# 3 Cats, 3 Unique Stories



## Rikka Ru! (May 29, 2008)

Hey all, newbie here, but I thought I'd share the background of my 3 cats, newest to oldest.

Aloisius - the baby of the bunch yet outweighs the other two by at least 7 pounds. He was a stray kitten when we got him and here's the story. My good friend has a small black cat named Merlin. Her roommate at the time had a bad habit of letting Merlin out of the house, considering he was tiny and completely declawed, quite dangerous for him to be roaming a Chicago alley way. Anyways, she was coming home from work and walking to the back entrance of her house from the alley. Right before she went through the back gate, she heard mewing coming from under the large dumpster. She leaned down to look and could only make out a small black cat. Thinking it was Merlin, she started calling out his name. And out came running out the sweetest little black kitten that immediately started rubbing itself against her leg. He was so cute she had to call me. See she not only has Merlin, but she also has two Labs. The labs are use to Merlin, but she feared that this kitten would be a chew toy for them and this kitten was so cute she just couldn't let it fend for itself. She of coupe explains this whole story on the phone to me and I tell her to go ahead and bring him over since I only have cats. So she comes over and as she enters my house she has this kitten perched on her should like a parrot. Just the sweetest little thing ever. He immediately ate two bowls of food. He didn't even get off her shoulder, I had picked up the bowl from the kitchen to bring it to the living room and he just lunged for it. So that’s how our love story began. Well that, and the fact he had about the worse gas I've ever smelled for about a month while he was adjusting to domestic cat food. He's a big ol'fatty now, but he knows who his mama is.

Loquacious - the cat that originally never lived up to his name, but you can't shut him up now. Especially when I'm on the phone.
I think this was a particularly sad story. Loquasious came via a friend. My friend works at an upscale botanical store. The owners’ cats always hung out in the back. Well the owners sold the place to another botanical store and left their cats there! My friend, who had the best intentions, but never owned a pet in his life, felt horrible about it. So he took them both home. He was able to get along fine with the female cat because she was quite sweet and gregarious, but the male cat couldn't even be in the same room with a human. He constantly hid and had a hard time adjusting - IMHO I think he was too traumatized about being abandoned. Anyways, my friend didn't even know what the male cats name was and never named him. When I came over to visit I gave him a name, Loquacious - partly because I thought it was ironic - you would never know that cat was around. Well after about a month, my friend realized he wasn't a very good animal owner - I can at least give him credit for having his heart in the right place when he took them in. He was able to give the female cat away easily since she was so friendly and sweet, but the male cat was a problem. At this time I had two cats (one has since died sadly - I miss you Maddy!). I wasn't too keen on taking on another, but I told him that if he couldn't find a home for him in a week, I would take him - which probably meant that pretty much my friend just stopped looking and dropped off the cat a week later. So it took me at least 3 months to recondition Loquacious so that he could even be in the same room with a person. In about 6 months he started to come up with me so I could pet him. About a month or two after that he was forcing his affection on any human or animal who was in close contact. I consider this a personal success story for me and proof that cats can be re-socialized.

And yes my old girl Vyvyan (yes she is named after the young ones character - she had the same temperament when I got her) Vyvyan was my first cat on my own as an adult. I adopted her about 9 years ago from a no-kill shelter for strays in Chicago called Treehouse. There, Vyvyan was known as Cinderella, not for her temperament, but because she was brought in by a Good Samaritan who found her on the road after she was hit by a car. She had her complete front right leg amputated. She was so beautiful (well still is), but she had such a nasty attitude she was kept in away from most of the other cats. That should have been my first clue. My arms were scabs for 6 months. You wouldn't think one claw could do so much damage but you'd be wrong. When I filled out the adoption application, I was asked if I would be able to take a special needs cat and if so what kind. Being only 22 at the time and working at a cafe, I knew I'd never be able to take care of a cat that needed medication daily, but I said I would take a physically handicapped cat. I think it’s interesting that so many people would turn their noses up to an animal just because it was missing a leg, eye, tail, etc. So they told me they wanted to introduce me to her, and despite all of her aggressiveness, I took her anyways. She has mellowed out a bit since. She only swipes at you every now and then. What’s interesting is that when I adopted Vyvyan, they told me she was a Blue Lynx Siamese. Sure she had the coloring of a Siamese, but she was quite a bit bulkier and her head was all wrong. I just assumed that she must have been mixed with some kind of domestic. So recently, in my free time, my fiancé and I have been talking about getting a dog too. I was looking at petfinder for a small dog that was good with cats. And for the **** of it, I went to see what cats were on the site. Well I started seeing a few cats that were doppelgangers for Vyvyan. They had the breed listed as Siamese (Applehead). So I did some research and wouldn't you know it, she was a pure Siamese all along - but of the original traditional variety. I gave the old girl props for having a crazy long lineage. 

So these are my kitties and their stories. I love animals and it’s always dangerous to bring them around me because I can't say no. A quick note on Maddy (Mademoiselle). She died of cancer about 3 years ago. She was the sweetest, softest kitty in the world and I miss her so much. I also adopted her at Treehouse about a year after Vyvyan (Vyvyan was getting extremely lonely, as I had gotten a full time job at that time). She was in the shy cat room and as I petted her, I asked the volunteer there why no one had adopted such a good adorable cat (she had unbelievably huge blue green eyes). The volunteer told me that she had three legs and people didn't want that. That pretty much sealed the deal for me. I became queen of the three legged cats for about 5 years.


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## marie73 (Jul 12, 2006)

What wonderful stories! You have a huge heart.  

Have you posted pictures of your kitties under "Meet My Kitty" yet? I can't wait to put faces to these tails.


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## Rikka Ru! (May 29, 2008)

I'll load them on this weekend. I have a bunch of polaroids (I was in a kodak phase for awhile) and a bunch on my digital camera I still need to transfer over. I do have semi-professional pictures of Aloisius somewhere. One of my friends who is a photographer wanted to do some test shots on him.


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