In a world where almost nobody has time for your typical household pet anymore, most people give me a, �WTF?� look upon learning about my quartet of felines. They wonder why on earth anyone would want not one, not two, not even a well rounded, holy three, but FOUR cats.
The explanation is simple in that I also have three younger sisters. Now, when my dad was growing up, his parents had a rule that as soon as you turned ten years old, you could have a pet of your own choosing. And so, he, being the kind and generous man that he is, decided last year to lay the same rule down before us.
The only problem with said rule is that I and my sisters were already over the age of ten, the youngest one having just turned it a few months prior. Plus, we already had a dog, and so as you can imagine, about ten months later our house became a reservoir for animal hair, dandruff, and droppings.
The oldest one, Aly(age 13) was the one that started it all. First it was, �I want a puppy!� and then, �I want a bunny rabbit!� and then finally, �I want a kitten!� It just so happened that at the time, one of the women in our homeschool group owned a cat, which had four weeks ago birthed a litter of kittens that she was looking to get rid of. Three days later, Macy came into our home.
�You�re quite the cute little fellow, aren�t you?�
�[purr]�
�Yeah, I agree. Shame they don�t come in blue, though.�
�[purr]�
�Why yes! I do indeed hate Scooby Doo with an utmost passion, and I�d love to help you chop his tail off and strangle him with it!�
So anyway, Ana, being the third oldest and having no cat, decided that she should own the third one. And, being eleven years old and a girl, she decided that Brutus� new name was to be Spunky, which is really lame and stupid as opposed to cool and menacing, which is what Spunky was before they softened him up.
Spunky has two very distinct personality traits which are usually more of a pain in the ass than anything.
1) He has this affinity for stealing food. You can have just fed him a whole bowlful of Nine Lives cat food, and he�ll still run across the room, jump, and tackle your sandwich out of your hands. This is cute the first couple times, but when it�s three and the morning and you�re hungry, it�s enough to make you want to cram him in the garbage disposal.
2) He HATES Rugs, the family dog. Rugs was around long before any of the cats were even thought of, several years in fact, and she�s getting old. She�s also a complete wuss. As such, combined with the fact that she�s just a really good pet, she�s never had any problem with the cats coming into our home. She�s never done anything to them save a friendly butt-sniffing. Spunky, however, being the bastard that he is, does everything in his power to make her life miserable. Such as stalking her through the house, jumping out of nowhere, and tackling her while hissing like a menopausal badger with privacy issues. Or stealing her food right out from under her nose while threatening her with his sharp and pointy claws and teeth. Rugs never fights back, just walks away with her tail between her legs, and the one or two times when she hasn�t run away like a scared child, Spunky�s drawn blood. But, all the same, it gives him a sadistic charm, and ya really can�t help but love him.
One thing that�s interesting about Stormy is that she is either incredibly courageous, or, more likely, an idiot. Nothing really seems to scare her, and on more than one occasion I�ve accidentally stepped on her/tripped over her/closed the refrigerator door on her simply because she didn�t think to move. I mean, she sits there, and STARES at me like, �Oh good, here comes a thing. I wonder what it�ll do. Good thing it couldn�t possibly cause me any physical harm.�
She spends most of her time imitating Jimi and avoiding Macy, as well as hitting on Spunky. Much like Jimi and Macy, Stormy and Spunky have a thing for each other, but due to the aforementioned, the world will never see any Stormy/Spunky babies. Which really does disappoint me, because I�d like to see a cat that is both pure evil AND fearless. In fact, I�d like to have several of them that would infiltrate government organizations and steal their special government coffee for me, because I KNOW they have it. Moving on.
Jimifulss was my first screen name, derived from a caffeine-induced rant one day having something to do with elves and bunny rabbits (those who know me best can tell you all about my delusion of being �king of the elves�) When it came down to trying to decide on a name for my newly adopted cat, it was either Jimi or Hades. Now, Hades would have been cool, but I take my religious beliefs very seriously, and due to some things that were going on at the time involving spiritual matters which one might call less than pleasant, I did not think it wise to name my black, polydactyl, tailless cat after the heathen god of hell.
If you�ve been paying attention and know how to count, you should know that Jimi was our second cat, listed last because he�s the greatest. Like Stormy, I obtained Jimi from Janice.
When I first went to see him and decide if I actually wanted him or not, it was like this magnetic attraction. He was all sleepy and passive and I just held him for awhile. I seriously think that the whole affection thing was just a ploy to get me to take him home, for he has since then taken to ignoring me and running away as though I were going to eat him alive.
Notice the thumbs on the front paws, and lack of a tail. The presence of the thumbs is due to a condition known as Polydactyl, which isn�t in any way dangerous. It just gives him six toes on his front paws, or thumbs, as we all call them. These thumbs give him the ability to grab onto things as though he had hands, and the claws on them are especially big and sharp.
The lack of tail is because he�s half Manx, and if you know anything about cats you know that Manx don�t have tails. Jimi actually had a brother who looked exactly like him, except for the fact that he was white with orange stripes (much like Spunky) .
Jimi is quite a passive-aggressive cat. He don�t take no crap, and as such, never needs to give any in return. But, this is because, of course, nobody messes with him. He�s four times Stormy�s size and more than double Spunky�s strength, and you can practically see the power when he runs. I still remember Spunky and Jimi having a sort of stare down the first time we let Spunky in the house. Spunky sat down nice and humbly while Jimi looked him over and growled with a tone that said, �This is my house, biznatch.�
Jimi pretty much does whatever he feels like doing, whether it�s destroying some important documents that he found on my mom�s computer desk, or taking a rancheous leak all over some freshly washed towels. He�s usually quite well behaved though, and spends most of his time lounging in the sun or getting high off catnip. He�s also a born hunter, and literally pounces on the opportunity to stalk and kill any small creature that dares enter our home. Including, from time to time, Spunky.
So now you have the why, how, and �WTF?� on all our cats. The moral of this story, kids, is to be very careful when choosing a pet, because you never know when that pet will be secretly plotting to kill you, as seen in this picture here,
