Friday, June 20, 2008

How it All Began

I was never a big cat person and neither was my (2nd and current-if he behaves himself) husband. He'd had a cat growing up and we also had a cat growing up, but I could kind of take them or leave them. When my kids were teenagers they convinced me to let them bring home a kitten from one of the never ending litters of kittens born at their Grandma's house. She loved animals but neglected to spay all of her cats so there were always litters of kittens at her house. So, they brought home a little grey tabby kitten, promising to feed it and keep its litter box clean, which of course happened rarely if ever. The cat box was in their bathroom and apparently it didn't bother them that a cloud of noxious fumes greeted them each time they opened the door. So, little grey tabby grew up, shredded my nice new sofas, and spent a lot of time sleeping at the foot of my bed. We never really named him, he was just known as Kitty, and then when he started spraying and we knew for sure that he was a boy (and got him fixed) we started calling him Mr. Kitty, which sounded a little more dignified. We are not good at determining cat sexes.
Of course, both of my teenagers grew up too and moved away, leaving Mr. Kitty with me, so when I got married and moved away, I gave Mr. Kitty back to my daughter, where he currently resides, very pissed off sometimes because in addition to Mr. Kitty, she and her husband have a dog and a new kitty. Grrrrrr...
We moved into a little house 100 miles away and thought our days of scooping cat shit and opening cans of cat food were done.
Nope.
A few months after we moved in, son calls and asks if we could take his kitten in-also a little grey tabby-because his crazy wife wouldn't let him keep it and was being abusive to it. So, soft hearted people that we are we said sure, bring the little kitty over. We didn't know if it was a girl or a boy but son assured us that it was a boy. Not-when we finally took HER to the vet, they assured us it was indeed a girl. A very rambunctious scratchy bitey little girl. After a few months we decided on the name Pepper, which suits her well, since pepper is kind of a bitey scratchy spice, not something you want to use too much of, and she's kind of peppery colored. She is now 4 years old and very fat and cranky. We had to put her on a kitty diet and she's not too happy about that, not that I blame her.
We have no baby kitty pictures of her since we had no camera back then, so here is a picture of her current fat cranky sassy self.
She goes nuts over the smell of celery and attacks the grocery bags if we bring celery home. And oddly enough, she likes pepper and will lick the top of the pepper shaker so now we have cat slime flavored pepper.
She's praying to the fancy feast goddess for opposable thumbs.

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