The Rest of the Family

Well, so far you've met my family...Alex, Abby, Josh and...well...me. Now let me introduce you to the rest of my family. As many may know, we have cats. Not just a couple, mind you, but rather five of them. You are probably saying, "Five cats?!? Are you insane!?!" Why yes. It is true. There are five furry felines living in our humble abode. It wasn't meant to happen like that, but they are here for the long haul. Three years ago, we lost our precious ferret Mace. He was the best pet you could ask for. I was beyond devastated when it happened because he was much too young to be taken from us (only 5 years old). My mom, God bless her, has always used the theory that replacing a lost pet with a new one right away will take away the pain faster. So she came waltzing over to our house with two adorable kittens. We fell in love right away and our family of two became four. It was one boy and one girl, brother and sister. Being the super Star Wars nerd that I am, we naturally named them Luke and Leia.

And here they are...Leia is the top one and Luke the bottom one.
They adore each other. We call Leia her Highness or Princess because she is so prissy.She only goes to Josh for attention. Luke we call the Hippie. He is so laid back...almost likea surfer-dude. I call him Lucas when he gets into trouble. So naturally I call him Lucas a lot.

Then, after them we of course had Alex. Now while I was pregnant with Alex, Josh and I had to live with my parents for awhile (thanks mom and dad!) and they live in the country. Well, country living usually means outdoor cats. And outdoor cats lead to kittens. This mother cat had kittens and she was very sick herself and unable to care for them after they reached about 5 or 6 weeks old. The kittens also became incredibly ill. They developed a horrible lung infection that traveled to their eyes. Their eyes were so infected that they became closed and nearly blind to the world. They were infested with fleas and starving. Being pregnant only made my love of these little critters so much more and so I took it upon myself to nurse the three of them back to life. The vet said that they had almost no chance of survival, but after a bath, some medicine, bottle feedings around the clock and loads of TLC later...they made it through and our family went from 4 to 8 over the course of the summer. Now Let me introduce you to Penny...

She has only one eye because the other one popped out after the infection destroyed it. Yes...I said popped out. It was the most disturbing thing to see happen. She had her first surgery before she was even 10 weeks old and did beautifully. She is Alex's best friend. She loves him and
wouldn't hurt him for all the cheese in the world. (She loves cheese...can smell it a block a way.) I called her Penny Angel for the longest time because I truly believe she was a little miracle from God.
Then there is Jasmine...
She has only 1 and a half eyes. It doesn't seem possible. I know.
But the infection made half of one of her eyes messed up. A film grew over
it and so she has limited vision in it. We affectionately call her Stinky
because she has a severe gas issue. She could bring you to your knees with a single fart.
And last, but not least, we have Logan.

He lucked out and kept both of his eyes. But he still has problems with one eye. It drains a bit from time to time. We called him Logan because he was like a little Wolverine (that would be on of the X-Men if you didn't already know). He growled a lot as a baby and fought for food like it was his last meal. Now we call him Chicken because that is what he is. He is scared of everything except spiders. He's my hero kitty because he kills all the nasty brown recluses in our house.

So now you know the rest of our happy family. It's great having five cats...most of the time. The litter and cat food bill is mind boggling sometimes, but they are worth it. And it's scary to think that if we had a bigger house, five cats could become 6 or 7. They are wonderful animals and we wouldn't have it any other way!