Santa and Mrs. Claus have 10 cats in the house and one lives outside, sort of a wild cat. Santa built him a two room heated house on the porch. Now on to our cats.
This is our oldest cat. Her name is Cali. We named her that because she is a Calico. All Calicos are girl cats. They have three colors in different patterns. The colors are , White, Orange and Black or Gray. We found Cali in an ad in the newspaper. She had been abused as a kitten and when we got her she was about three years old. We have had Cali about 4 years now. She is kind of a loner but most of the other cats respect her and leave her alone.She is Santa's favorite though, sort of like the Queen of the house.She sleeps where ever she wants to.Cali entered into eternal rest on June 22nd, 2006. She spent 12 of her 15 years with us and taking her to the vet for the last time was about the hardest thing we have had to do. Some day I hope to see her again on the other side of Rainbow Bridge. I love her and will miss her deeply.
This is Sierra. She is a gray tiger with a white belly and nose. About 6 months after we got Cali we thought it might be nice if she had company. So we went to the Animal Protective League and there was this cute little gray kitten, six weeks old, who needed a home. She is still a little shy with strangers, but she is strictly Mrs. Claus' cat. Sierra has a special green shoelace that she carries all over the house. Sort of like Linus' blanket.If you see the shoelace she is not too far away. Sierra went to Rainbow Bridge on February 27th, 2012 and had just passed her 18th birthday. She had cancer and went down fast and stopped eating. Mrs. Claus misses her dearly.
Say hello to Pumpkin. She was rescued from a tree about 35feet up. She was seen in the tree for three days before someone climbed the tree and brought her down. She was so happy and loving that we could not stand to see her face that kind of life so we took her in too. Of course we didn't know at the time that she was going to have kittens. She had a litter of seven . We were able to have someone give a good home to two of them but we kept the other five. Pumpkin is mostly orange with bright yellow eyes, thus the name pumpkin.Pumpkin's kidneys went bad and she went to Rainbow Bridge on June 4th, 2008. Another sad day at Santa's house.
Pumpkin's first born kitten was Lady. She is also a calico, but she doesn't have as much white as Cali does. Lady was a keeper as soon as Mrs. Claus saw her. Lady got her name because when Mrs. Claus said we were going to keep her Santa called her a lucky lady and the name Lady seemed to fit her so that's her name. She is not too friendly with the other cats except her mother. She sleeps way up on top of a cabinet where she can be by herself.She is still a little lover with us though. It doesn't take much to start her motor purring. It is kind of funny when Mrs. Claus is on the phone and Lady sneaks up on her and pesters her until she hangs up.Lady developed a thyroid problem and the medicine was attacking her kidneys so we had to take her off of the medicine, but then her thyroid got so bad and she lost so much weight that she had to go to the vet for a final trip on February 4th, 2011. Always a sad time when they become part of the family.
Freckles got his name as a little tiny kitten. After all of Pumpkin's 7 kittens had their eyes open and started to walk around, Santa used to go in their room and lay on the floor to play with them. There was this one cute little orange and white kitten that used to climb all over me. He had little spots on his face so thus he became Freckles. Santa soon found that he could not part with Freckles, so he became a keeper, our 5th cat. He grew up to be the tallest of all our cats. He is lean , but he weighs in around 16 pounds. He is a real scaredy cat and hates to go to the vet.This morning January 26th 2011, we had to take my dear Freckles to the vet for the last time. His Thyroid problem of two years was no longer responding to the medication and we had just given him two night's worth out of a two month supply of the highest dose there is. I prayed all last year that I would not lose any of our cats and that prayer was answered, but his sister,Lucy, died on January 9th 2011. There are only two left from that litter, OJ and Lady and Lady also has thyroid problems. As of October 13th, the whole litter is now gone.
OJ is his name, could be because he looks like orange juice or because he wears an orange jumpsuit. We had not planned on keeping any more of the kittens but we only adopted out two of the kittens to a lady through our vet.We could not think of taking them to the Animal protective League, so we just kept the other three.OJ became a real lover. When Santa is at the kitchen table OJ will jump up on my shoulder and curl up around the side of my head. That's alright if I am just reading the paper but at mealtime I have to tell him that I am eating and he jumps down.Cat number 6.Another really sad day at Santa's house. Today, October 13th, 2011 we had to take OJ for his final ride to the vet. OJ had bad kidneys and it got to the point he wouldn't eat, drink water and was having a hard time walking. What was really sad is that when I called him to take him to the vet he came to me. I really do pray there is a Rainbow Bridge.
Ricky is one big cat. He is all muscle, not fat. He weighs in at 15.2 pounds. I call him Ricker the Licker because he always likes to lick me. That is how a cat shows affection.He is also orange , and when He and OJ were younger we had a hard time telling who was who.The reason we named him Ricky is because we named one of his sisters Lucy. He cries the whole time he is riding in a car, I guess he doesn't like going to the vet either. Ricky is not too hard to find. He likes to lay accross the back of a kitchen chair. The back is only about two inches wide and he straddles it. He waits until Santa goes to bed and then he does too.Cat number 7. On December 22nd, 2009 I went to feed the kitties their late night snack, around 11:00 PM. All the cats came to eat except Ricky. I called him and he didn't come out to eat so I took his food bowl and he was laying on the landing, but for unknown reasons Ricky had died. He had eaten his dinner at 7:00 PM and showed no problems. He is our first one to die at home and now we are down to 9. Two that are not pictured here are Squeaky and PC ( Porch Cat ) that now lives inside. This was a sad Christmas at Santa's house. And now an update that I am sad about, our cat Squeaky who was not a lap cat but a really pretty black cat with white whiskers had a tumor and it caused her body to fill with fluid and compressed her stomach, heart and lungs. We took her to an emergency animal hospital and opted for them to drain the fluid to see if we could prolong her life. That only lasted a week and a half and she filled back up with the fluid leaving us no option but to take her in and have her join so many others of the ones we lost at Rainbow Bridge on March 29th, 2012. We now only have 5 left and as they grow older I know I will go through the pain again.
Last of Pumpkin's kittens is Lucy. Lucy is all love. She will cuddle up next to Santa in his recliner and purr so loud that you can hear her at eight feet away.Lucy is a tortoise. No, not a turtle, a tortoise cat. She is black with a little orange mixed in. Tortoise cats are all girls too, just like calicos.She loves to be petted and no matter which cat I call, she comes running. She is smaller than Ricky.... she only weighs in around 11 pounds. When Santa goes to bed she either stays in the recliner by herself, or sometimes sleeps on the back of the couch.There is one cat that she doesn't get along with, look at the next cat to see who that is. Cat number 8.On the morning of January 9th 2011 I couldn't find Lucy. I looked all over and finally found her curled up body in a soft kitty house we have. The worst part of losing what became my lap cat is that she had a vet appointment on Monday the 10th. She is the second one to go of the 5 we kept from the same litter.
One day at a pet supply store, buying cat food and litter, there was an animal rescue display of cats. Naturally, Santa had to check them out.There was this friendly cat with a pretty face. Well Santa is a push over for a pretty face, so enter Minx. Minx only weighed 8 pounds when we got her. Well that was then , and now she weighs over 16 pounds.For some reason, most of the other cats don't like Minx, and Lucy will chase her until Santa comes to Minx's rescue. OJ is about the only cat that gets along with Minx.She loves to be combed or brushed, even a good back scratch will get her going. She taps you on the leg with her paw until you pet her. Cat number 9.
Minx entered eternal rest on November 29th, 2007. She was very active and all of a sudden she got sick and wouldn't eat. We took her to the vet and they ran all kinds of tests on her and her blood sugar count was 645 and that affected her kidneys and liver and her circulation. She was in the hospital for four days and just kept getting worse and she lost all her ability to respond and we had to do what was best for her. I will miss her most in the evening when she wanted those pets the most. I hope to meet her on Rainbow Bridge some day.
Although we feed a stray cat on the porch, sometimes he gets company at the food bowl. There was this cute kitten that started coming around to eat. She became very friendly & Santa named her Cutie Pie. Well, it got embarasing to call out "Here Cutie Pie" and with winter coming and with her being a girl and the porch cat being a boy, We decided that the only right thing to do would be to bring her in. She is 8 pounds of pure energy and has an appetite that doesn't stop. She thinks she rules the house and thinks Sierra is her personal pet to chase around the house.Mrs. Claus keeps saying... NO MORE CATS.. but this one was an exception. Cat number 10. More sad news, at17½ years old her kidneys shut down and yet antother one to go to Rainbow Bridge.
Meet the stray cat. We named him PJ. That's an odd name you might say, but a year or so earlier there was this ugly but nice cat that came around to eat and I called him Pickles. Then along comes this cat that looks like it could be his son, so I called him Pickles Jr., thus the nickname PJ. PJ replaces a cat that we took care of on the porch that we called Spot. (see below) Every night ( except for Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve)I sit on the porch and hold PJ in my lap. We take this stray cat to the vet when we have to, but we can't bring him in the house because he is a fighter. He is a very loving cat to Mrs. Claus and myself, but doesn't like to be with other cats. PJ is also a neutered cat. One winter I built a two room house on the porch and heated it with a 25W light bulb and put a plastic curtain over the doorway, now every winter I clean up the inside and put a clean rug in there. PJ will follow Pumpkin and Cutie Pie around when I take them for a walk on a leash but he knows better than to bother them when I am there.I guess we should say Cat number 11.Oops, there is an update. In the winter of 2002 it was so cold outside I decided to move PJ into the house. It was exciting at first but he now tolerates the other boys, to a point. He is the 12th cat in the house (see below for the 11th one) now and I took down the outside house. I still feed any strays that stop by though..
And yet another sad day at Santa's house. PJ has had sugar diabetes for the last two years and we have been giving him insulin shots. Cats don't usually last long with diabetes, but we did all we could to keep him going. In December of 2007 the vet said there was nothing more they could do for him and was ready to put him to sleep, but I wasn't ready for that and I brought PJ home and hand fed him and used a syringe to squirt water in his mouth, He made a 100 % recovery,and would run around and play with the cat toys. But then in the summer his blood sugar went up and his health went down. He had a circulation problem where the blood wasn't going to his brain and it was to the point he couldn't remember that he was eating and we would help him, even going back to the hand feeding. Then for the last couple weeks he forgot what a litter box was for. Sometimes he would go to the litter box, sniff it, place his front two paws in the box and go potty on the floor. I was prepared for this and had put a piece of plastic on the floor in front of the litter box and put a rag rug on that.He had a regular scheduled vet visit to check his blood sugar level today, September 22nd 2008, but we knew it would be his last trip to the vet. He had lost some weight and was down to 7.6 pounds. PJ was Santa's boy and I had to make the decision. Most of our kitties are getting old and PJ is the 4th one we lost since 2006. I really loved this boy, even going the extra mile to keep him going.
Here is my newest number one favorite cat now. Her name is Angel and named so for a reason. Angel was born in the spring of 2002 to a feral cat. I have been feeding the stray cats in a parking lot for a few years and this kitten was really friendly with me. I wanted to bring her home but the rule was NO MORE CATS ! But in September of 2002 Angel must have climbed up under the hood of a car. When the car started she got her paw caught in the fan and got her head clipped too. That was on a Saturday. I found her on Monday and took her to our vet. They had to remove her front left leg all the way to the shoulder because of gangrene. She also lost half of her right ear and her right eyelid. At first the vet thought she would lose the eye, but with treatment she didn't and she learned to close her eye by squinting sideways. We figured if God saved her life she must be an Angel. The surgery alone was $910.00 and the total on getting her in shape to mix in with the other cats cost us over $1200.00. She does just fine on three legs and will playfully attack any of the other cats in the house. Angel became the 11th cat to enter our house. I have some pictures of Angel here. Angel pictures
Oh Oh, an update A cat that has been on the porch through 2009 and 2010 had her 4th litter of 6 kittens. Three just vanished, then two got run over by cars. There was only mama, who we named Grease Monkey because of her gray coloring on an orange body and her son who is a Siamese mix who we named Sami, left and I did not want to see any more get run over so to the vet they went for testing and shots and both got fixed. They came in the house in late 2010.
Update again, we took in a Calico from a rescue and named her Heidi, she was fixed and had her first shots so we got the second shots for her, a tough kitty but at first she went into hiding which is why we named her Heidi. Then a whle later a Siamese kitty showed up on my porch. At first she acted feral and would not come up to eat if I was still on the porch but within a week I was able to pick her up and hold her with no trouble so to the vet and the first thing he did was to scan her for a micro chip, whew .. there was none so we had her checked out and got her the shots and had her fixed. We named her Mesie and she was about 8 months old when we found her but she is one tough kitty. Because of all the ones we have lost over the years and added some, we now only have 6 kitties as of November, 2013.
In the spring of 2004 we took them all to the vet to get them checked out and booster shots, here are the weights of our "little kitties".Cutie Pie; 8.8 lbs, Cali; 10.4 lbs, PJ; 11.4 lbs, Angel; 11.6 lbs, Lucy; 12.0 lbs,Pumpkin; 14.4 lbs,Sierra; 14.6 lbs, Freckles; 16.6 lbs, Lady; 17.4 lbs, OJ; 18.0 lbs, Minx; 19.0 lbs, and our big guy Ricky; 21.6 lbs