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.