A month of gifts, day 7: The Gift of Pets

I like to tell people that my husband and I stole our first cat. It’s not technically true—Orca was abandoned by the neighbors, who threw her out when she went into heat (who on earth could have predicted that would happen?!) and began following my husband home from the parking lot of the apartment complex where we lived in Sacramento. A beautiful, sweet-natured calico cat, she spent the next 16 years bossing us around, as cats do.

Next came Donut, who came home with me after an ill-advised visit to the local SPCA’s ‘Whiska Wagon.’  He passed away last December after a valiant fight with a stubborn infection. I still miss him; he always was the first one to greet me in the morning (mostly because he wanted someone with opposable thumbs to fill his food dish).

(Here's Donut, looking grumpy over the whole new-kitten thing. Padfoot just wants to looooove him.)

Then Padfoot joined us. He’s a Maine Coon cat, enormous and fluffy. Sadly, like so many of the beautiful people, he does not have two brain cells to rub together. But he looks good. He’s basically a dog in a cat suit.

(All your fishes are belong to Padfoot.)

And now there’s Dirtpaw, another neighborhood stray adopted by my son. She’s a tiny calico cat with an outsize personality. We theorize that she has kitty PTSD from her time in the wild, since she’s prone to sudden rages. Fortunately she’s also prone to snuggling some of the time, and therefore she’s weaseled her way into our hearts.

(Dirtpaw does not recall giving you permission to work.)

Isn’t it funny, how creatures who sometimes eat bugs that turn them into a cross between a lawn sprinkler and the pea soup scene from the exorcist can become such an integral part of the family?

(I’m posting this today because it’s not my day to clean the litter box, so I’m looking more favorably on the rambunctious beasts.)