Sad news, we lost one of our 14 year old tuxedo cats this morning. That's her, Sneezy, on the left with her sister Squeeky. We'd been expecting it somewhat. She had always been slightly overweight, but in the past year she had lost a lot of weight and was very bony, had lost several teeth and couldn't chew, and was walking a bit stiff. At least now she's not hurting anymore. Before she started going downhill, she was an absolute lap lizard, and would want to sit in your lap anytime and anywhere. We'll definitely miss her.
So very sorry for your loss. Both of my cats are getting close. The male has gone through a couple no-eating/weight loss periods, has some teeth missing and the female has an intracranial tumor.
I had a sock-stealing cat. What happened is that she had a litter of 3 kittens and she wasn't ready to give them up at the time when my grandmother insisted that two of them had to go to a new home (we kept the male). So one day I found a pile of my dad's work socks at the top of the stairway, and Lightning carrying another one. She was very gentle with them, and making mewing noises like some mother cats do with their kittens. To this day I don't know where she put those socks or the ones she took from me. We never found them. She'd lost two babies, and she was determined that she'd never lose another one (she'd tried to hide her remaining kitten, but gave up when she realized that he was too big for her to carry him up the stairs). Unlike the cat in the article, though, Lightning never stole pairs of socks. I just had to make do with having one yellow, one blue, one green, and so on. After awhile I gave it up and bought all-white socks. That meant that it didn't matter if she took one of a pair; they all looked alike. Well, my younger cat just freaked out! She went running around the apartment, looking for the Other Cat. We did have a strange cat here a couple of days ago. My balcony is shared with the neighboring suite and the partition doesn't go all the way to the floor. So when their kitten got out, she ended up on my side and then couldn't figure out where home was. She was trying to get in here, my younger cat was upset about her being on the other side of the window, and I figured I'd better do something. So I opened the balcony door, the kitten was happy to get inside, and I went to see if the neighbors were home. They weren't, so I taped a note to their door to let them know that I had their kitten and they could come and get her when they got home. I put the kitten in a room by herself, with a water dish, and waited for her humans to show up. They did a little while later, and thanked me for looking out for their cat.
Hubby has been working on my office for weeks; Junior has been loving all the plastic tarps. He loves the noise it makes when he wads it all up and makes a kitty bed out of it. Hubby has called me a few times to "come get the damn cat!" because he's try to spackle and paint while Junior is pulling the tarp away.
He's just marking his territory so to speak. Our cats have their favourite spots around the house. And one of them loves sweet wrappers.
He looks like my cat Shneaky. I found out he passed away while I was deployed to Afghanistan (2010). But it was due to Shneaky that my late adolescence was a bit more blissful than without him. He was already full-grown by the time we got him, but he hung on with us for 13 more years before I got the bad news.
Not sure if anyone else has followed Dinosaur Dracula, nee X-Entertainment. I always enjoy it because it's fun and full of relatively useless stuff, but the sort of stuff worth appreciating to certain nerds. The webmaster just got a new cat, and has a number of them so I'm hoping for a good integration.
That is the "Oh My GOD, why are you not petting me/feeding me every minute of the day? I shall fall dramatically upon your desk until you comply."
BJ, I'm sorry to hear about your kitty. One of mine has discovered avocado, and he loves it! This is the same guy who was obsessed with portabella mushrooms for a few years.
My two girls love to visit me at night. The older cat loves to crawl under the covers and rest on my lap and the younger one kneads the blanket.