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Our Cats

We have three cats. We got them all before we had children. One reason we got cats is because I really wanted to have a baby, but my hubby wanted to wait (he didn't feel ready for children). Of course our cats didn't quite meet the need I felt inside to have a baby, but I was able to offer them love and nuturing and a safe home (one cat was almost poisoned by a previous owner's neighbor, one cat was a stray, and one was from the pound), and our cats gave us love and warm acceptance, too, so we helped each other.

Now we have two children, Ellen age four and Calvin age one. I don't give our cats as much attention now that we have children, but we still love them and they are very much a part of the family. I'd like to tell you a little bit about them.

All our cats are indoor cats. They love to sit in the sunshine and sniff the fresh air from an open window, but inside they are safer and we don't have to worry about them getting lost or hurt by a car or other animal.

Our first cat's name is Buhner. We got her when she was a full-grown cat, so we didn't name her. She is named after Jay Buhner, a baseball player. She has short black and white fur. Her pervious owners had to get rid of her because their neighbors had threatened to kill her because she liked to dig up their flowers. When we took her, she became a happy house cat. She is a kind, wise, gentile, sort of reserved cat. She gets afraid easily, so she doesn't let the children pet her very much at all. But she loves it when John or I pet her.

We got our second cat when she was still a kitten, and we named her "Mew-mew." She is so-named because when we brought her home she kept going "mew! mew! mew! mew!" She has short black and white fur, too. Her mamma was a stray cat. I wanted to keep one of her siblings, too, but John thought one was enough. Kittens sure are cuuuuuute. I remember carrying her in my lap on the drive home. . . . so sweet. Now she's our "crazy" cat. See the crazy look in her eye? :-) She likes to scratch anything made of wood that she can get her paws on. :-/ She loved to sit on my lap when I was pregnant with our first child, and she likes me all right, but she seems to love John the best. She always goes to him and wants to be petted by him. He works at a lumber mill, and we think she likes the smell of the wood that he brings home on his clothes. He used to leave his boots out in the front room after he came home from work, and she loved to play with them. Mew-mew, like Buhner, doesn't like to be petted by our children.

Our third cat's name is "Ophelia," but we call her "Ophie" for short. She has beautiful, fluffy grey fur. We almost got a pit-bull puppy (sooooo cute), and we were going to name her "Ophelia," but we ended up getting a kitten instead (our landlord wouldn't let us have a pit-bull, for which I am grateful now). We got Ophie from the the pound. She was such a quiet kitty when we first picked her up, but wow she changed after we broughter her home. She became verrrry feisty and wanted to scratch everything. I remember the feeling of her little paws scratching my arms. Because she scratched so much, we made what I now think was a bad choice. . . we had her de-clawed. It was so sad when she came home from the doctor's office after the procedure. . . she looked so dejected and her fur was all flat and she had a zillion fleas. She got a bath and her fur got fluffy again, but she appears to have an allergy to fleas and her hair comes off on her back legs sometimes as a reaction to flea bites. I'm not sure exactly what happens, but it looks icky. We used to take her into the doctor's office to gets cortizone shots (I think??), but we don't anymore. She seems to be better somehow. We give her better cat food now (one of the the more-expensive kinds that doesn't list corn as it's first ingredient, Iams), and also she hasn't gotten any vaccinations for quite a while, and I think that might help, too (yes, we stopped vaccinating our cats--we don't vaccinate our children, so I figured why should we vaccinate our cats).

Ophie is the cat that is affectionate toward our whole family. She's very patient with our children. When my daughter Ellen was two she went through a short period of time where she was very aggressive about grabbing onto Ophie's tail. One time when Ellen grabbed on I tried to get her to let Ophie go by picking Ellen up. She didn't let go of Ophie, and poor Ophie was hanging in mid-air by her tail. Finally, one day Ophie had enough, I guess, and she scratched Ellen once, and I think that helped Ellen got over her obsession with pulling Ophie's tail.

One way our cats have benefitted from our having children is that I don't slap them anymore when I want them to get off the kitchen counter--well, I guess it was mainly Mew-mew that I did that to. Anyway, we have made the choice not to spank our children, and so I felt I had to stop hitting our cats, too. I do need to be more patient with our cats, though, and that is something I admit I need to work on.

Well, thanks for reading about our cats! I hope to put some more pictures of them here soon! :)

Me (mykidzmom)	My Husband	Our Daughter	Our Cats	Anniversary Page	Misc Links