I lived in Baton Rouge, LA for 7 years - 4 of those were when I attended and graduated from LSU. I'm a Southern Illinois native, and now I live in St. Louis, 2 hours from where I grew up.

My cats are very responsible...always willing to help with clean-up after partying.

Claudia is a snowshoe mix, which means that she's part siamese, part bi-color domestic shorthair. I am not sure if she's full-bred snowshoe, b/c we got her from a rescue group, but her markings are almost exactly what a lot of snowshoes look like. I've been told she looks like she's part ragdoll too. What's surprising is that she had such short hair when we got her in June, but her hair is the longest of all of our kitties now and she sheds the most too.

We hide most of our beads away - we amassed several boxes of them over the years (some really good ones too). We just had these few small strands from a banquet we went to in January with a Mardi Gras theme. We didn't make them "show their bellies" for beads - all they had to do was be sweet!