Happy Valentine's Day!

There are several stories Mom loves to tell about special moments she's had with her cats.
The most important ones are probably in regards to Dude because he was the one who started it all by making Mom fall in love with him at first sight and therefore making it possible for us others to follow in his footsteps.

The first moment lasted about four hours which was the time Mom spent in the chair under the lemon tree holding. Four hours of strategic purring, loving on Mom and drooling on her shirt, convincing her they would have to find a way to get this boy (not so young anymore how they found out later) from California to Germany. Which they did, with the help of their friend in whose house he had been left behind by the previous residents, after her ex couldn't resist him either when it was his turn to meet him a week later.

The second moment came after he had been let out of the bedroom where he had been locked up to make sure he'd be there for his flight to Germany. The whole evening they had tried to get him back inside, not made easier by it being Halloween and the friend's cat being so territorial and chasing him (which was the reason for her not having been able to take him in fully).
The next morning, however, after worrying the whole night, Mom found him sitting on the neighbor's window sill and when she opened her arms, Dude walked right in and clung to her. She often says that the feeling was incredible and that she can still feel it when the memory comes up.

Another moment were 15 minutes of Madam Mim sitting on her lap. Mim loved being in the same room and she tolerated pets and short hugs, but she was not a lapcat. 15 minutes were all she gave Mom in her life, very precious 15 minutes, especially after knowing Mim had had some hard times in her life.

The moment Mom picked up sick baby Merlin from the post from where he was hissing at her in the attempt to convince her of his fierceness.

I could of course keep going with stories from my, let's call them ancestors, but also other cats Mom met in her life, but let's get to me now.
In May 2017, I moved in here. You may remember that I was really skinny and really tired and so glad to get off the streets. I learned to trust Mom, but I always had my boundaries. Petting, fine. Cuddling on the pillow on my terms, fine. Even belly pets are okay with me if I'm in the right mood. I have to draw lines, however. No picking up for cuddling, no carrying around - that means that if it happens now, it usually means vet or - not for a while now *knocking on wood* - medication. No holding down for medication, I'll rip your arm off and I'm not kidding. Ask Mom, she learned the hard way.
And like Mim, I'm not a lap cat. I may stand on Mom with my front paws on very rare occasions, usually if I'm very close to starvation, but I can count those times on one paw.

Today, though, I decided to give Mom a huge gift. She doesn't do Valentine's Day, not just because she's single, it's just not her thing, but now she will always remember this.
She had got cozy, den Dekan on her feet, what else, and ready to make a grocery order.
And then I walked up and sat on her chest.
She actually held her breath. This is not something I have ever done before and she couldn't believe it. She started petting me and I just sat there for a while.
Then I lay down. Guys, I honestly thought she'd lose it completely now.
I gave her our very own special moment - for two hours. She put away the laptop to give me more room and I used it. I purred, I groomed, I rolled around, I stretched out, I rolled up to a ball, I did the whole portfolio, even fell asleep twice, and I swear that Mom teared up a little because it made her so, so happy.
Her favorite game show was running in the background, it often makes her laugh out loud, but she was very careful not to belly laugh, so she wouldn't disturb me, instead she chuckled softly and even then she held me, so I wouldn't be startled by that.
There is no saying how much longer this could have gone on if someone hadn't needed an urgent trip. I could tell how much Mom hated having to coax me off her belly with promises of an extra snack, and now she keeps staring at me, still in disbelief.
I tell you one thing, that lady loves me, and there's nothing der Dekan can do about it. You want to know why I even mention him? Well, see for yourself ;-) He seems to have been wondering about what's going on, too!

Mom took more pictures and even tried to get a little video, but her arms were hardly long enough to manage anything at all as you can tell from the picture not showing my feet. So she's not showing them all, but she tried her best and you get the idea :-D
She told me she'd keep them all, anyway. Humans are so weird.

Happy Valentine's Day to all of you!

Not pretty, but nice

For months Mom has been telling me to get my butt in gear. In fact she has put it a little more rude than that.
I kept telling her that nothing interesting ever happened in this house, that I hated her and that she wasn't even my real Mom (I totally stole that from a meme). Sometimes it is fun to throw a puberty tantrum without having the actual ordeals of puberty to go through.

Now Mom has been nominated on Facebook to share a cat picture each day for five days and she went into memory mode once again and told me Mim's story.

Dude had just moved in a few months ago when Mom and Dad decided he shouldn't be alone all day. So they went to the shelter to have a look at cats.
At first they fell in love with two cats they couldn't take home. Micky was 18. His Dad had died and so Micky, a skinny tabby cat, ended up at the shelter. Mom's heart started bleeding right away, but Micky had been a single cat all his life (no worries, he did get adopted later!). Then there was a beautiful blue cat boy with white markings, but he was FeLV positive, so they weren't allowed to take him, either.
They told the lady that Dude had had problems with territorial cats and that they'd like to take in an older, calm cat. The lady said she had a seven year old girl that could be just the one.
Mom and Dad slept over it and then came back to pick Randy up a few days later.

When they came to the shelter's office to pay the adoption fees and sign the papers, the lady there said "Oh, you are taking her in? Really?" She told them that Randy had already been back twice, once because she bit the cat that had already lived in the house, that she was aggressive and mean. Obviously that made them a little nervous because the lady at the cat quarters hadn't told them that, but they wanted to go through with it after all.
Mom still gets mad thinking about the people who took Randy back and told such things about her.

Not that she was to stay a Randy any longer. They both hated the name, and Dad came up with Madam Mim instead. When Mom asked him why, he said "well, she's not pretty, but nice" (he revoked that statement about her not being pretty later).
Mim wasn't excited about the new place, but still as calm as they had been told she would be. She walked through all the rooms while Dude hid under the wardrobe. In fact he stayed there all night through. Mom who can be a terrible pessimist was close to tears, but Dad said to be patient, and if it really didn't work out, they would have to take Mim back.
That woke Mom's fighting spirit. There was no way that poor girl would be taken back again. And she didn't.

Dude and Mim never became close as in cuddling on the couch, but they got along just fine once Dude found it was time to come out from under the wardrobe the next day. They respected each other and never fought.
It quickly became obvious that Mim must have had some very bad experiences. When she had to vomit, she would hide under the bed afterwards and shiver. She was afraid of the brush and comb at first, but learned to love them although she never managed to sit still during a grooming session.
She wasn't a cuddly cat, but she always had to be close to her people, on a chair, at one end of the bed or at least in the same room.

When the young ones (that's for another story) got on her nerves, she only gave them one quick slap, and she was the only one who was not scared by Fips, the prairie dog, when he had one of his hissy fits.
Not even when she caught Frankenmaus, one of the gerbils who had managed to get out of the cage, she got mad when Mom dragged her out from under the bed.
She never bit anyone, not even during the epic fights when she had to go into the crate for vet visits.


And once, only once, she jumped on Mom's lap and stayed there for fifteen minutes. Mom says that this is a memory she treasures.

Memories

Yesterday we had a blood bath here. No worries, everyone is ok. It was an accident. During a little fight Meffi's ear was punctured. Mom has her experiences with that from when she took blood from Merlin's ear to check his blood sugar. That was a blood bath as well sometimes.
Only she didn't know this time it was the ear because Meffi shook her head all over the place which means there were spots of blood everywhere (including the wallpaper and the Steiff lamb's leg, oops).
Meffi got some of the infamous herbal cream put on her ear and things were ok again.

This inspired Mom to pull up some of the old pictures to show us how much friendlier we used to be with each other. It's true, those cuddly times have gone. Not that we don't snuggle anymore, but not as long as we used to. She still thinks it was Merlin's good influence and she's probably right.
Wanna see what she's talking about?

Merlin, Greebo and me - are we adorable or what?

Merlin and  Greebo

Merlin cleaning me

Esme and me - much younger then (can you believe we'll be 7 this year??)

Greebo and me

Gandalf and Greebo

And of course the lovebirds Merlin and Meffi

This was before Esme and I came along (a long time ago, just look at that video cassette on the floor!) when Mom had her first incredibly expensive and pretty lousy digital camera

Of course there are more pictures, but you know how it is when old people tell their stories "When I was young, I had to walk to school in 4 feet of snow, barefoot, 15 miles only on a piece of bread for the whole day" ... we just walked off and let her ramble ;-)

Memories - Dude's story, part 1

If you have ever read Mom's own blog, you'll know she's fond of memories and if you don't stop her, she'll share them with you. To be fair she usually warns people she's hard to stop once she starts.

I'm a great jumper, I'm a cautious walker and I can lie down very properly - all of that if I want to, that is. Just as easily I can knock over everything on Mom's desk with my tail or I tear down garments that have been left hanging over a door. I really have to be in a mischievous mood to throw down the wire spools on her nightstand, though. Whenever Meffi does that, she goes nuts. Mom going nuts is unnerving, she gets that whiny sound in her voice calling out "Oh Meeeeeeff!"
What I am trying to say, is that these are the moments she starts telling stories from a long time ago (sounds as if this could become a regular category on his blog, too ...). Just yesterday she started reading a book about a blind cat and when I knocked over Lady Agnew of Lochnaw (it's not as if it's the original, it's just a notebook!), she heaved one of her "memory sighs" and started telling me about Dude, the guy who prepared our humans for all other cats in this house.

The story started in October 1992 when our humans visited a friend in Northern California for the very first time. Mom had been told the story about the white cat with the blue and the yellow eye on the phone already, the cat that had been left behind by the former inhabitants of the friend's house. Jenn had two cats of her own, small Chocolate and her big tabby son Reggie, both very territorial. They wouldn't let him into the house. Every, now and then White Dude, usually called Dude, sneaked in to sleep on the couch. Several possibilities were discussed, but in the end Dude lived in an abandoned car in the neighborhood, but got his food and snuggle time.
How much he needed it showed when Mom arrived at Jenn's house a week before Dad who still had some business to take care of. Mom more or less got out of the car and into a chair in the little back yard underneath a lemon tree. There she sat for hours, her new love in her arms. Dude had come, seen and won her heart within one second and all she could think of was how to take him home. A week later Dad arrived and although he played the tough guy, he lost his heart just as quickly.
That's how Dude finally became a foreign exchange kitty and the first cat ever in this crazy household.

To be continued - part 2 will tell you why a blind cat reminded Mom of Dude.