Angel & Charlie

We believed that our little old lady cat needed a companion, so we chose Angel. (Really, Max held Angel at the store and couldn’t put him back in the cage.) We were wrong, wrong, wrong. Angel kept sneaking up on her, and not only did she not learn to look behind her as he walked around the kitchen island again, Angel didn’t know when to quit. We kept him in the bathroom for a month before returning him, crying our little hearts out. Little old lady kitty died a week later from gallbladder complications, and we went an entire week without a pet; it was horrible. Angel was brought back the day we went to the pet store to remedy the situation. His foster mother was done with him harassing her cat. We brought him home again. He was mad at us for a long time.

While we were getting Angel again, I saw the cutest tuxie in a carrier waiting to be placed in a cage. I grabbed a Petco cardboard carrier and transferred him. My mother suggested we name him Charlie. He is the most obnoxious, loving, funny, infuriating cat.

Susi

On our “first contact” anniversary (the first letter I sent to my pen pal Max in Austria), he was being a special kind of jerk, so I insisted that he go look at the cats in Petco. Out front, in a cage on top of a larger cage with a barking dog, lay a little black cat curled up and ignoring the world. Max said, “She’s given up hope.” We went inside and looked at the cats, came back out, and was confronted by the shelter rep hosting the black cat, eagerly offering to let us interact with her. We returned to the adoption center and sat down with her. She perked up, but we gave her back. As we drove away, Max said, “Susi would be a nice name for her.” And a week later she was dashing around our apartment, delighted to be freed from her little cage.

Jenny

Someone (yes, me) believed that Susi needed a sister, because the boys were not warming up to her. We (I) looked at cats everywhere; I still do…you never know when you might need another one. Finally, at Charlotte Animal Control, Max chose a cat before we walked in, because she was so cute. Her name was Hailey; we found we couldn’t call her the same name as our niece, so changed it to Jenny. Isolated in the guest room, she showed no interest in the other cats, sitting in the window and entertaining herself. When we decided to let her socialize, she became hissy and has remained so. Should you wish to have only one pet, please email me for more details on this lovely little darling. She loves people. She hates animals. We love her a lot and wish for her to have a home better suited to her, a home with no other pets.

Luna

At our complex, we help the resident cat lady Sue feed the small colony of cats generally residing behind her building. The little black cat she’d named Mama Star followed us home each night on our evening walk. We reluctantly left her outside. On returning home after Christmas in 2018, we saw that she’d suffered a trauma causing hip displacement and a severed tail with bone exposed. With Auntie Sue’s help, we got her surgery and took her home. Displacing Jenny in her room created havoc in the apartment, but our newly named Luna needed recovery space and time, which turned out to be a mere two months. She is still mad about our returning Jenny to the guest suite, but she gets along with everyone else, playing the domination game with at least one of them at least once a day. She is the funniest cat, begging for love, then running away to peek back around the corner.