Thirteen Things about cats I’ve had
- The first cat I remember having was Blackie. This was back in Dublin, so don’t remember much about her. She had a kitten that we kept, named Sooty. Yes, we are terribly original when it comes to our cat names.
- After we moved our neighbours called around and deposited a kitten with a gammy eye with us. We were told it was female, so we named it Cleo. But it soon turned out that Cleo was in fact a Leo. As Tom cats do, he took to wandering off for days on end, and then one day he didn’t come home.
- After that we spotted an ad for a stray that needed a new home, so we got a new cat. She, yes we checked this time, was white, which meant that you could really see the fleas as they moved about her coat. She was the first cat I ever gave a bath to, and hopefully she’ll be the last. She became known as White Cat.
- A few months after we got White Cat we were surprised to find a ginormous tabby cat on our windowsill. It turned out to be C/Leo, complete with still gammy eye. He hadn’t been killed on the road as we thought, but had been off doing what Tom cats do around the neighbourhood.
 White Cat had numerous litters of kittens. We kept one, an all black one that we called Black Cat. Or sometimes, Baby Cat. She also had one or two litters of kittens. Usually around the same time as White Cat so they’d share the raising duties. White Cat would never, ever mew, or make any sound. Totally silent, but a great hunter of mice and rats. We’d often find the dead bodies about the garden.- We’d name all these kittens. Once after the characters in Brisco County Jnr, another time after those in Bear in a Big Blue House. Once, taking the dog for a walk I turned around to discover two cats and a line of kittens following me down the road. It looked cute, but I had to take them home. Then we decided enough was enough and got both cats spayed. And pretty soon after Black Cat got knocked down, and White Cat disappeared.
- After that we got another kitten from different neighbours. This was actually a relation of one of our previous cats, as we’d given them a kitten a few years before.
- She got called Lucy Locket, from the rhyme, I’m not quite sure why. And she was taken from her mother at too young an age, and was always a bit strange. Her first litter of kittens died, I think a Tom got at them, but I’m not sure. We had her spayed after her second litter, and kept one of her kittens, who we called Kitty Fisher.
- Lucy and Kitty lasted a good few years, but then Kitty got knocked down. And a few years after that Lucy died.
- We remained cat-free for a while after that. I think our next cat was an orange tabby. But I’m not sure, as I wasn’t living at home any more. Anyways, she died on the road.
 Our next cat was Missy, also an orange tabby, who went through the wars and even lost an eye[1] before disappearing. We think she got hit by a car but we aren’t sure. After that we decided that the road was really too dangerous to get any more cats, so we’d stick with the mutt. But then de mudder found a little cat wandering the streets, and after asking around and finding no owner, took him in. He is quite an affectionate cat, but he is also a terrible bawler and moaner. He’ll whine and cry and mewl for food, when there is plenty in his bowl, it just isn’t tasty enough for him. And he’ll bawl to get out, and then sit on the window and bawl to get back in.- He’s been neutered so hopefully there’ll be no wandering from him, and he has made it a good few months, so maybe he has learned that the road is to be avoided. We think he may have learned this lesson as a while ago the sound of brakes squealing was heard and he was then located crying under the shed, and had a few wounds. I doubt he was actually hit, they were very minor scrapes, but maybe he’ll have been scared enough to stay away.
Links to other Thursday Thirteens!
- Tinkerbell
- Don’t call me mummy
- Special K family
- Find of Snape
- Kitchen Table Chat
- But what these unobservant birds
- Blissful Life of a SAHM and Military Wife
- Too many Ideas
- Chicken-Scratch
- Top Left Hand Page
- (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)
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I love this TT, I love cats, I love the pictures (especially the last one). Great list!!!
My TT lists 13 things I can’t (or don’t want to…) live without.
Great list – loved all your little stories of cats. We had an Albert once that turned in to an Albertina lol.
That's quite a lot of cats you went through in your life.
We used to have cats, too, when I was a child. They weren't allowed inside the house and so mostly were half-wild, not really belonging to us but merely living more or less in the vicinity of our house in sheds and such. None of them got much older than 5 or 6 years at the most, before they got run over or accidentally shot or whatever. Imagine my surprise at age 20 when I met my first indoor cat aged 18! I never even knew cats could live that long! LOL
The only thing I am wondering is why you chose the lizard header for this TT what with all the different cat headers I have lazing around on my page…?
I had one cat, the legendary and lovely Harley aka Harlequin aka my Precioussssss. I loved her more than anything in this world and losing her three years ago (to cancer) was the saddest thing that ever happened to me, dead relatives notwithstanding. I'm still not sure I'll ever be able to have a cat again. It hurt too much to lose her and cats are hard to keep safe.
Great list! I use to have cats, but the hubby is allergic! Now we have a dog, who answers to kitty~kitty!
Great T13! Thanks for visiting mine!
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Thanks Tink, I quite like that last photo too.
mom not mum, everyone thought our most recent cat was a female when we first got him. But I thought he had a "male head" and the vet proved me right when he got neutered rather than spayed :)
Samulli, I was going to use a cat one, but then i had photos of my cats, and I do like that green lizard, so randomness ensued :) All our cats are mostly outdoors too, though they do come in for comfort on occasion, so they are pets, but they do tend to have trouble with the road, especially since the one outside our house has gotten busier in recent years.
H, ever is a long time. But yes, cats are hard to keep safe, unless you have a solely indoor one, and even then live less than 20 years.
Such pretty kitties! I kind of miss having a cat…but I don't miss the litterbox and no way would I let my cat outside, we live on a busy street LOL!
Toni, our dog comes when you call the cat too. but that may be because he thinks that he is entitled to whatever the cat might be getting. Although he has managed to learn not to steal the cat food, at least, not when one of us is looking :)
Hi Janet. Technically I suppose I don't have a cat, but they are the family's cats so I regard them as mine. Can't have pets in the apt where I live.
I love cats! I grew up having lot and lots of cats. Now, I only have one. I really want 1 or 2 more. But my husband wants a dog. A BIG dog!
Great TT13!
I could always wait til I'm REALLY old, then arrange to die at the exact same time as my cat so that neither of us will miss the other.
But that may be slightly insane.
Great Pictures!! My husband is allergic to cats, so we only have dogs now :( When I was little, I had my first 2 kitties. My dad took me to pick them out….Bonnie and Clyde. They rocked!! I miss having a little kitty to cuddle with!
Great list!
I love cats, and I've also never been very original with names. My first cat was called Betsy, which isn't so bad—except that I had a rabbit which was also named Betsy. They were named after my imaginary friends, the twins Betsy and Betsy, who although they were twins were not the same age. And one of them was deaf. Hmm…I obviously had a lot of imagination in other ways! Betsy (cat) got run over, and Betsy (rabbit) ran away.
My Thursday Thirteen is Thirteen Books Poodlerat Bought.
I LOVE cats. I think the pictures you posted are adorable.
It took me a while to spot black cat in the photo. Your current cat looks very cute :-)
I love cats and the enjoyed your cat family history. Have a great weekend.
I'm all about books (unread) this time round. Do stop by!
I remember my first cat, a long hair white Chinchilla called Tilly. We've got some great pics of her looking into the fishbowl trying to figure out how to get the fish out without getting her paw wet.
As a cat lover too, I loved your list! I can remember all the kitties who lived with me. I had to laugh about Cleo. That happened with one of my cats too. Even the shelter I adopted him from said he was a neutered female and I had him 5 years thinking he was a she. But he kept "getting it on" with one of my stuffed animals and I became very suspicious. So the next time we went to the vet, I told the doctor and it took the doc a while but he looked at me and said, "You're right! This is a male!" Ha!
I loved reading this post :)
Unfortunately I too had too many cats die on the road :( A few just disappeared too. Because of that we had the whole back yard fenced and made these special bars for the windows so they can't leave. I now have four cats – the oldest two are 7 years old, and the youngest is just one.
My parents had a number of cats over the years, before they had kids. My dad had Gikky and Stinky when he was a kid (one of whom apparently changed sex half-way through its life…) and then later, they adopted my grandad's old cat Charlie. Charlie begat Velvet, a slinky black cat who was a big giant ho (toms literally lining up on the wall to get at her) Velvet eventually moved into a neighbour's house and since the neighbour liked her and my parents were moving house, she stayed there.
They also had Horror and Judas (named by my dad) and later rescued a lovely ginger kitten named Sunset who was the victim of an attempted drowning and was very grateful to my mum and dad for saving her.
We had no cats for about 14 years or so, then I got Harley for my 15th birthday. In the in-between years, myself and the sister semi-adopted a half-feral cat named Cindy who lived in the garden next door and had her kittens in our hedge. There was another cat next-door whose name escapes me but she liked me a lot. I used to play with her with a piece of string which she would chase up and down obstacles all over the garden. Once I ran around so much I got tired and lay down and she decided to run over the obstacles for me without the string, to help me feel better. Sweet cat.