My Kitties - Bob and Joey

[CatDad]

Hopefully, you will enjoy this, I have not written this much outside of work since I was in collage.
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After hours (OK, maybe 1 hour) of going through kitty pictures I have chosen some to introduce my lovable fur balls, Bob and Joey. But first you get to read about them.

We'll start with Bob since he was first to the current household.

We got Bob from a local no kill shelter, after our previous kitty passed away due to Renal Failure (Flicka was quite a kitty, I will talk about her in another thread). I was not really sure that I wanted another so soon after Flicka had passed, it had only been about a month or two, but the house seemed kind of empty. So when I started to visit the local animal shelter and other kitty websites we decided it was time to at least start looking (yea, right, looking). I saw Bob and fell in love with him. I wanted to be sure and went to a few other places, but in the end I still wanted Bob. When we went back to the shelter he was still available. I am not sure what his life was exactly like, but just before we adopted him he had been abandoned by his previous owner and left with an ex girlfriend, bad idea. He was rescued by her daughter and brought to the shelter. She claimed that he was being abused by the other cat in the house. Bob is really sweet guy, but he is huge and will defend himself, if he thinks that he needs to. We suspect that he was being abused by the ex girlfriend because Bob was really scared of my girlfriend at first. He would always slink when she was in the room and even run away from her sometimes. Some people are just really pathetic, and have to take out there anger out on an animal. Sorry, I had to say that. Anyway, Bob had another name when we got him and the shelter suggested that we give him a different name to help and disassociate him from his previous bad experiences. It seems to have worked, he now loves on her and they spend many happy hours together.

Bob is a Maine Coon/Mix or MC look alike. My vet says she is almost positive that he is an MC or at least mostly MC. He is a big lovable guy, weighing in at about 17 lbs. He got to almost 20 lbs once and that is when he went on a diet. He could still stand to loose about another pound or half a pound, but at least we have the weight issue mostly under control. Truth be told if we would quit feeding him so many kitty treats he would probably make his weight, no problem.

Bob does definitely have some of the MC traits, he has the cutest little chirp and he likes water. He is not a real lap kitty but does like to be in the same room as we are in a lot of the time. Don't get me wrong when he is in the mood he can be real lover boy, and very cuddly, but it will generally be on his terms. Although sometimes he really looks too cute and I have to pick him up and love on him, he puts up with that.

He really loves to watch the water come out of the faucet and will even drink from it sometimes. He has never really played with the water as I have heard of some MCs doing. He will also let us know when he uses the litter box, when he comes out he will meow a few times just to make sure that we know. The first couple of times I came running to make sure that he was OK, and he just stared at me few a few seconds and then plopped down and cleaned himself. Does anybody else's cat do that? Now, I just tell him thanks for the information and go on with whatever I was doing. He is a real guard cat, he usually wants to be someplace up high so he can observe and make sure that all is well in his domain. I have built a couple of cat trees so he can do just that. When I get to the pictures you can see them.

I saw a post yesterday or today about a cat that will just plop down and demand attention, Bob does that. He will be sitting there and I'll walk up and he will take a few steps and just plop, it is not an ease down it really is a plop, sometimes he even makes a thud sound. He will then roll on his back and I then must give him belly rubs or suffer the kitty consequences. He also loves to be under things, blankets mostly. I think it is a hunting instinct, but he then get warm and comfy and falls asleep.

Ok, you have suffered through enough of my description about Bob. I really could go on for a couple of more pages, but I feel that I would loose my audience. So on to the pictures (unless of course you have already skipped to the pictures and have come back to read).

I do not have the pictures on a site that I can access them from, so I have to put them in as links in different posts of this thread. Hopefully that is ok.

Here we have Bob demanding a belly rub.

[CatDad]

Here is Bob on the first cat tree that I built for him. This is one long cat, the platform that he is lying on is about 28” and if he stretches out he will hang off either end. I made this one because I couldn’t find a scratching post that was long enough for him if he was completely stretched out. By the way that is about 38”, yes I measured it once. I wanted to be sure that he had a proper scratching post, didn’t I?

[CatDad]

Now for the image from the previous message.

[CatDad]

This one is just cute. As you see more pictures in the future you will see many more stuffed bears. My girlfriend has quite a collection and they have invaded the entire house. I tease her that our decorating motif is early bear. Don’t laugh one of our spare rooms is filled with bears. Remind me sometime and I will take some pictures and post them.

[CatDad]

Here is Bob relaxing and sitting up trying to be bear like. They are not in this picture but he has about 4 or 5 bears to the right of him. If I had been thinking I would have included them.

[CatDad]

Ok, one last picture of Bob just because it includes the cat tree that I built for the cats about a month ago and I am really kind of proud of it and wanted to show it off. So when I found a reason to do so disguised as a Bob picture I took it.

[CatDad]

Now on to Joey:

After we had Bob about a year it seemed that he needed a friend (Ok, we wanted another kitty and didn’t think that Bob would mind too much). He seemed to get along with the other kitties that he met at the vet’s office. This was also at the height of Bob’s little (big?) weight problem and we thought that another kitty might help him be a more active and thus help keep his weight down. So we started a new kitty quest. Thus we happened upon Joey.

We found Joey at the same shelter that we found Bob at. This was to be my girlfriend’s kitty as I had picked out Bob. She was in the room that they keep the socialized cats in and thought that this was a good choice. She let us pet her and was not unfriendly to either of us, so we asked about her. A brief physical description, Joey is a DSH or DMH kitty, has tabby markings, and weighs about 9 or 10 pounds. I know that she is a normal sized kitty, but she seems tiny next to Bob.

It turned out that Joey had quite a history, she was labeled a semi-feral. She was born in a cat colony to a feral mother and was not picked up right away so was not properly socialized to people at a young age but she was taken in by the shelter when she was still quite young, so they spent some time and tried to socialize her. She spent about 2 years at the shelter and was then adopted by a couple. They unfortunately never got her to come out of her hiding spot and so she spent a year and half hiding under a bed and only coming out to use the litter box and at night for food. The shelter did not speak ill of the couple so I am pretty sure that she was not abused, it was probably just not the right type of environment for Joey. Which does happen and the couple did care enough to bring her back when it was very clear that they were unable to work with Joey. So at this point Joey is about 3 and half by the best estimates and she spent the next year and half at the shelter. I did not feel very bad about this as the people there are really nice and they take very good care of there kitties. I know this because I found out that Joey had developed a tight bound with one of the volunteers that worked there and he had taken care of her like she was his own, he just could not take her home. We still thought that she deserved a permanent home.

Anyway, we asked about her and they interviewed us and gave us her complete history and that she was a semi-feral and that she would probably always be a little skittish, but that she was a good kitty and would probably become more friendly the more comfortable she got. The told us that she had not been adopted since she had come back because she always hid up high and nobody saw her. They were glad that we saw her and were interested in her because we had a history that they could trace with Bob and they knew that he was doing well. However, we still had to be interviewed by the lady who was the feral cat expert, because of Joey’s past. She was off the day that we applied, so we had to wait for a day.

It turned out that the lady, who deals with feral cats, is also the one that got the final say on the adoption of abused cats because it was the person who we interviewed with before we were allowed to take Bob home. She had no problem with giving Joey to us. She gave us all the information that we need to introduce Joey to her new home and to Bob. She also let us know that there was no shame in bringing her back as a feral cats can be very hard to acclimate. I have done some reading since we got Joey and it is very had to get a feral kitty to integrate into a home. I am glad I did not know this before hand.

Anyway to make an already very long story a little shorter, we brought her home and had the “excitement” of introducing 2 cats. Which started rough, but now they at least tolerate one another, and can even be friendly. I will post pictures.

She is still very skittish and I have to be careful when I approach her, but at least I can approach her and she is not hiding all of the time. She is even comfortable enough that she does not jump ever time that one of us walks into the room.

She has warmed up to us quite a bit. Shortly after she had run of the house she found some towels on the dryer in the laundry room and grabbed one and I think that she had decided that we need a present because she dragged it up 2 half flights of stairs and dropped it at the door to the bedroom, meowing all the way letting us know that she was bringing up a present. She is not a quiet demur kitty when it comes to her voice, she has very loud meow. We first thought that she may be trying to create a nest or something so she could hide, so we left the towels there. When she ran out of towels she started in on the dry cleaning that was out, and that was not good. I took the towels back to see what she would do and that night she moved them back upstairs. So it has become tradition that the towels get dragged from the laundry room. I have placed a bunch of smallish towels in a basket and that is what she brings us. She also has the 4 original towels that she started with which are bath towels that are larger then her. I have not gotten a picture of this yet because she will not do this while we are watching. She stared doing this during the night and we got so used to it that we do not wake up anymore. As she has gotten more comfortable with us and stays out more and more, she started doing it during the day. The target area keeps changing. For instance, when she started taking treats from us she started to drag the towels to her treat place. I called it the “Joey, Towels for Treats” program.Now she will vary the target area, I am not really sure what the determiner is. She is happy and that’s all that counts.

Within about the last 3 or 4 months she has started to come down and sit on me and we take naps together. I am really excited about this as it would be the first time that she has let anyone sit and kind of hold her. I take is as a really good sign that we are making forward progress and there may actually be hope for more in the future.

Ok, there are many more things that I could write but I will wait for another time. I really didn’t know I had that much writing in me. I usually only write short notes, thanks for reading it.

I will write about Flicka another time. Like I said she deserves her own thread and writing about her will take me a while. As it was this took me most of the afternoon to write what I have.

Now onto the picture part, once again I have to do this in several posts.

Here is the Joey girl sitting pretty.

[CatDad]

Here I caught Joey sleeping:

[CatDad]

Here she is relaxing in the big comfy chair:

[CatDad]

I took this one because she was looking cute. She was actually scared to death in this Picture. We had just gotten back from the vet which is always very traumatic. The towels you see are some of the ones that she drags around the house, I think I put them there to try and make her feel better.

[CatDad]

I thought that I would include a few pictures of them together. These are all taken from far away because if I get to close the Joey will run away.

[CatDad]

Another picture of the two of them.

[CatDad]

One last Picture them in the big comfy chair.

Ok that is all, I hope you enjoy the stories and the pictures.

No Really, this is the last Post from me in this thread.

[catcrazylady]

Those are two GORGEOUS kitties!! I love the sitting picture of Bob!! He is one big handsome hunk of kitty!
Joey is absolutely BEAUTIFUL!! She looks very relaxed and content in her pictures! Having a house full of ferals myself I can tell you that you are doing a wonderful job with her! She is showing you all the signs of trust and love. It just goes a lot slower with ferals. I think you have made wonderful progress! We have one that we couldn't touch for a year and a half and now finally after three years he has just recently become a lap cat!! Patience is a definate virtue with these kitties.
I loved your stories as well. It helped me really get to know your babies. I think that they are two very lucky furballs!!

[rg_girlca]

Phew, okay I'm finally finished reading those amazing stories and looking at all the gorgeous pictures of your beautiful cats Bob & Joey.

They look like they could be brother and sister. I would definitely say that Joey could have some Main Coon in her also.
I just adored all the pictures.
Thank you for sharing their wonderful stories and sharing those two gorgeous cats of yours.