All my life I’ve been a dog person. It’s not that I don’t like cats. I just didn’t feel any way about cats. For some reason we didn’t have cats when I was growing up but my mom had both cats and dogs after I was grown and gone. We didn’t have cats when my kids were growing up because they were allergic to them, so they grew up with dogs only. I’ve never spent any time at all around cats so I have no idea what they are like except through all I’ve read and the cartoons like Garfield. My thought of what a cat would be like to have around the house would be something that would be there at their convenience, not yours, loving, but in a removed sort of way. I guess I expected a cat to act like an intellectual, someone that stands back and judges everything you say and do, finding your way inferior to theirs. But I have to say nothing could be further from the truth, or at least further from my experience with at least 50% of my cats. And I know 25% of the remaining 50% is my fault for not being a love monkey – I did it to him when he was a kitten by scaring the bejeebers out of him with the ear mite medicine, and after feeling his claws between my fingers in the most tender skin on our body I wasn’t right there to reinforce the warm, fuzzy feelings so since he was a barn cat I really didn’t understand the need to do anything different. And Booger came to us half grown, already elusive in his ways but willing to learn. Sometimes. But Bartholomeow and DonCato are the biggest love monkeys that ever walked the face of the earth. We went through some really scary times where we thought we were going to go insane, but if you can just maintain when you come out the other side it is well worth the effort. DonCato did this licking thing, and he did it incessantly. My God, it felt like he was going to lick your skin off. If he saw you he came running for you and you went running in the opposite direction. It was a race to see who could get to the door the fastest, then slam the door in his little kitten face. But you couldn’t see the sweetness in his face because all you could see was the pain caused by that little kitten tongue trying to lick the skin off your body. And he was relentless. He was a little demon in kitten clothing. Bartholomeow, on the other hand, didn’t do anything obnoxious except try to sneak into the house at a time when he had not yet been invited into the house as a house cat. So we were still undergoing the battle of the wills. Because he was coal black, you wouldn’t see him slide in when you opened the door, he’d just be there, in front of you, and you’d wonder how he got there when you just saw him outside. But once we decided we were just going to have four house cats life became decidedly more simple (on one hand). The most important thing I can tell you is that my cats are the most loving little critters I have ever been around. They are so soft, and they love to be touched, and I love to touch them. It feels so good to sit and rub their fur, and feel their warmth. You can feel the love and appreciation they have for the home you have given them. I know people say they are standoffish and removed, but they aren’t, and I promise they will bring something to your life that is so grand that my words just don’t describe the feeling. I can’t tell you what it means to pick up a warm, furry creature, to hold in my arms while they sleep, to feel the beating of their heart. You feel their love seep into your skin, and it brings you comfort throughout the day when you deal with things that are so disheartening that we all have to deal with; the news of the loved ones that have cancer, the children that can’t seem to help themselves and are constantly in trouble, hours and hours spent working for that never ending pile of bills. You can face it all alone or with comfort of a warm heart to get you through the worst of it. It was a complete shock to me, not something I expected to happen, and I am grateful beyond words for the opportunity to have them. It saddens me when I remember that 70% of the cats that are in shelters are euthanized because there aren’t enough people to adopt them, and those are the cats that make it to the shelters. The answer is to spay and neuter your pets. At the shelter, we have two dreams. The first dream is have a cat facility because the room that is the cat room now is not a good environment for felines. Their room is a closet, and the best that can be said is that it’s simply not suitable. They need a room that has its own hvac and fresh air system , separate from the dogs, and it needs to be on the outside of the building where they can have a window to the world and be stimulated by the world outside, the trees, the birds, the sky. The second dream is a big one. It is going to take a corporate sponsor. We have a $15,000 dream to build a clean room onto the building where low and no cost neuters and spays can be performed for the people of the county and the surrounding area. If we had the facility and the doctors, there are grants available to fund the surgeries. Our dream is to create the first area in Southern Illinois that outlives the need for an animal shelter because of programs such as this dream, to spay and neuter the pets of the area at low or no cost. It’s a big dream, but isn’t that what dreaming is about? Make your dreams as big as you can imagine, and to imagine no more need for shelters is a perfect world in my book. So join us in our dreams. And never forget, it is only through you that the Randolph County Humane Society continues to save lives, one by one.
I opened my heart to my cats and received so much more in return.
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