First, our cats!                                                           

A house is not a home without a few cats--and boy--is our house a HOME!!  Welcome in--and meet our feline friends!  

This is our oldest kitty, Wicca.  She was given to Jessica 17 years ago.  She's very affectionate (needy, actually), and is stone-deaf.  However, her sense of smell is well-developed.  She can smell a can of opened cat food from the other end of the house!

We acquired two more cats from Jessica, too--Luna and Circe. They are both about 13 years old--born sometime in 1993, I think.  Luna's a rather eccentric feline, mostly because of her kinky delight in being swatted on her behind with an empty wrapping paper roll.  This is the thing she loves most in life.  Personally, I think she's a bit autistic--she doesn't particularly like being touched, but when she sees the cardboard roll, she goes nuts.  She's always been a supervisor:  If we're doing something, or if we have a plumber or carpenter in, she's in the toolbox or on the ladder, or wherever she can get into the action.  Her nosiness got her into some trouble last summer.  I'm not sure exactly what happened, but I was on the deck outside, heard a crash, then cat screams.  I finally found Luna limping, unable to move her right hind leg.  It ended up that she severed a tendon, and now walks with a limp.  It's slowed her down some, unfortunately.

Circe is a very affectionate kitty.  She likes to be carried around like a baby snuggle up against me on the couch.  She's also the only one of the bunch who likes to sit on my lap when I'm at the computer.  That wouldn't be so bad, but she resents it when I move my hands to type.  She gives me some gentle warning by wrapping her teeth around my wrist. The second warning isn't so gentle...

 In 2000, a friend of mine told me about a pregnant mamma cat who showed up at his doorstep.  I was able to convince Lloyd to come down and look at the kittens when they were born.  I fell in love with a little long-haired butterscotch kitten.  Lloyd liked the  mamma, so we ended up with two more.  Kali, the mamma, a long-hair calico cat, was skin and bones when we brought her home because she had been nursing both her kittens and her daughter's kittens.  Since then, she's been living the good life, and is a rolly-poly ball of fur.  She's really a tiny cat--very short legs and body, and when she began to put on weight, it really made a big difference.  Like Circe, she's a very high maintenance cat--very needy. She MUST have her head rubbed, and if she doesn't get what she wants, she'll nip or swat at you. 

 Since Kali's gotten so fat, Monica and I have been giving her a "lion-cut" because she's too darned fat to clean her butt.  The short fur makes it easier to keep her relatively fragrance-free.

Kisa, Kali's baby, is a sweet little guy.  He's our only male cat, and at 7 years of age, he still thinks he's a kitten.  He loves being brushed and he loves sleeping on my chest at various times of the night.  He's not content with just sleeping, either..he wants to get his whiskers in my face and sniff my skin.  I haven't slept through the night since we started letting the cats in the bedroom at night.  

He's a real scaredy-cat--he practically explodes when the doorbell rings, and all we see is a streak of orange fur heading to his hidey-hole behind some shelves in a remote corner of the basement.  His life becomes miserable when we have company, especially overnight guests.  He creeps up at night, but for the most part spends most of the time hiding downstairs, until the intruders leave.

We ended up adopting Lucy and Sweetie from the litter of kittens that we rescued in summer 2006.  We had decided to keep Sweetie,  (right) but had found a home for Lucy (left).  Lucy, perhaps sensing that her future was elsewhere, began to snuggle up in Lloyd's lap whenever he was sitting down. As the day drew nearer, Lloyd told me that I needed to call the lady who was taking her that our little Lucy was staying right here.  So we've ended up with two more, bringing the grand total to 7 indoor cats.

Lucy (on right below) is somewhat timid--well-mannered little girl, and allows her sister to take toys from her.  She's still pretty tiny, and is a very picky eater.  Picky in the sense that she doesn't like the good cat food, but prefers the Meow Mix I feed to the outdoor cat contingent.  She still likes to "nurse" on the fuzzy blue blanket I got for the newborn kittens, and cuddles up next to me on the couch every night, a big hunk of yarn in her mouth, sucking away.  Lucy learned a while back to fetch like a dog.  We throw her one of her tiny, marble-sized balls, and she'll trot back with it in her mouth so we can throw it again.

Sweetie (left) is the explorer and a tomboy. Maybe that's because we called her Lewis for the first two months of her life. She needs to be on Adderall.  She needs constant stimulation and gets into everything.  She knocked down some figurine from the cupboards on top of the refrigerator the other day.  If we throw a ball for Lucy, she beats her to it if she's anywhere near pouncing distance.  But she is a real cuddler and she had one of the loudest purrs of all our cats.