Jacca5660 · Post by **Jacca5660** » Dec Wed 09, 2009 6:53 am

It gladdens my heart to see such love, affection, and caring from my fellow Disers. To know how hard the life of a stray cat is. Knowing that we are out there rescuing so many of them. Simply beautiful!

To beat the band, it's by a lot of us macho guys!! I guess we're just old softies! ;+>

UPDATE: We never did recover Rex! R.I.P. *TEAR*

mindflipper · Post by **mindflipper** » Dec Wed 09, 2009 10:47 am

withspirit: gotta question to ask: who does your cat hang around the most with? Is it you? Or your son in the photo? Some cats like to emulate their housemates.

BTW I gave away my cat bed. My cat never used it either. Her opinion is that if we get to use furniture and beds - so does she!

withspirit · Post by **withspirit** » Dec Wed 09, 2009 8:39 pm

mindflipper,

withspirit: gotta question to ask: who does your cat hang around the most with? Is it you? Or your son in the photo? Some cats like to emulate their housemates.

She stays with me (mostly) when I am home. She likes everybody in the house and settles for any warm lap - she is an equal opportunity lap cat. She only sleeps with me when I am home. When I am away she sometimes sleeps with my wife, but only once-in-a-while. I think she stays around me because I am a pushover for an added snack in the middle of the day!

mindflipper · Post by **mindflipper** » Dec Wed 09, 2009 9:09 pm

Mine's the same - she works for me the snacks too. Odd how cats pick the male head of the household to manipulate - you think it would it pick the female head of the household, but they pick the males over the females. Maybe is because they can bring out in us the "old softies" like Jacca5660 said?

mindflipper · Post by **mindflipper** » Dec Wed 09, 2009 10:48 pm

Telling this one tale in multiple parts:

PART THREE: SEARCH FOR A FOSTER HOME

I ran into problems placing them in a foster home. The problems were like dominos falling: first, the foster who was going to take the cats had a family emergency and would be away for weeks, relocating her fosters to other current fosters; second, before that, another foster went on a trip to Europe for a few weeks, and the other fosters were taken care of her cats during her trip; and third, there's the timing: this particular time of the year of late Spriing and Summer is known as the "kitten season". There would not be an available foster - anywhere, in any local cat adoption agency - for 6+ weeks!!!

That was going to be too long to keep them living under the deck of the homeowners' association president's home. He had been very cooperative up to this point, but 6 more weeks was stretching it.

Time was also not on my side with kittens. They needed to be tamed down if they stood a chance to be adopted. Living on the deck without human contact would allow them to grow up wild and turn into feral cats. For cats to adopted, there's two important criteria they must meet: they must be "approachable" and "socialable". If you can approach a cat and pet it, it can't be adopted.

While living on the deck, I came up with names for kittens:

The black and white tuxedoed pair I named Heckle and Jeckle. They worked together as a team like the cartoon pair of tuxedoed crows, so the names fit.

The striped one I named Tiger. Tiger even that young and small had a whole lot of attitude. Name fit the personality.

The grey and white kitten I named Bobtail. Why? Because the first ever I came across a kitten with a bobtail (a stubbed tail). Sometimes "Bob" for short.

Since I still could not get near the kittens, I had no idea of their sex.

And finally I found a temporary foster home, thanks to an unexpected and unlikely benefactor...

to be continued

MetalRage · Post by **MetalRage** » Dec Thu 10, 2009 1:32 am

Everyone has very nice looking cats! I keep forgetting to add my pictures

I'm going to make a reminder to myself to do it tomorrow!

disneydreamer58 · Post by **disneydreamer58** » Dec Thu 10, 2009 9:23 am

Mindflipper, great story! So glad you have such a generous heart and the momma and babies are adorable. I am such a cat lover, and you really touched my heart with your story!! I am gonna try to see how to upload a pic of my cat Precious on here........

disneydreamer58 · Post by **disneydreamer58** » Dec Thu 10, 2009 9:54 am

Mousekedude wrote:
disneydreamer58 wrote:I don't know how to post a pic on here
Go to a file sharing site like Photobucket.com and create a user account. It's easy and free (I was opposed to doing that at first, but now I'm glad I did). Follow the instructions for uploading pics from your computer. Once you have done that, choose one and click on the button above it that says "share". It will take you to a menu for different types of sharing links.
Click on the button at the top that says "Get Link Code". That will open a menu for different types of link codes, and the one you want is under the section that says "IMG for bulletin boards and forums." It's the first one under that heading, and says "full size" next to it. Left click once on that link to highlight it, then right click to bring up a selection menu and click "copy". Then go to your text window in subsonic where you are typing up your post, right click on the window where you want the picture to be, and click "paste". You will see the link code appear there. Then when you actually submit your post, it will show up as the actual picture.

I signed up for photobucket but it doesn't give me the option of IMG for bulletin boards and forums when I go to Get Link Code =(

disneydreamer58 · Post by **disneydreamer58** » Dec Thu 10, 2009 10:04 am

OMG you all have no idea how hard that was for me to put on here! ha ha ha Anyway, that is my baby!!!! I love my cat! She is 9 yrs old, wait I think she is 10 yrs old this month!