I have two cats: A momma named “Nips” (which my stepson named something else several times) and her daughter “Zip” (because she tends to run up walls almost). The momma cat was a stray kitten when I took her in years ago, though I didn’t intend to adopt a cat or any kind of animal at the time because my life was too busy–in other words I was gone a lot. So I took care of her, fed her and she adopted me.
At the time, I wasn’t earning a lot of money so every extra cent went to survival, which meant paying the bill collectors who screamed the loudest. This also meant that getting her fixed wasn’t in the budget at the time. Needless to say, before I could, she got pregnant and a had a litter of kittens. All of them were adopted except Zip, the runt of the litter.
Now Zip is one of the prettiest cats I’ve ever seen. It looks like God took a paint brush with all the hues of brown one could imagine and dabbed her everywhere on her body. I mean it looks like short brush strokes in her fur. But what can you expect of the daughter when the mother is beautiful too? Her underbelly is snow white while her back and sides have black/gray tabby markings.
And I want to kill them sometimes.
Don’t get me wrong, I would never harm an animal, unless they dig their claws in me at 6:30 in the morning so that I’ll feed them. Or to get my attention so I’ll let them out, they scratch on things they already know I’ve squirted them with water enough to make clear are out of the scratching post options.
Right now, however, after two years or more on the floor of my apartment, they decided my phone books were good to shred. You guessed it! I have shredded paper all over next to the chair where these books lie. I can’t keep a cardboard box anywhere in the house to save my life they don’t seem to find it. I have several boxes of expensive tiles that I got off one of my jobs and they’ve begun working on the corners weakening my only storage for these them.
I think God sent these little animals into my life to teach me humility, patience and the virtues of a cat-free life, so I’ll appreciate my freedom more when I can get away.
Or…may be He thinks He’s being funny.
Tags: adopt a pet, animals, cats, family, humility, kittens, love, scratch posts, strays
April 27, 2008 at 10:05 am |
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April 27, 2008 at 2:09 pm |
Better cats than dogs. Cats can’t do anywhere near the kind of damage that dogs can do. I once housesat my sister’s neurotic high-maintenance dogs … and came back from work one day to find that they’d chewed through about fifty of my compact discs.
April 27, 2008 at 4:21 pm |
If you’ve ever seen a cat go nuts, they can break every lamp in the house, scratch the crap out of all the furniture and generally create hairballs.
I think it’s a toss up.