I was a stray in 2001-2002 before I was captured in the back yard.

Mom and realized I was homeless and started feeding me on the back deck . It became friends with the family's spayed female cat, Lily while she was tethered outside, so they thought I was also female. Lily usually chased other cats away. I never sprayed urine on anything and avoided the other cats outside.

I eventually decide to let mom pet me. When the weather started getting cold,  she decided I should come in. She threw her fleece jacket over me and managed to get me inside. Boy did she get a couple of bad scratches! I was so frightened! She sat on the kitchen floor with me and I loafed down and buried my head between her and the wall, shaking with fear. My body felt really warm. She realized I was used to the cooler weather and living under the neighbour's deck, so she took me to the basement and set up a few cardboard boxes on the lowest basement shelf in the room with the cat litter boxes.

She figured out that I was an unaltered male. I lived in the basement for a few weeks but gradually ventured upstairs. She carried me up to my bed a few times - that was awesome!

I am still afraid of a variety of things that don't bother Buddy or Lily she raised from kittens. I will panic if she picks me up while standing near an outside door, which she thinks means I'm afraid of being tossed outside. She thinks that may be what originally happened to me.

I am sometimes afraid of thunder. I get really stiff and sometimes shake. She said she can imagine me doing the same when I used to live under the deck. She saw me behave this way once while she was in the basement. She sat down and tried to comfort me on her knee. When that didn't work, she put me on the drafting table where me food is. She thought she might as well comb me if I'm going to be all stiff, maybe she could get more of me done. I started purring like I usually do when being combed, and eventually relaxed.

I had some urinary problems where I was making very small urine clumps in the litter box and sometimes peeing where I'm not supposed to. I showed her that I was having problems. Mom found help on http://catinfo.org/ (updated March 2009) - she is very grateful to vet Lisa A. Pierson for her info!  Now my family knows how important it is for me to eat properly. I've notice that I've gradually lost a bit of weight, too. My vet complimented me on my healthy coat and said my current diet was better for my kidneys. I feel pretty good!

Our second cat. Neighbours where we used to live got a tiny kitten and left it outside all the time. We had to keep returning it to them to prevent our dogs from harming it. We finally brought him in and he's been with us ever since. They got another kitten and did the same thing with her, so we found her a new home with someone else. 

The neighbours never went looking for their kittens or asked us if we'd seen them.

I'm mom's family's first cat. I am supposed to be my mom's sister's cat. Over the years, I have alternated between my mom's sister's place and my mom's, where I am now.

When I was about eight months old, they had my front paws declawed. That was the worst pain ever! The vet didn't tell them anything about declawing before my operation. They've decided that if they'd know what it involved beforehand, they wouldn't have done it! They don't think my personality has been the same since and I'm not as playful or active. Mom recently found out that many kitties continue to suffer paw pain for the rest of their lives! Some find that kitty litter hurts their feet so they avoid using the litter box. Many declawed kitties are abandoned, surrendered or euthanized because of their problems! She found out info on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaEx-qe2wBw and www.PawProject.org.

Because I was peeing where I wasn't supposed to, I was diagnosed with cystitis many years ago and put on Waltham's Urinary S/O prescription diet and fed both wet and dry formulas. I still suffered an occasional bout though. I gained a lot of weight on the Rx diet and mom was wondering why.  She got help for us me on www.catinfo.org (updated March 2009). Because she saw the links to Commercial Canned Food, she learned why this Rx diet wasn't good for kitties. She doesn't understand WHY vets still sell it, other than they charge about $40 CDN for 28 cans!  

Now I'm getting PC Nutrition 1st Chicken canned food like the other kitties here. Even though it's got brewer's rice in it, I've lost some weight, play more, and am very happy I get to check out the other cat's dishes now. Mom would love to be able to afford to feed us Wellness or something similar all the time. She is still looking for alternatives and wants to price out raw food and the necessary additives to make my her own. I love cooked beef, but it might not be the best thing for kitties.

I don't usually jump up on the counter, but I might if there is a box of pizza up there! Mom once dropped a leftover meatball on the floor. You should have seen how fast I took off with it! By the time she followed me to the basement, that meatball was history!  She said I shouldn't eat them though, because garlic and onion aren't good for us felines.

Long hair, black.

Cat # 5! Miss Kitty was a regular visitor to the cat food for strays. We don't know where she originally came from. We didn't know she was homeless until we saw her living under our neighbour's back deck (where Blackie used to live).

She is very sociable with people and will flop down infront of visitors and want her belly rubbed! We belive she may have suffered abuse from a previouse owner - she is very afraid of being picked up but loves to walk up someone while they are sitting. In the beginning, she would thwart our attempts to pick her up by "Velcroing" herself to the carpet. At the vet's, she hooked her claws over the edge of the table when they went to go weigh her. She can pull unlatched doors open, but refuses to push them open if on the other side.

Early in 2007, this black short hair cat was hanging around for a week or so, visiting our veranda for food and the water in the heated dish. He would meow at us with a  hoarse, squawky voice (turned out to be his normal voice). We're guessing he was abandoned - he looked well-fed & no one responded to our found cat ads. He didn't have much hair on his belly. One of his eyes was more slanted and didn't close the same as the other, and a old tear out of one ear suggested he'd seen at least one battle or attack.
 
I coaxed him inside with a dish of wet cat food on very cold night when it was about - 17 degrees C ( 1 Fahrenheit). He ate and rolled around on the living room rug, purring. I couldn't pick him up, so I coaxed him upstairs with more food and shut him in a bedroom with litter box, etc. He used the litter box and was already neutered. He was very tired and slept a lot the next few days. We called him Sammy.

He was fine for about 10 days, then he wanted out of the room. We let him into the "general population". The other cats, Buddy and Blackie, didn't really like him. Ollie & Miss Kitty came inside in the fall of 2007. At times Sammy was a bit aggressive towards old Buddy , but thankfully there were no major fights. They didn't get along well enough to play with Sam. Sometimes he would curl up beside my pillow, purring, and fall sleep with his head on my hand. At times I had three black cats sleeping on my bed.

He grew to trust us more, and I was able to carry him. He was not in-your-face affectionate, but would lay on the floor and rub against our hand. He still showed some fearful behaviour, his sad and wary expression enhanced by his scarred, crooked eye.

In the fall of 2007, our cats were eating dry kibble supplemented with a dish of wet food every day or so. While online, I found www.catinfo.org. A while later I discovered Blackie was having urinary problems. I felt really bad because it was my fault, and I an still angry about the implications. I am wondering how many other cats are suffering because of species inappropriate cat food. The info I got online helped me decide to put all our "kibble addicts" on 100% canned food. Blackie started improving, and they all benefited. Sammy's dandruff even cleared up. His fur was softer and shinier than ever.

In warmer weather, we let our cats visit our back yard. Sammy LOVED to go outside and mark out territory - I saw him shoot VERY impressive urine streams. He would not stay in our own yard, though, so I put a red break-away collar on him when he went out. At least two cats outside took an intense dislike to him and would attack him. It was almost as if he was wearing a giant "kick me" sign. We ended up having to chase the attackers away and retrieve the collar from the grass. Poor Sammy.

He seemed to have more confidence when in the house now. When he started urine marking inside, we had to confine him to the back half the house, which includes the basement and the kitchen on the main floor. I tried to find possible solutions online. We knew he wasn't having difficulty urinating, so we tried feline facial pheromones in a plug-in diffuser. Blackie and Buddy were more sociable, even towards visiting relatives! But the urine marking continued. Buddy started joining in as well. We figured they were probably stressed by having to share territory. Now Sammy and Buddy were sharing the same, smaller territory inside. Perhaps Sammy was unable to smell the calming pheromones? Maybe he wasn't raised indoors, or with other cats? Who knows? It was too much for us and wasn't fair to him or our other cats.