Over the years, we've had several cats. Most are no longer with us, unfortunately, so this page is a kind of tribute to them. Click on the small gifs for larger pictures.

We start with:

We adopted Muffin and Patches, must've been twenty years ago. I do remember it was one time when Grandma Jean and Grandpa John were down visiting and they had left to visit a friend in Daly City for a couple of days. Big surprise when they came back. Muffin used to catch gophers. Mom or Dad'd go out to get the paper and there'd be a gopher's head rolling on the front step. No sign of the rest of it, of course.

Muffin had been diagnosed early on with a heart murmur. One day we went out and found him lying in the backyard, dead from a heart attack.

So a few months later, Dave came home with

Sam was supposed to have been a boy. When she and Patches were introduced and Patches hissed at her, something told us that maybe she wasn't. She was a lot like Muffin otherwise, though. Great mouser. We had to stop putting the cat door in because she'd catch a mouse and bring it home to finish off. I think she was trying to teach the younger cats how to hunt. Didn't really work.

About this time, Patches was getting real cranky and sick. One day, she wandered off and that was the last we saw of her.

Anyway, a few months after Sam arrived, Dave brought home another black cat. This one was

Scooter was one of several strays found in a dumpster behind school after football practice. Real character. You'd give him a bone and he'd grab it, hunch over while eating at it and growl at anyone who came near.

About a year or so after he arrived, Scooter was killed in the garage door. We figure he was sleeping on top when it was closed and got squished.

Couldn't stand having only one cat, so we waited a while, looked in the papers and found

Pippy was born on April First, and the date suited him, because he didn't grow for the longest time, then when he did, WHOOSH! Twenty pounds at one time! {Sigh} Pippy was ... something special. He was always my cat and the one we had when I first got sick. When I first went into the hospital, I was asked what Mom could bring me from home. My first answer was Pippy. She couldn't get the real one, of course, but she did find a stuffed cat in the hospital gift shop that looked almost exactly like him (the real Pippy is a vampire, the stuffed one isn't). Then when I got out of the hospital, whenever I stirred at night, Pippy was always there (usually on my chest, and still rather sore from the lung biopsy, thanks cat ;-), making sure I was all right.

A few years after we got Pippy, I went up to spend the summer with my grandparents. Came home to find

Doormat was a stray Dave found, wandering the neighborhood. Poor dear was starving at the time and had a parasite in her head that we were never able to get rid of. She's also the only cat we've ever had to go into heat.

We live on the edge between the city and the country and across the street behind the houses is a field where Sam would go to hunt. Coyotes and foxes also tend to hang out there and one night Sam didn't come back....

This left another void in the household, so we decided to do the right thing and checked out the animal shelter. Brought back

Isis:

Poor Isis. Found out after we got her that she was already infected with Feline Leukemia. Couldn't take her back, since they'd immediately put her to sleep, so we kept her.

She didn't last very long, being a kitten when she got FeLv. Being not-too-happy with the shelter just then, we decided to go for a purebred this time. Got it down to either an Abyssinian or a Japanese Bobtail. Did some calling, found a breeder who not only was home, but had a fresh batch of kittens, went down there and eventually came home with

Ko-Koi and Kimi:

Ko-Koi was the kitten. She took one look at Mom, curled up in her lap and went to sleep. So much for that. Kimi was a different matter. Poor dear was a show cat, and had had two c-sections, the second of which ended with her being spayed. Show cats who can't breed are basically useless. We got her for essentially nothing, just the price of having her papers transferred. If you're wondering about their names, Kimi is Japanese for Joy and Beauty, and Ko-Koi means Little Love.

Then about the first of last year (1998), Doormat joined him. She was the first cat we've had to make it to being a senior. Never really liked her much, but I do miss her.

After Doormat died, we noticed that the local pet stores offered kittens every Saturday. So in April, we did some looking and came home with

Nicky-poo and Richie-pie:

Nicky and Richie are brothers and it really shows. They're very affectionate with each other, more so than I've seen any of our cats, even Ko-Koi and Kimi. They're also polydactyl, meaning they have more than five and four toes on each paw.

And that's the story so far. Ko-Koi, Kimi, Nicky-poo and Richie-pie are all still living with us, very happily. More will be added to this page as time passes.

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