Maggie and Piggie

Smokey Joe came out of a litter from my friend's tabby cat my senior year in high school (that was 1995). He is, as you can see, not a calico. My friend and I coerced my mom into letting me have him by bringing him and another (calico) cat over to the house one night. I knew if she saw them she wouldn't be able to resist. I was right but she surprised me by not picking the calico. The little calico just wasn't the right fit for us and looking back it was the right decision. Smokey Joseph is now an institution in her house.

He is a huge lap cat -- literally huge -- like a beached whale. He is a super sweet kitty but very much a one woman cat. I can usually get him to let me pet him but she has friends (and relatives) that are afraid to come over because of him.

My husband and I adopted Maggie and Mollie at the same time from a vet's office in Abilene, TX in November of 2000. We saw Maggie as soon as we walked in to the office. She was the last one of her litter to be adopted, bless her heart, and she was so cute. This tiny little bundle of black and orange rubbing against the side of her cage with all her might, begging me to adopt her. She has the funniest meow you have ever heard and she uses it all the time. She and Mollie were a wonderful pair after the initial "getting to know you" period. We lost Mollie to illness right after we moved to Virginia in 2003 and Maggie was left alone for the first time since we had adopted her. She didn't mope too much, but I could tell she missed Mollie -- which is why we adopted Piggie (see below). Maggie and Piggie tolerate each other pretty well but Piggie is not the sister from her kittenhood.

Maggie spends most of her time in my bedroom sleeping on or under the bed. We have a bedtime routine (see my video below) and she is the first to greet me in the morning. She even sits in the bathroom sometimes while I shower.

She is great with my kids. My four year old, Preston, adores her. She will let him pet her and love on her. She rubs up against him and meows for him. When he was gone this summer for three weeks, she tried to love on my two year old, James, the same way -- I think she missed Preston.

She loves to play. We used to throw socks in the air for her and she would do flips trying to catch them. She loves string and ribbons; and the hand under the blanket trick always makes her happy. She also loves birthdays and Christmas because of all the ribbon and paper.

Maggie is a sweet and steady sort of kitty. I hope we have her for years and years to come.

Piggie is the ultimate lap cat. In fact, she is trying to lay in my lap right now while I am typing on the laptop. The down side of her love of lap is that she doesn't want me to touch her. I had to train her as a one year old kitten to let me pet her while she was in my lap. If you are going to sit here, you are going to let me pet you or I will boot you out. She has learned to tolerate this to an extent because her love of lap is so great. Let me tell you how this little love affair got started.

We adopted Piggie in June of 2003 from a friend who had just had a baby. We had just lost Mollie and I was badly wanting to fill the void and for Maggie to have a companion. So when they said they needed to get rid of her, I was happy to take her home. And while I will never regret that decision, it was not an easy road for any of us.

Piggie spent the first year of her life with my friend and her husband. They named her Precious and she was a scrawny little calico with lots of spirit. Her first love language is biting and my friend said she got that from her mother. Whatever -- I still have to bop her on the nose sometimes to get her to stop biting me. I guess she loves me a lot.

Right before we brought her home, they had her spayed and got all of her shots, so she was already out of sorts from that experience. And then I come and get her and bring her to a small apartment that smells like two other cats. "OMG, what have you done to me." She was not happy. I fixed her a place in the back room where she could hide, made sure she had everything she needed, then realized that Maggie's litter box was still in that room. When I went in there to move the litter box, Precious (or not so Precious as she came to be called for awhile) latched onto my hand with her teeth and all her claws. She was terrified, I was terrified. Not a great start. I ended up in the ER three days later as my hand became infected. But I realized that she was just a scared little kitty that didn't know where she was or why she had been brought there. So the acclimatizing began . . .

She started venturing out of the back room slowly but surely. I didn't rush her. I just talked to her and loved on her with my words. We started meeting up in the kitchen for mealtimes. I would sit on the kitchen floor with her, not touching her at all but just talking to her while she ate. This is actually when and how she got her name. She would snuffle while she ate, kind of a little piggie noise. So we started calling her Piggie, which sounds a lot like kitty, and she started answering to it and here we are six years later.

It took about a month of the above routine for her to warm up enough for me to really love on her. She is definitely my cat. She tolerates my husband and avoids the kids. She is always around and out where people can see her -- she just doesn't want anyone to touch her. Funnily enough, she hates it when the kids cry. She will come running, always has, whenever the kids cry. She will get right up next to them, sniff them over and look at me like "Can you please make this stop?" I think she feels protective of them and she will let them get within a finger width of her and then she runs or swats. I have always just told them to leave her alone or she will scratch you. And yes, they have been scratched. They will learn eventually.

Now as you read above, Piggie likes to use her teeth. Well, to make her even more pleasant, she has wicked long claws and is almost impossible to have clipped. When her claws are at their longest, she clicks on the wooden floors like a dog and sticks to every fabric. My entire wardrobe has holes in it from the Pigster. Lovely, let me tell you.

Now we have in the past taken her to the vet to have her claws clipped for $10. No big deal, at least for awhile. The last time I did this, they were unable to get it done as she was "fractious" and tried to take one of the vet techs hand off. Isn't that what vet techs are for?

So, since our move to CO, I have not even tried to have this down . . . and my wardrobe is suffering for it significantly. Well, I have had enough. I told my husband that we had to figure out a way to clip her claws so that we could all be happier. It can't be fun for her to stick to everything either. So, the other night I got out a big towel and after a couple of failed attempts to catch her and wrap her in it, I succeeded. I handed her to my husband and miraculously she didn't move a muscle. One paw at a time, I clipped those nails with our fingernail clippers. She didn't stir until I got to the last paw which was kind of in an awkward position. Nevertheless, I prevailed. Daddy dumped her on the floor when I was done (in order to stay clear of the teeth) and she didn't speak to me for he rest of the night.

But now she is a much softer kitty all over it seems. She is not sticking to things and you can't hear her coming, just like a cat is supposed to be. This will definitely become a quarterly event, at least.

Obtaining Jedi was actually an attempt to appease my husband for getting Piggie. Piggie was a poor replacement for Mollie's sweet temperament so when the opportunity came up just a few months later to get Jedi, I did.

Jedi was part of a litter that was found abandoned on the side of the highway in Richmond, Virginia. One of my co-workers spotted the kitties on her way in to work one day and, animal activists that they were, they devised a way to trap them. It turned out to be a momma kitty and her four kittens, all of them wild as all get out. The momma was particularly hard to deal with. She hissed continuously whenever anyone came near her cage. Eventually, they were all given their shots and spayed and neutered and ready to be adopted.

They were a beautiful quintet of kitties. The momma kitty was a beautiful petite tortoiseshell and her kittens had divided her colors. Jedi, the only female in the litter, was completely black except for a matching set of white earrings, necklace and belt. You can see this a little bit on some of the pics I have of her above, not much but still not completely black. Her three brothers were all orange tabbies. The adoption people were concerned about adopting a black kitty because of the time of year, so when I said I wanted her -- they knew I had good motives -- they were happy to let me have her. I brought her home and told Shelby he could name her -- I wanted her to be his kitty. He came home with a list of names which he gave me -- then he said, "But my first choice is Jedi." I said okay and Jedi she is.

She was so tiny when I brought her home and she was so scared. I made her a place in our bathroom and kept her closed in there for several days. I would go in and she would hiss and hiss at me, but I would just scoop her up, hold her close and tell her to stop that. I wasn't going to hurt her. After a few days, she stopped hissing and started purring. I started letting her out while we were home. I wanted to be cautious with the other cats and introduce everybody slowly. It wasn't long before she was making herself at home.

She grew up to be a sassy little thing. She never got very big but she made up for it with attitude. She spent most of her time hiding during the day, then she would come out for some love at night. She made Maggie's life pretty miserable. Old Maggie cat didn't have any patience with sassy little Jedi and Jedi loved to antagonize her. You should have seen her sashay her little butt right in Maggie's face.

So it was only with a little surprise that one night a couple of summers ago, Maggie took a chunk out of Jedi's neck. I came home from a night out with the girls one night and Jedi had come down for her nightly loving. When I got a closer look at her, sure enough, she had a chunk bit out of her neck. I knew it had to hurt but she didn't act like anything was wrong. I initially suspected Piggie, "The Biter", but later when I went upstairs, there were tuffs of Maggie's hair laying around mixed with Jedi's. My sweet Maggie cat had taken a chunk out of Jedi! Jedi had to have surgery the next day to repair the wound. Poor Jedi -- but I couldn't really blame Maggie for standing up for herself.

When we made the decision to move across the country to Colorado the next year and I had to come to grips with the fact that I couldn't take all three kitties with me, I knew it had to be Jedi that was left behind. My girlfriend at work had been talking about getting a kitty for awhile, so I asked her if she would take Jedi for me. I was heartbroken that I had to leave her behind but she was the antagonist and we were moving into a smaller place with barely room for two kitties, definitely not for three. I think Maggie and Jedi's relationship would have only gotten worse and I know she is happy and well cared for back in Virginia with my friend.

I miss kissing her head and having her sleep with me. My sweet little Jedi!

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