Boo-Boo Kitty

I’m not the cat person in our family, hubby is.  He talked endlessly for years about wanting a cat and we haunted the animal shelters without finding the perfect kitty.  I wanted a female, too many issues with males spraying, and hopefully, a sweet, docile little lap cat.

So we finally gave up the idea of animal shelters and went for a purebred.  We decided on a ragdoll, looked at a few locally, but they didn’t do it for us, and finally traveled to a vineyard about 90 minutes from us and found “the cat,”  a pretty little Ragdoll, a small cat since she had been the runt of the litter, and hubby deemed she was perfect.

We came home, named her Rags, but we just couldn’t leave it at that.  Years ago I had an orange persian named Boo-Boo Kitty, and since we have a history of renaming our animals, Rags was quickly discarded and she became Boo-Boo Kitty.

LC is enchanted with her.  I’m on board, too, but it took awhile with me.  The sweet, docile little lap cat has been more of a little hellion.  She refuses to sit on my lap, she jumps off of furniture and blindsides Maggie, jumping on her back wanting to play.  And even though she is a small cat, she’s still bigger than Maggie, who weighs in at a whopping five pounds.  And Maggie is old(er) now, she’s nine, and she has no interest in playing with a young cat.  But she tolerates her for the most part, and when I hear Maggie bark or squeal, I know it’s time to intervene.

She lays on my computer desk and stares at me when I work, she comes when I call her if she’s in the mood, but mostly she ignores me, and heaven forbid when she escapes to the wild outdoors, she hasn’t got a lick of sense, she heads for the hills.  We had her neutered and declawed right away, so she just can’t go outside, and she is getting better about not running out full speed ahead, but given the opportunity, she’s gone.  She’s something of an airhead, she chases butterflies and blowing leaves, and then poof, she’s gone, off to the horse pasture or the woods with LC following her, stomping his feet and muttering about “that damn cat.”  But the good news is she is a fly catcher.  Since we live in the country we normally have so many flies that manages to get inside in the summer, but kitty stalks them, pounces on them and kills them.  I haven’t had to use the fly swatter at all.

She’s not a scaredy cat, she’s very social, loves it when people visit, sits by them, allows them to pet her and even purrs, something she isn’t fond of doing unless it’s the middle of the night, when she jumps on my head and purrs in my ear.

She just loves little kids, too  She’s so patient with Lexi, she sits besides her, Lexi yells “CAT” “CAT” at her, and she just sits there, and when Lexi pets her that’s fine, too, and when she gets enough she just moves out of reach, she doesn’t run away, she just keeps her distance.

It was so funny to watch her with Abby when she came earlier this month for her annual summer visit.  They bonded immediately, Abby even gave up golf cart rides for the most part to spend all of her time with kitty.  She would pull this orange string through the house, with Boo-Boo on her heels, pouncing on the string at every opportunity.   Eventually Boo-Boo would bring Abby the string in her mouth and give to her to play with her.  Abby had a hard time understanding that kitty wasn’t like a dog, she wouldn’t do what she wanted all the time, so Abby would declare that she needed to be in time-out, and she would put her in the bedroom and shut the door.  Of course, kitty could care less, she would just curl up in Maggie’s bed and go to sleep. 

She abandoned us to be with Abby, sleeping on the foot of Abby’s bed, she was beside her all the time.  Abby, like LC, is enchanted with her, they were so sweet together, kids and animals, there is nothing better.

We definitely have enough animals now, Butterbean, the lop eared bunny still lives in a hutch under the birch tree on the patio, and LC has goldfish, Mac and Cheese in his garage.  And Mags, she isn’t a dog, she’s my fur child, she’s in a whole other category.  She’s taken to sleeping on my lap these days, no doubt because I protect her from the big, bad kitty.

Our animals bring us so much joy, they make us smile with their antics and brighten our lives on a daily basis.  You can tell a lot about a person’s character by the way they interact with animals.  It’s a zoo at our house these days, but it’s never boring.  Now just where is that darned cat, anyway.  Guess I need to check the linen closet, sometimes she jumps in there to nap and I shut the door without realizing it.  She lets us know when she wants out though, and so far it’s been quiet...