Kitties!

My family has had cats my whole life. My mom had a cat named Ebie before I was born (maybe even before my parents got married, I can't remember) that we had until I was in the 4th or 5th grade. She was getting really old and, after she mistook my Grandma's purse for a litter box, my parents had her put down. I don't have any pictures of her on the computer and I don't remember her too much but I will try to scan in some old photos of her and add them to this post later.

Soon after that my sister and I convinced my parents to let us get new pets, one for me and one for her. I chose a kitten, Precious, and she chose a puppy, Blacky. We didn't end up keeping Blacky too long because he was pretty hyper active and Emily wasn't really capable of taking care of him. We do have a cute picture of Precious and Blacky eating at the same time in the kitchen. If I can find it I'll add that picture as well. After we took Blacky back to the vet's office where we got him, Emily picked out another kitten, Treasure. She actually ended up coming up with all the names but I decided that Precious' full name would be Precious Moments Stalder, lol.

Emily's cat, Treasure. I'm not sure when this picture was taken.

 My baby, Precious. I also called her Fatty and Fat Cat. :)

 She loved to be by me. She also had a really cute tendency to do somersaults when you were petting her and she loved having her belly rubbed.

She's so cute!

Precious would always sleep with me at night. I loved waking up to her sitting on the pillow next to me purring away. After I went away to college things changed a little bit. For the first couple of years she would just act mad at me when I first got home and then go back to being normal. After we moved all my stuff out of my room, she kind of became more of my mom's cat. It was really sad for me, especially when she started getting older and got sick. We actually thought Precious would be the first to die because she got sick so much. We thought we would have to put her down near the end of my college years because she was so sick, but she did end up getting better. She never gained much weight back, though. Emily's cat Treasure had always seemed pretty happy and healthy, so we were really surprised when she took a drastic change for the worse one weekend. Luckily Emily happened to be in Austin for SXSW so she was able to be with her until the end. It turned out she had a tumor. The doctors weren't really sure if treatment was even possible and it would have cost over $2,000. Treasure was already over 15 years old at this point so they decided it wouldn't really be best for her to try to prolong her life. Precious was still doing ok, but her age was definitely starting to show. When she was younger she was a very social cat and loved being around people but as she got older she stayed to herself more often. She also didn't really like me very much anymore. It was the worst thing when I would come home and go see her. She would growl and hiss at me. In March of 2009, my mom called me and told me Precious was really sick and they were going to have to put her down. I really wanted to see her one last time so I visited Austin from Lubbock as soon as the weekend came. It was hard to see her so frail and sick but I'm glad I got to say goodbye.

At this point, both my sister and I were pretty much completely out of the house, so my mom had been the one taking care of the cats. Their deaths hit her pretty hard so she didn't want to get new cats for awhile. During Thanksgiving of 2010 she was ready, so we went to a shelter and got two kittens; two boys named Tigger and Barney. Precious and Treasure had been kind of laid back cats, even as kittens they didn't really play that much. Tigger and Barney were complete opposites. They went crazy as soon as we let them out in the house. They will play with anything that's on the floor and moves, lol. Precious and Treasure also hated each other. Any time they were too close to each other they would growl and hiss and bat at each other (Treasure usually started it). Tigger and Barney loved each other. They would play fight a lot but they would also just lay next to each other and clean each other, hehe.

Barney. He was pretty much full grown when we got him. He was a BIG cat!

 Tigger. He was a tiny little kitten when we got him. He pretty much plays 24/7, unless he's sleeping.

They love each other :). After I took this picture they started cleaning each other hehe.

Tigger cheated death in the first year of his life. He managed to get a hold of a roll of thread to play with. I guess the thread came off and got in a big ball and somehow he ate it. My mom didn't know he had eaten this but knew something wasn't right. She took him to the vet and they could see that he had a blockage in his intestines but didn't know what it was. They were going to give him a little bit of time to see if he would pass it on his own and if not they would have to do surgery. Even then, it wasn't a guarantee that it wouldn't happen again (they didn't know yet it was just thread.) My sister was home during this time and one morning Tigger jumped on her bed and she saw a piece of thread on his butt. She thought it was just stuck to his fur so she pulled it. Since it was connected to a ball of thread inside his intestines, Tigger wasn't too happy about that and zoomed off. Eventually he did pass it all and was back to normal. Just thinking about him having a piece of string hanging out of his butt is hilarious. We joked that if he had seen it he might have tried to play with it because he plays with everything lol. The mental image that creates is pretty funny.

We knew that Barney did have some sort of heart condition but he seemed to be perfectly happy and healthy and very playful. Barney loved my dad, even though he was the one to cut his nails (we didn't get these cats declawed.) Every day when my dad got home from work he would sit at the computer chair and Barney would rush over so my dad could either brush him or play with the laser. Barney loved the laser! Just before my mom left for her trip to India on Christmas Day, Barney threw up. This was pretty unusual since neither cat had thrown up or had hair balls. He seemed to be fine afterwards and was normal for awhile. He got scared of the fireworks on New Years Eve so he was in hiding. After he didn't come out for awhile my dad went to find him and saw that something was wrong. He took him to the vet and Barney ended up joining Ebie, Precious, and Treasure in kitty heaven a day or two later. They think he had some kind of tumor but I don't know if they're really sure what happened. Poor Tigger must miss him so much. Tigger isn't really a cat that would be good by himself so, when my mom got back from India, they decided to get another cat to help keep him company.

This is Sam. I haven't met him yet but according to my parents it might take Tigger awhile to get used to him.

So, as you can see from this post (and my pinterest if you're following me) I love cats! Hopefully once Daniel and I have a house we will get a cat as well. For now, I get to see my mom's cats whenever I visit. We will probably end up having a cat and a dog since Daniel has grown up with dogs his whole life. I'm fine with that as long as they get along with each other.

Well, I had better get back to working on my traveling posts; lots to do still! Bye!