196 days ago by vickie386 | 53 views | 0 meows

I'm Famous!

Hey, check it out! Mom (that lady who I used to call "the nice volunteer") got a letter in the mail a few days ago from Workman Publishing Co. in New York. One of MY pictures (one of the gazillion pictures Mom sent in of me) was selected to be in the 2008 Bad Cats calendar. I'm in all my brilliant orange glory in the wall calendar for 1 and 2 June 2008, and in black & white in the page-a-day calendar on 2 June 2008. Eat your heart out Morris!

This is JUST the beginning...

 

196 days ago by vickie386 | 56 views | 0 meows

How It All Began

So, there I was - it was August of 2001 and I was at a Petsmart Adoption Center. I don't know exactly what happened, I don't remember exactly how I came to be there, but there I was. At first, I really didn't like the place. I didn't want to come out of the metal box they put me in, and all the people that kept coming up to the window and tapping on the glass made me nervous. Some would even bring their dogs up to the window to have a look at me - I can't even begin to describe how uncomfortable that made me! But, eventually, I got used to it, as best as I could - with the help of the humans who volunteered at the adoption center. They made sure I got clean water and fresh food every day. They scooped my litter box and cleaned up my cage and would let me out of the metal box - I really liked getting out of that metal box. I used to love sitting on the very top shelf of the cat tree. I would just hang out and watch the other cats.

There was this one volunteer who was the nicest one of all and I could tell she really liked me. She brushed my hair and gave me treats and talked softly to me, a lot. She seemed kind of nervous too sometimes - like when people would come in to see the cats and then pay too much attention to me. And she did a lot of pointing to me and looking at me when the head lady volunteer would come in. The head lady volunteer would come over and scratch my head and talk to the nice volunteer.  Then, some time later it happened.  One day the nice volunteer and the head lady volunteer were in the adoption center together, just them, and the nice volunteer started to fill out the paperwork that I had watched other people fill out before - the people would hand the papers to the volunteer and then they would put one (or somtimes two!) of the cats in a carrier while they all talked and smiled and laughed, and then out the door they would go with the cat(s) in the carrier. Those cats never came back either.  I noticed then that the nice volunteer had brought a carrier in to the adoption center.

Hmmm, I wondered.

Then she did it. She handed the papers to the head lady volunteer and came towards me. She talked to me and scratched my ears and my chin, kissed me on the top of my head and then lifted me off the cat tree and put me in the carrier! I remember being kind of scared - the last time I was in a carrier was when I was taken to the place with all the other cats where I'd stayed for a couple of days (again, in a metal box), and where they stuck me with sharp things they called needles. Then they took me out of there and put me in the back of a big moving box that jostled me around a lot inside that carrier. It seemed like I was in there for hours until I arrived at another big place with LOTS of smells.  There were dog smells and bird smells and little animal smells and more cat smells - it was total sensory overload.  I kind of got used to it, like I said, and started to lounge around on the top of the cat tree when they would let me out of that confounded metal box. 

Well, now after the nice volunteer put me in the carrier, she walked out of the door of our cat room, out past all the smells and sounds of the big place and outside (jeez, I hadn't seen or smelled the outdoors in what seemed like years).  Then she put me in a moving box, but I wasn't in this one for too long  - and it was just me and the nice volunteer - who talked to me the whole time. Finally, the moving box stopped, the nice volunteer got out and picked up my carrier and walked me into a house. There were LOTS of new smells in this place too, and a lot of it was coming from two other cats and a dog! I was pretty nervous, but it seemed a lot different here than in the big place, or the adoption center, so I got out of the carrier and started checking things out. It was seriously weird, but I had a feeling it might be home and I had an idea I might be staying put for a good long while...