Post about Cats!!!

I promise not to do this too often, but with my last post about my blog not caving in to popular demands and tastes, i decided to become a hypocrite and talk about the populist topic on the internet: CATS!!! More specifically, about my two family cats back home, Kitty and Pepper. There are some pictures to hopefully redeem this tangent.


The story begins about a while back, I will say 5-7 years ago, but perhaps even earlier. My family's pet history up to the arrival of the first cat was a dog name Jake that died when i was about 7 or 8 years old, a couple of hamsters my sister had and my aquariums. But we had been adamant that we were not cat people until Kitty arrived literally at are door.

Kitty wanting outside

Our backdoor neighbours have a farm, so most of their animals manage to visit our property at some point, if not frequently. One such visitor was Kitty. It was winter and with snow on the ground, a little tan coloured, long haired kitten comes to our back door. She was just hanging out at first, being all sad and lonely and we were not sure where she was from or what she was up to. At first we largely ignored her, despite her adorableness because our neigbours have barn cats and we didn't know if she was there cat or what. However, kitty was insistent and won my mother's heart as she began to feed it, despite our reservations. eventually, Mom let it in the house and those we got a new cat.

We found out shortly later it was our neighbour's cat technically, it had been the runt of a litter from a barn cat and so they brought it inside. They had named it Peaches and had got it neutered and most of its shots. However, our neighbours have a granddaughter who is rather tough on animals, enjoying such activities as riding sheep and wrestling the sheep protector dogs. So it seems that kitty fled the scene and we were the closest warm place. To settle the cat issue with my neighbours, my dad did some welding as payment.

Kitty as a cat is aloof, she is rather intelligent, and has a lovely coat of hair. Her life now consists of sleeping, eating when necessary, and mostly cleaning herself. She also does not like to be held, although she likes being near people and is really quite friendly so long as you leave her be. She once was a very good hunter, but she is getting older and she is not that healthy and we suspect she is mostly deaf.

Pepper came into the house after my dad went to the mechanics one day and decided to bring home a kitten that the mechanic's cat had recently given birth to. Pepper was not a runt, she was short-haired with mostly grey fur with a white patch under her throat and of barn cat pedigree too. We suspect she is partially Siamese because of the way she meows and her features sort of.

Pepper trying to look tough

Pepper turned out to be a more dramatic cat than Kitty. She is more playful and huggable than Kitty by a long shot, she actually enjoys being petted and held, which brought great relief to my mom, who loves holding her, and for Kitty, for being free of human contact. She is loud and clumsy, as you hear her every time she jumps down. She also has no problem with getting soaking wet, which is very uncatlike. She is a very good hunter despite her lack of stealth and intelligence (compared to Kitty), depending on her powerful hind legs to chase down prey. She is a more prolific hunter than Kitty, but eats less of what she kills.

My cats are the best of friends. When they first meet, there was hissing at each other, but this ended quickly. They do play fight every so often, with Kitty throwing tactical jabs and Pepper falling on her back and kicking with her back legs. Most of the time however they just do their own thing, but they do like to sleep beside each other, and Kitty will clean Pepper, since Kitty enjoys that much more than Pepper. Pepper in turn will kill things and bring them for Kitty to eat as Kitty has stopped hunting herself. The only issue between them is that Pepper is more aggressive and will eat all the cat food if given the chance, so mom feeds Kitty afterwards.

Kitty and Pepper in combat

While my whole family love our cats and our cats love us (sort of), they really are mom's babes, especially Pepper. They curl up with here when she watches TV as she cuddles with them, and in many ways I think they are mom's way of coping with her actual babes leaving the roost. She is not psycho about them like some people, but she clearly puts a lot of energy into them.

So there are my cats for you. I never thought I would be a cat person but me and my cats get along, they do their thing and I do mine. I'm not sure if I would someday want cats in my house or not, but they have helped me be more comfortable around animals, particularly cats, and besides, are they not the cutest?

In any case, my pandering to the internet is done for now.