And Then Came Mama

Mama was a little, grey wild cat. When two grey cats came around in the middle of winter one year, the little girl with two huge, raw, scabbing over, scraped spots on her back and the little boy with a broken tail, we, of course, fed them and let them stay in the shed to stay out of the cold weather. I thought back to the early summer when I had seen to grey kittens outside and when I had called to them, they ran off and I thought they were running back home. After seeing these two young grey cats I knew they were those two kittens and I figured out what had happened. A college student had gotten two kitties and went home for the summer sans kittens and they were left on their own. So their first year of life was definitely not an easy one.

Spring time came and the little girl had kittens in the neighbor's window well. One day it just poured down rain and stormed to beat the band and Denny went to check the little family and found one of the kittens lost out in the rain, brought him over and dried him off, got him warmed up and took him back to his mama after the storm. We worked with them during the summer to get them to come inside, but no, although Broken Tail started to come in just a little bit. Mama moved the family to our yard in some bushes, around the shed and they would come up onto the deck and play.

When the weather started to cool off and head towards winter the four kittens were playing on the deck and I slid open the door and put some food about four feet inside it and they actually came in to eat. While they were eating I slid the door closed and they went ballistic, but I kept them in. We didn't want them to go through a winter like their mama and uncle Broken Tail did. Northern Illinois winters are not at all warm. We named them Tillie, Misti, Pippie, and Tut. By that time Broken Tail was coming inside regularly so when he came in again the little ones weren't quite so afraid.

A few days later it was cold and rainy and I saw Mama on the deck and slid the door open so she would come in and get food. She had started to slip in a little ways at a time to eat, but this time I had the food further from the door than usual and slid the door shut when she was all the way in. She didn't go quite so ballistic as the babies, just a little. A few days later she gave us some more kittens....behind my computer desk.... seven of them.... all grey. Broken Tail was a daddy.

Sid, Nancy, and Goldie weren't too sure about those little bitty things, but they caved and played with them when they got old enough to play. Tut was the first of  Mama's  "teens" to tame down some, then Tillie tamed down a bit to where we could pet her and eventually hold her. Tillie was a bossy little thing. Pippie would come down stairs and Tillie would chase her right back up. Seth was living with us for awhile and had been there several months and one day saw Pippie and wondered where the cat-with-the-crazy-eyes came from, when we got her. Told him she'd come with the others.

Mama had taught her kids to stay away from two-legged-tall-walkers, they weren't to be trusted. She taught them well! Tut is tame, Misti we can pet but she is still skittish, Pippie we can pet once in a great while. Those two still remember Mama's teachings and they've been with us for....eight years now. We did try to give them away. Someone came and got Tillie, since she was KIND of tame. They brought her back the next day, Tillie was just frantic.

The Illusive Laser Light

This is Goldie, Sid, plastic turtle, Nancy, and Babe, searching for that illusive laser light.

Lucky Little Dude McCloud

November of 2002 my oldest son saw a little kitten at work by the dumpsters and went to get him, but he ran away. Couple days later Mike was over by the dumpster and saw the little guy again and he was just so hungry and weak, he couldn't run. Mike took him home and fed him, kept him warm, put some flea stuff on him and he started getting stronger. They called the little guy Lucky.

When I was there after church one Sunday I took the little guy home with me since Mike couldn't keep him. I drove home with him cradled inside my coat and he decided I was his new mama. I called him Little Dude. He was just adorable, no bigger than a good sized spit wad. Grey, shiny, long fur and grey eyes.

Angie came over to visit one day and fell in love with him and called him MacCloud, since he was grey and cloudy. So I suppose his full name was Lucky Little Dude McCloud. :)  He sure was a little cutie pie.

New Additions

Mom, Angie (my niece), and I took one of our Girl's Weekend Trips to Beardstown and I was sure to remind hubby and son to NOT let Thomas in the house. Well..  they neither one listened and Thomas and Babe had a rendezvous without Bud.... the little Casanova. He was still a good lookin' Casanova, though.

In September I flew home with Mom to Florida and we stayed at a condo on Treasure Island. It was good. BEACH!!!  The day after we got down there Denny called and said Babe had babies... three little ones. We ended up  naming them Sid, Nancy, and Goldie.

Bud and Thomas

In the summer of 2001 a charmer cat came around, long fur, gold, handsome. We called him Thomas.

 He and Bud and Babe would play together and just have cool times. 

Thomas even taught Bud how to climb trees.

Bud was kinda scared at first... but he got to like it. He got rather pleased with the idea! 

Now Bud's a big shot who can climb trees!!

Bud and Babe

Bud still liked to sit on the monitor when I was working and I would lave a small blanket or sweater on my desk and he would curl up on or inside it and take a nap. But he also liked his Babe. They got to be pretty inseparable. They would nap together, play together, actually, Babe taught Bud HOW to play. He didn't really know how to play because he'd been in a cage his whole life until we brought him home with us.

One day Bud got outside. We were beside ourselves. He just wasn't an outside cat, he didn't know the ropes! We gotta FIND him! We looked and looked, called for him, walked around the yard, the neighborhood, got in the car and drove around a little further from the neighborhood, came back home. On the way home I got to thinking, when Bud looks out the window from my office or the front room he sees the house across the street and their yard, and I just bet he is over there somewhere. 

I stopped the car when we got in front of our homes, our's and the across the street neighbor's, got out and shined the flashlight around the bushes and such, and there he was. Under the large bush in his yard across the street. That's what he always saw outside so he considered it his. He was terrified, yep. So I took off my jacket, captured him, I wrapped him up in it so I could get him inside without being torn to shreds. He was THRILLED to be in his inside home!! He snuck out again but I knew where he would be. :)  Then he got used to going outside. He and Babe would play in the flowers and under the deck, loved it out there.

Babe

So after a month or so with Bud, we decided he needed a companion. A different companion than me. I was his main toy and I needed some time to myself! LOL  So we looked for another cat and found an adorable little striped kitten we named Bud's Babe. She liked the computer, too. LOL

Bud

When we moved to DeKalb in 1994, we had to find new homes for the pets we did have since we were going to be renting, so we didn't have pets for awhile. We did find a house and bought it the end of 2000 and we got Bud from the animal shelter. He'd been there his whole life and he was a year old if not older. When we got home I sat in a rocking chair and held and cuddled with him for three hours, bonding. He loved it.

He liked to hide under things, newspapers, blankets, paper bags, he loved to sleep in the bed with us, on top all the covers but under the top on, right smack dab in front of me with my arm over him. He liked to be warm. He liked working with me, too.

At that time I worked online at home for Sage Online/Multex.com (I LOVED it!) and Bud would sit with me at the computer. Sometimes on the computer looking out the window with his tail decorating my screen, other times on my lap and arms while I was typing. That's what these pictures are of, Bud helping me type.

Sammy

When hubby was stationed at Eglin AFB, FL. back in the 1970s, we had captured a little wild kitty from the farm before we went down and named him Sammy. We lived in a mobile home park and our neighbor had a small dog. Sammy and the dog formed a very strong friendship; they were pretty much inseparable. We were there for about two years. When we moved back to Illinois, we let Sammy stay with his best bud, the dog next door, and they all lived happily ever after.

Punkin, Spot, and Blacky

Blacky.. yeah.. he was a cat. Black cat, of course. yep... Spot? yeah... well... I named him Spot because he had one white spot on the very tip of his tail. Punkin... yep... he was orange. He was just a tiny little thing. We had him for awhile and he got older and just didn't grow very fast at all... but he was soooooo cute. That basket he is in is NOT a very large basket. Check out the chair! When we moved from our home to DeKalb, we had to give the kitties away and Punkin did grow! He grew into a good sized, king of the hill tom cat. :)
This must have been in 1994.

Cinnamon and Ginger

ahh...  It was winter, cold, snowy. There were two little puppies, cold, caught in a fence, scared. Well, of course we took them in! They were just cool dogs.

We'd look outside and in Pat's pea field you would see these two little dog heads popping up and down in there, chasing butterflies, and knocking off peas. One day they came up from the creek and one of them had a duck in it's mouth. Didn't chew it, no holes poked in it anywhere, they just very gently carried the duck up from the creek  to the yard. We took the duck to the vet's and they took it to another creek.

Which reminds me... one of the girls had gotten ill and we had taken her to the vet's who kept her there a couple of days. The other dog was just beside herself, pacing, not eating, until her buddy came home. They were both happy as larks after that. They really were BFFs.

Here is a picture of the two dogs and Seth, back in 1978 or 1979. It isn't a great photo, but it was taken from a Swinger, after all. LOL

Skipper

I started living with pets at an early age... from birth. When I was just a young'n and learning to sit up, Mom and Dad had a Cocker Spaniel puppy, Baby. Baby loved to play and wanted so much to play with me and would knock me over every time. Baby got new parents... my Grandma and Grandpa Wessel. She was a marvelous dog and we did get to be good friends when I got a little older. LOL

Mom would tell me the story of when she would have me outside in the buggy. She would go in the house, (this was in the old days when it was ok to go inside and leave your kid outside in a buggy) and Skipper would lie down beside the buggy. NObody could come near, absolutely no one but my mom or my dad. That's it, you try and you die was Skipper's motto and everyone took him quite seriously, which was wise.

This is a photo of Skipper with me watching him eat. Truth be told, I probably helped him eat his food.

Critter Family

Critters.  Gotta love critters.

We've had critters for a long time now, although at times we couldn't have any because we were renters, we generally had pets. We've had dogs, cats, gerbils, parakeets, a sparrow or two, pigeons. Ok.. so the sparrows and pigeons and such were mostly take them in, feed them until they grew or got well, and let them back out to their habitat.

We've had Thunder, a teeny little kitten that stood up to our recently acquired dog that didn't particularly like cats and showed it. That little black and white thunderball stood up to that huge-to-him dog and that dog backed down from the hissing and teeny claws. They did become friends, or more like the dog tolerated that kitten. LOL

Then there was Toby; a brownish long haired shaggy dog with a heart of gold. When we lived in one house in the country he made his hideout in the basement, getting there through the hole in the foundation. My friend, Jessie, came over one day and Toby just barked and barked and barked at her when the car pulled into the drive. She got out, looked at him, said "BOO" and away he flew through the hole back to the basement.

He's also the dog that, when we lived in the next house in the country, went after a snake-in-the-grass. My father-in-law hired a man to paint the house. HIS hired hand was painting, no problems. The owner of the painting firm drove into the drive, got out of the truck, and Toby took out after him... barking, yipping, he did not like him the least little bit. I called to Toby and got him inside. Went out to talk to the "boss" and after he made a pass at me I realized why Toby went after him. Boss left, told my father-in-law what had happened and our house was painted for free, so was the hog house and the barn. Boss drove back up the drive one day and I let Toby out the door. Boss climbed a pole. I did call him back in and Boss did leave. The guy that did the actual painting and Toby got along just fine.  :)

Hubby thought it would be neat to have a blog about our critters, with pictures and stories. There are those, for sure. LOL