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I got Cass in the summer of 96. It was about a month before I went to France. I was working at the factory my mom (and later, Lon) worked at. My job was pretty much dumb shit and I had a lot of down time. A woman who is known for bringing in strays was walking around with a box full of kittens. I asked my mom if I could have one and she said no. I wore her down throughout the day and when I brought her the kitten I wanted she saw how cute he was and said that it was ok. So I had the kitten in a box next to me for the rest of the day. He was Russian Blue looking, but not exactly and he wasn't pure bred. That night we went to the store for kitten mother's replacement milk. He was a nice kitty. He'd sleepon my back, he'd think Boggy (my half bearded collie half sheepdog) was his mom and try to suckle from him, he'd hang off of Boggy's fur and go for rides, he'd climb inside the dishwasher and lay down in the rack while I was trying to do dishes.... Then I went to France for 3 months. When I came back he was more grown up and had started to get his famous temper. I only spent a couple weeks back at home cuz that's when Lon and I met physically and we moved in with his dad back in Wisconsin. When we moved in with my mom in May of 97, my mom and brother had turned Cass into a pretty mean kitty. He was ill-tempered throughout his whole life. I've still got scars from him scratching me. He was sweet to Lon though.

The second kitty we got was Kali. She wasn't being taken care of where she was living so I stole her. She had eye problems her whole life cuz of her initial owners. She was the best kitty we ever had, except for the year she spent on top of the computer desk and kept dumping her water on the computer monitors, but I'll get to that part later. We got Kali the summer Lon and I were living with my mom, 1997. My mom was adamant about me not getting another cat, but just like with Cass, Kali came home with me. She's a muted calico.

The third and fourth cats we had were Precious (Dilly) and Sonic. My friend Janet was still with her abusive husband (they're now divorced). He worked in a pet store. She had to go there to ask his permission for her to hang out with me. I was checking out the animals. There was a cage of kittens. One of them, a girl calico, had a serious eye problem. I knew nobody would buy her and she'd end up dying or being put to sleep so I asked how much they were, $20 each. When I lifted her out of the cage the kitten she was sleeping with/on mewed like "don't take my friend!" and snatched onto her. So ok, he came home too.... The sick calico looked like Kali, and her friend looked just like a kitten version of Cass. Precious got her name cuz she was just so damn cute. The name evolved to Preshally-esh-us to Presh-dilly-ishus, to finally just Dilly. Sonic got his name cuz he was blue colored and was VERY hyper as a kitten. He'd run around, go up the walls, run on the backs of the furniture. He was like Sonic the Hedgehog. I got them close to our anniversary (in Feb). We had our first apartment by then. I brought in a box and Lon could tell something alive was inside it. He said "That better not be a fucking dog!" Once he saw the kitties he was all "awe, how cute" etc. He loved feeding them milk, which Sonic loved drinking. The other cats didn't like the kittens at first but then they got used to each other. When we got Sonic neutered he stayed over night cuz he wasnt cooperating with his stiches. That night he nanaged to somehow get out of a locked cage. The vets office has motion detectors and Sonic was making so much fuss and mess that the motion detectors went off, bringing the police and the head vet to the office in the middle of the night. Sonic was roaming about, probably looking for his balls. They sent him home the next day with an e-collar (lampshade thingy).

The fifth cat we got was named Target. Janet's dickhead husband threw her out in the winter. She had frost on her fur when I found her outside Janet's house. Janet's daughter, who was two I think, was crying "Where's my Targgy??" Yeah, I took the cat home, with the understanding that I would get her fixed for Janet. Michael (the hubby) said he threw the cat out cuz she was in heat and got sick of her whining. He also threatened to shoot it, which I took seriously. Why else would he name the cat "Target" to begin with. Granted she had a bullseye pattern on her sides, but still.... She was a gray and black tabby. This was in early 99. Lon was pissed. Kali didn't get along with Target. Targgy kept beating up on her. This is when Kali lived on top of the computer desk. There wasn't enough room for a litter box up there so we used newspapers. At night she would come and sleep with us in bed. She would cry and cry for us to come get her down in the middle of the night. When we were home she would snuggle with us in our chairs. Kali loved strangers. We called her Crotch Kitty cuz she would curl up between anyone's legs and go to sleep. Target stayed with us longer than the agreed upon time. Janet ended up leaving that hubby but couldnt have a cat where she found an apartment. I finally gave Target back after Janet remarried and had already gotten another cat. Her daughter was very happy to get her Targgy back. I'd gotten Target and Dilly spayed at the same time. The fucked up Dilly, and she was very sick after the surgery. She spent a whole week under our bed. That was from the low-cost spay neuter clinic.

As I was leaving to see the fourth of july fireworks in 2000 I heard a very loud animal scream coming from the edge fo the woods (they came right up to the parking lot). It was started to rain but I still found whatever it was that was making such a loud, awful noise. It was a TINY black kitten. It was still screaming till I brought it in the house. I stayed around to see Lon lovin on him and putting him in the bathroom with food/milk/water etc and helping him calm down. Kitty was very malnourished, and too young to be away from his mama. I went on my way picking up friends and watching fireworks. This was the night I got arrested (detailed in a very early entry). By the time I was out of jail, kitty #6 had a name "Itty-Bitty" and Lon was already attached. His nickname at first was "Itty-Bitty-Shitty-Kitty" cuz it would smell so much after goin to the bathroom. Then as he got older his nickname was "Itty-Bitty-Big-Balls" cuz he had HUGE balls! I mean, people who hadn't met him before would be pettin him, then he'd turn around and everyone would say "GOD DAMN that cat's got big balls!" He was such a small cat too, very sleek. He was all black, though in the sunlight you could make out brown highlights and the faint dark-black stripes of a tabby. he was a great cat. That was Lon's special kitty. That winter a stray started coming around, I called him Gabriel. He was an orange tabby. He was the sickest cat ever. This poor thing was coughing and sneezing. I'd let him sleep in our bathroom on cold nights. We took him to the vet and she confirmed that he had kitty aids (FIV) she worded it like this "Good news is that he doesn't had feline leukemia, bad news is, he's got kitty AIDS." So we took care of him the best we could. We couldnt have him around our other cats cuz he was contagious. Sometimes he would look "ok" and other times he was just horrible. He would be around for a couple days then disappear for a week or two. I would cry thinking he'd died, but he always managed to show back up looking more horrid. Finally he showed up with eyes all mucussy, snot dripping from his nose, limping with a hole bout a 1/4 inch deep in the front part of his shoulder. I took him to our vet and she bandaged him up but said it was time to put him down. She said that would be at least a hundred, which we didn't have. I took him to the humane society and they put him down for free. I can't remember exactly when this happened so it was probably while I was using. Gabriel (also called him Sunshine cuz he liked to roll around in the sunny spots outside) was cat #7. Another stray we'd feed was called Mama (#8) cuz we were sure she was Itty-Bitty's mom. We brought her in the winter of 2001 (That's when we started using too). Of course she had to be pregnant when we brought her in. She had the cutest kittens. It was around easter. She had them in the middle of the night, in the back of the closet on top of my records. The first kitten had rolled off the records and was stuck back in the closet somewhere. You could hear his muffled cries. Lon and I had awoke and I had Lon find the crying baby. He went to pick it up but it was all slimey with blood and afterbirth etc and he said "Eww! You do this, this is womany stuff!" So I put the kitten back with Mama. She had three kittens that night. Two of them ended up living. A few weeks later we found the runt dead under the rocker/recliner. He was under there while I was sitting in it. We'd kitten proofed the apartment that weekend, but who thinks of the furniture...? Anyway it was really sad. We went to the closest vet to us to be sure it was dead. I don't know if me being high had anything to do with the kittens death. The kittens were cats numbers 9, 10, 11. I gave Target back either right before or right after the kittens were born. We named the oldest kitten Roley-Poley. He was very chubby, and fluffy. We'd sometimes call him Fluffy. His sister had short hair, we called her Pumpkin. She had orange dots and was all sorts of different colors, but not really a calico. Like a tortiseshell/tabby mix. She had spots and stripes and was orange and black and silver and tan. Her brother looked more like a long haired tabby, though he had some orange too. The one that died was black, like Itty-Bitty. On November 6 2001 (my birthday) my mom showed up in Columbus and forced me back to NY to detox. Lon stayed in Ohio in a rehab there. I was super sick, it turns out I had an intestinal virus while detoxing. The monday after (the 12th) Lon walked out of his program and I was going into mine. My brother was still in Columbus. Prett picked up Lon and went to the vet where Cass was put to sleep. They brought his body, inside a little cardboard kitty-coffin, back to NY where it stayed in the garage for a couple months (ground too frozen to dig). When my mom and her bf started bitching about the dead cat in the garage we ut him in our trunk. He was in the trunk of the car for a few months, until it started getting warm and smelly. Yeah I know its gross but we just couldnt let go, plus for me, it was a constant punishment. I "like" punishing myself. Anyway we finally buried the cat on my evil aunt and uncle's land behind their resteraunt around april 2002 I think. Pumpkin ended up having kittens. We're not sure if the father was Itty-Bitty or Pumpkin's brother Roley-Poley. We think it was Roley-Poley. They looked like him, but Itty-Bitty acted like the dad. We were heavy in our addiction and all spare money went towards the drug and not for important stuff like getting the cats fixed. I was wary of the low cost clinic after what happened to Dilly. We'd moved while Pumpkin and Roley-Poley were still kittens. We were going to bring Mama but she escaped. Pumpkin escaped too but we caught her. Mama ended up biting both of us REALLY badly so she's probably still wandering the woods of the old apartment complex. The two kitties cried for a couple days in the new house. The kitties liked that house the best I think, it was by far the biggest place we lived in (two bedroom townhouse w/basement). Around Easter of 2001 Pumpkin had 6 kittens. We were in NY at the time. This is when we were trying to stay clean, though when in Ohio we'd be high or trying to get high, and we'd go to NY to withdraw in comfort. Lon had lost his job already. I had spilt cereal on the tv and shorted it out so we had a very small bad reception tv at our place, no phone, no food etc. The runt of the litter died. One of the kittens was given away at Kroger (grocery store). I knew if I took kitties with me to the store someone would take em home. Then my brother's friend Kelly took another one. Oh, all these kitties were long haired and looked just like Roley-Poley, though some hads more orange than others. Only one was short-haired, that was the only girl. She looked exactly like her mom, Pumpkin. Pumpkin's kittens were cats #12, 13, 14, 15, 16 & 17. When I decided to move us to NY for good my mom said we could have two cats and that was it. On the next trip to NY I took Dilly and Roley-Poley to Lollipop Farm. It used to be a no kill shelter when I was growing up in NY, but after taking the kitties there all the way from Ohio it turned out that it wasnt. Another time we brought the 3 kittens, their mom Pumpkin, and their serrogant dad Itty-Bitty. They went to the humane society. It was so hard giving them up, knowing how much Lon loved Itty-Bitty. All we had left was Kali and Sonic. And then my mom's boyfriend flipped out and said we couldnt have any cats at all. We had already completely moved from ohio, been evicted from the townhouse. We boarded the cats for about a month while trying to find a place for both of us to live that accepted cats, that would let us move in with out jobs and our awful credit etc So the first boarder was calling us like every day "Come get your damn cats!" he didnt make us pay, he was just losing business by having our cats there. We found another boarder. Thats the last time we saw Sonic or Kali.

Always remember to quit while you're ahead.

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