Not too long thereafter...

One of my coworkers (for once) was trying to get rid of his two cats. I don't remember the reason, but he even paid us $100 to take them. They didn't have any health problems and they even came with a custom made litter box (which Zack loved to climb on).



Here we have Jewel (she's the brown one). Josh used to call her 'the devil cat' because she hissed at everyone so much. But now that it's been a couple of years, she's warmed up to all and rarely hisses anymore.

Rudy is the black and white (or cow cat as Josh calls him). He's declawed (as is Jewel) and we feel sorry for him when the other cats try to play fight with him.

The Replacement

Some friends got a cat and a dog from another friend that moved or something like that. Our friends already had a dog, and the two dogs became good friend and made the cat third wheel. After calling some others and being told by all of them that we'd take the cat, we were called and we took her.

Sasha makes us back to eight.

Mmmmm... Shower Water

I don't know where Chunk learned it from, but he developed this habit of waiting 'til we got out of the shower so he could go in and lick up the water. They always had water in their dishes. It still baffles us as to why he did this.






And then he taught some of the others how cool it was and they joined in on the party.

When it gets "cold"

This was one of the cats' favorite spots to sleep- on top of the dish receiver. It was always on (even when we turned it off) so it was always warm. We had to remove the cover multiple times to blow out all the cat hair that accumulated inside through the vents.

The cats will have to live without their heater again this winter as we don't have cable/dish anymore. It just cost too much and now we actually get to spend time together doing something instead of just wasting our lives away.

Be on the lookout for cats when entering

I got this for Amy- I don't remember when. It only said beware of cat, so I had to add the 's' to make it more appropriate to our situation.

Lunch Time

Another of Amy's coworkers was giving cats away. This time her husband was allergic and not her. They were sisters, Pip and Squeak. I don't think that they were too happy with the change of venue- they lost a lot of weight and it was rather noticeable as they were kinda fat when we got them. Squeak got really skinny. We tried to force feed her with liquid food, and it worked for a while. But then she gave up eating again and died. Most of her is buried in our backyard (ask if you dare where I have the rest of her and what I plan on doing with it).

So we were reduced from 8 to 7.

Tall, but not Tall Enough

We bought a bar height table thinking that the cats wouldn't be able to get onto it. I guess we're not that smart- of all the cats we currently have, only a couple haven't figured out a way to get up there. Some jump up from the litter boxes that we keep to the side of the table. Some jump up to the counter, up to the top of the fridge, and then jump over to the table. Others just jump up from the floor.

The Tower that We Built

We had looked for cat furniture only to find that it's rather expensive. So we tried to find plans to build one ourselves. This is what we found. We did a lot of the work in the garage and then did all the sisal rope wrapping in our room with the door shut. Once we opened the door, the cats came rushing in to see their early Christmas present. We've since made 3 others and gave 2 to friends (they only cost about $80 or so to make; the most expensive part is the sisal rope.).

Exploring New Territories

With a brand new house and no previous owners, there weren't many smells. So the cats had to investigate everything and put their scents all over. Plus they were just curious about the new terrain.

A New House and Some More Cats

Then, after Matt graduated college, we moved out of our apartment and got a house (back in 2006). This did, of course, open up many doors as to how many cats we could fit into our home (you can see that our house is much bigger than a 2 bedroom apartment).

But since we had no kids, we saw nothing wrong with having "so many" cats.