Always had cats growing up, probably always will have them.
Biggest problem I have with cats is relocating them. There's a 50/50 chance they simply won't come back. Once we had to move into a 1 room 'live in" hotel while the house was being worked on. Completely changed my cats' personalities. Being unable to let them out because there were major streets and businesses all around the hotel, they stayed couped up inside for 6 months. Now they believe that if they can't see food, it must not be there (since the only thing for them to do in the hotel room was stare at their food dishes.) So they will eat and an hour later whine for me to go downstairs and feed them....despite there still be food in their bowls. Took them years to relearn that they could go look for food before demanding I feed them. They're both still totally neurotic about eating though.
I've got two, a half-Maine Coone mutt and a Russian Blue, probably also somewhat of a mutt. The Maine Coone, Jingo, is "mine" by virtue of him having the strongest connection to me and me leaving the biggest imprint on his personality. He's super expressive, vocal, affectionate, needy, lovable and annoying as shit all at once. He's a lab cat that was in drug trials and was adopted out after they were over. If you look you can still see the faint tattoo on the inside of his ear. It's kinda funny. Since he grew up on concrete floors, he overcompensates today by kneading the shit out of everything: carpet, wood, jeans, flesh. It was kinda funny when we first brought him home, he literally could not walk straight on carpet because he'd never experienced a surface with give before. Took him weeks to get used to it. Longer still for walking on grass.
The Russian Blue, Dinkin, is no one's cat but his own. He's basically the opposite of Jingo. Quiet, reserved, aloof, independent. Where is Jingo is skinny, almost too thin, Dinkin is round and chubby. He can be affectionate but you have to catch him at the right time. He's not a huge fan of being petted, especially on the head....but if you stick feet in his face he will love up on them all day. I've pulled this cat's ass from the fire so many times I'm starting to lose count. He likes to roam, has to go outside every night or he meows up a storm. Sometimes he'll go missing for a day or two. When it hits three days, we know something has happened. Once I found him after he was MIA for days, laying in the basement nearly dead from dehydration, malnutrition and a pretty nasty virus. The same virus caught my attention a year later, although he wasn't quite so bad off that time. I've pulled him from Raccoon Traps the neighbors have put out. I think I've even pulled him out of a neighbor's yard when he let himself get cornered by a dog. I sort of expect him to just not come home one day, because that's the way he wants it. For all that, he can be absurdly cute when he wants to be, in a chubby, butterball kinda way.
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Topic: The Cat Thread. (Kittens, Cats and misc felines.) (Read 5594 times)