I love having pets, but I haven't had one in a long time.
I got my first cats at like, six years old. One was a stray male, a Maine Coon, and the other was just a plain black female. Shorty (the male) was really skinny when we first found him, but I guess being a stray taught him to eat whatever food he could get his paws on, 'cause he got fat quick. By the time we'd had him for like four years, he was heavy enough that he was hard to pick up for more than a few minutes at a time.
Shorty was the really sociable one. He was very affectionate, and always loved to cuddle with you. I liked him way more than I liked Maxie (the female), because, frankly, she was a snob, lol. He was also an outdoor cat, and we gave him a lot of freedom. Probably more than most owners would. We'd let him out whenever he started clawing at the door or whatever, and then it just became kind of normal for him to be gone every now and then for a couple of days at a time. Sometimes we worried about him, but even when he was gone for almost a week, he always came back in the end.
I was really attached to Shorty, too, and he used to follow me around like a dog. Like, once, he followed me all the way up to the school back when I was in eighth grade, which was probably at least a good half-mile from our house. A year later he almost followed me to the bus stop before I made him turn back because I was afraid it was too dangerous since I had to cross a pretty busy road. And he used to climb in my bed and sleep with me all through the night. :3
Also he was really intuitive, even though sometimes he didn't seem all that bright. Once, Shorty continued, over months on end, to always lay on my mother's stomach when she was on the couch, pawing at it and whining and such. Turns out she ended up having to get a full hysterectomy, and right after, Shorty never climbed on her stomach again.
Maxie was really, seriously, a prissy little snob of a cat. She never let me or my mom get near her, she just lounged around on the couch or on the window sill. She either ate or she slept. That was it. She only started letting me touch her about a year before we had to give her away to one of my mom's co-workers due to my mom having allergy problems, but I think it was mostly because she was getting too old to bother with running away from me all the time.
Lolsobstory:
But yeah, Maxie was given away to my mom's friend, and Shorty was given away to my father.
But my bubble gum of a father let Shorty stay with one of his friends because he was too cheap to pay the deposit at the apartment he was staying at, and even though I kept asking him when we were gonna get him back, it wasn't until a good year and a half later that he finally told me that Shorty had run away one day and never come back. :/
Maxie stayed with her new owners a little longer, but she, too, eventually ran away.
It makes me feel really guilty, because we had them for ten years (which is a really, really long time for cats), and I think that giving them away might have really broke them down. After ten years, I think, they just couldn't get used to having new owners. They wanted us, and we just gave them away. And now they're both gone, and we have no idea what even happened to them. Just thinking about it makes me want to cry, and I'm seventeen years old. We might be getting a kitten soon, but... nothing could ever replace them. :/
I don't have a picture of Maxie on my computer, but here's what Shorty looked like:
I was worried cuz I've known people to feed their pets just anything, and it's frustrating that the pet food industry is not particularly helpful about doing things right by the animals. Yeah, cats can get too curious for their own good, mine is no exception. What I try to do is to spray some water at him and say it with a firm "No". It takes a while, but he learns to associate it as bad behaviour, although it doesn't stop him from trying!
credit; PinkoMax
only barks when someone creepy's staring at him.
I cry whenever I think about my dogs passing away. I love them so much.
