The Menagerie

I thought I would share my pets with you, of which there are three cats and two dogs. Here's the the menagerie...

This is Boo (Also known as…The Notorious B.O.O. / Buddha / Mr. Boo-jangles / Boo-regard T. Cat / Mr. Boo Boop-e-doo). I got him when he was 11 weeks old and had the most gigantic feet I have ever seen on a cat (I took one look at him and literally said, “That’s gonna be a big cat!” Of course then I said, “Wrap him up! I’m takin’ him home!”). He still has gigantic feet and likes to hold hands. I originally named him Dexter because he was kind of geeky looking as a kitten with the gigantic feet and all disproportioned like he was, but that only last a couple days. He had this habit of flying out at me all of a sudden and scaring the bejesus out of me, so he was henceforth called Boo (BEG calls him ‘The Notorious B.O.O.’ because he’s so fat). He is a two and half year old Maine Coon. He is large and in charge weighing in at 46 pounds. I literally need two hands to pick him up now. And it’s awfully hilarious when the 5-year old girl (Little Miss Maddy) across the street comes over to play with him and tries to pick him up. She kind of drags him around cause she can’t really lift him (He literally weighs five pounds more than she does). He doesn’t care what she does to him though (they’re buds…and her cat sux). He’s also spoiled rotten. He used to get hand-fed shrimp and would cry when it was time for it. He doesn’t get them anymore though because I can’t seem to find the kind he liked in any store. It doesn’t seem to bother him since I have found a replacement for the shrimp and he eats dog food on the sly now. He also enjoys the whipped cream. He’s sweet as pie and never causes any trouble. It’s probably because he’s too fat and lazy to get into anything. He spends most of his time chirping and rolling about on the floor. Or sleeping, cause what else does a cat do with its time? I love this cat to death. When I feel crappy and am having a bad, this cat is always doing something adorable to make me laugh and cheer me up.

This is Mina, named for Mina Harker (Also known as Mina-puss). I got her when she was eight weeks. She was born on my birthday and has been feisty every day since I got her. She’s nearly a year and a half now. I got her right before we moved so Boo would have a friend. I sort of thought she would grow more though. Around here, she’s known as the suspended-growth cat since she never really got bigger, just fatter. She’s a little demon. I call her angsty. She’s always making trouble, stealing things (my wedding ring, hubby’s socks, pens, my birth control pills, pot-holders, etc.). She also chooses to do this stuff rather noisily during the night so then I have to get out of bed and get my stuff back. Once she tried to steal my fabric scissors, but only made it halfway across the room cause they were too heavy for her. She plays in the ceiling (My house is in the midst of many remodel projects). She climbs the curtains. She also spends a lot of her time taunting the dogs and making them bark and chase her. She’s just wicked. But I love her anyway.

Walter is a pure white Turkish Angora with pale green eyes. He’s four and a half years old now. Walter is the cat I got from these two morons in the process of getting a divorce. The male portion of the moron-age moved into my house (Because I have five empty, and when I say empty I mean empty, bedrooms upstairs) and brought me Walter (who was already three and a half and well-accustomed to his name, otherwise I would have called him something different). They abused the hell out of this cat, and so did the people they got him from. He’d been thrown at a wall, was never given soft food, was never brushed, never really played with or loved, never had toys, they never clipped his nails (which were like daggers when he came here). He was basically a bag of bones when he came to live with me. Their idea of feeding the eight cats they had in their house was to dump a bag of dry cat food in a large Tupperware bowl and let them fight it out. He is a large cat bone structure-wise and weighed a mere 11 pounds when he came here, craving attention. This outraged me and BEG who was familiar with the cat before he came to live with me. I had Boo and Mina already and they are spoiled rotten and have large expensive cat furniture, soft and dry food and anything else a cat could want. Needless to say this was a whole new, beautiful life for Walter and it took some adjusting. He’s good now though and weighs 24 pounds. He actually looks healthy now. Male moron never paid rent or anything and went back to skanky female moron-demon and I got to keep Walter (It was actually more like, “You’re takin’ that cat over my dead body!” this was six months after I got Walter and had totally rehabilitated him to a completely normal cat, even though he still has issues with the nail clipping part of his new life). I call him the consolation prize cat. He was pretty uptight when he came here, but now, he’s all sorts of laid back and great. We often times think he should have a top hat and a monocle. He likes to play on the steps and he sheds like mad, but he’s so purrrty!

This is my Golden Retriever, Angus (named this because he spent nearly two weeks unnamed and just called ‘Puppy’ and Angus was the only thing he would answer to). Angus is nearly 15 months old and he weighs 110 pounds, so he is a large dog. This doesn’t stop him though. He still thinks he’s a cuddly, lapdog. He is as dumb as a box of hammers and will eat just about anything, including human nail clippers, cigarette butts and plaster. It’s really amazing to me that he is still alive. He loves the car and rawhide…and that’s about it. He doesn’t listen to anything I have to say and he growls at me a lot. He is definitely hubby’s dog and not really mine even though, I feed him and everything else and spend all day with him. Angus watches TV and takes up the whole couch and when it gets quiet in here I definitely know he’s doing something he’s not supposed to be doing.

I got Jezebelle (Also known as Busy-Belle / Little Bitty Bella / Belle of the Ball / Dancin’ Queen), a Dalmatian-Pointer mix as a playmate for Angus. I got her from a shelter. She had been moved up here from Kentucky and had been in a bunch of homes that all complained she was too high-energy to keep. We drove two hours north-west to get her and I was like, “If she’s a psycho, we’re not bringing her home.” Because the woman that had her kept trying to tell me that she was a demon from hell. We get there and she was this little 7 month old, 30 pound, bouncy baby and Angus loved her (they are the same age), so we brought her home. She is all personality and she dances on her hind legs, twirling around my living room. She also doesn’t take any shit from Angus. Her name was originally Harriet and then they changed it to Dot when she was moved to Wisconsin. I decided to rename her Jezebelle because when she got here, she was already fixed and Angus wasn’t (He got neutered like two or three days later) so there was a lot of “Angus don’t hump your sister!” being yelled around here. As it turned out, she is not a psycho like they claimed. She’s bouncy, but she’s far better behaved than Angus is or probably ever will be.