My Furbabies

Equ » Autumn is in the air🍁
June 8th, 2017 2:25:34am
927 Posts

Seeing everyone on HP's beautiful kitties and puppers, I decided I'm about due to tell the story about mine! :P

Many of you have probably heard me talk about the kiddos Tubby and Boots quite often, but for those who do not know, they are my rescue cats whom I love to death. We are not sure exactly what breed they are, but the closest the veterinarian can assume is they're Domestic Shorthairs. My boys' story is interesting for the fact that they were not rescued from a shelter, but rather a take-in.

I have never owned cats in my entire life. I have owned 3 dogs: an Australian Shepherd named Blue who had seizures, a Shih-Tzu rescue named Baby/"Spud" {who has since passed away from old age} and a pug named Lilo {who is currently 10 - 15yrs old}. The first cat I ever got was a beautiful Calico cat named Ninja, who came to my house during a bad storm in September emaciated and had probably ran away from her prior owner {whomever that was}. I managed to nurse her back to health by giving her scraps from our weekly meals and bowls of water or milk to drink. Due to still being partially feral, she became a barn cat around the property. A few months passed by and I began to notice that Ninja's stomach was a bit rounder in size, but no any obvious signs of being expectant; at the time, I just brushed it off to her getting a little fat from eating our table scraps and plus the side hunts she did around the barn. Then sometime in March of 2010 - 2011, we had the unexpecting surprise that Ninja had a litter of three kittens overnight: Tubby, Boots and Stumpy {we called him that due to the severe birth defect of having no tail, but rather a spinal "stump" where a tail should've been}. Sadly, Stumpy had passed away in his sleep after being delivered due to having severe birth defects, leaving my two boys left.

About one month later things took a turn for the worse. It was a stormy night and Ninja decided to move her surviving babies under our house for shelter to go out to hunt. Unfortunately by morning, I found that she had mauled by a Bobcat. She stay alive just long enough to for me to pet her head and say goodbye before dying in my arms; my kids were now officially orphans having no surviving parents left. After a few hours of searching, we found the two under the house and took them in to get out of the rain.

Below is the first photo I ever took of my two boys { pictured here at approx. 3-weeks-old. Boots is on the left and Tubby on the right} when I began hand-rearing them to adulthood.

As they got older, which was pretty quick, seeing both their personality and quirks started to become quite apparent; Tubby was actually quite slow in development compared to his brother having difficulties with walking, playing and eating solid foods. In total it took about 8 months for him to be at the same stature as his brother. As soon as the two years old, which the vet told us was mature age, we immediately took them to be neutured and vaccinated.

It has now been almost 8 years since I last took them in and they're now much bigger than when I first got them! Below is the most recent picture of them both.

Tubby

Boots

As of currently, Boots has officially become what we like to call the "evil genius", as he's always plotting or getting into trouble. He can open and close doors {both bedroom, bathroom and cabinets, turn on and off both light switches and faucets and is currently learning how to try and open the freezer {we're not sure why}. He has also become such a mooch that he will beg for table scraps, though will run away disgusted if you actually offer him anything. At this point, I've just concluded that he assumes we like an audience while eating as much as he does. Besides these oddities, he's pretty much a typical, normal cat.

Tubby, meanwhile, has a complete opposite personality to his brother; while not exactly an evil genius, he is more so like a dog in the sense that he loves attention, loves to please and is actually trainable. He currently knows several hand commands such as "come" {which is a finger snap}, "lay down/roll over" {which is patting the floor where he is} and "come up" {usually only use this when he wants to get in my lap, yes that's that thing}. His most recent learning command that he is in training with is learning how to play fetch with a little toy mouse. This has gone quite well as he's learned that "ready" means I'm about to throw it, "sic" means to go after it and "that's enough" {which is usually a gentle side path and putting the toy by his feet} means to stop. I'm eventually hoping to teach him some more complex tricks if that's possible.