Catapalooza!

After all this talk about cats and kittens, I thought I would make a montage to all the cats that have graced my life. Of course it all started with Hercules and Zena. They are the patriarch and matriarch of the great cat dynasty the reigned at my house for 7 years. Kittens really are such fun, but they are a lot of bother as well. We had the most fun naming them. At first we stuck with the Greek theme: Zeus, Apollo, Thor (my favorite), and Aphrodite. Then we moved on to Star Wars with Luke, Leia, and Vader. One of my favorites was the Phantom of the Opera theme, Phantom and his two sisters Carlotta and Christine. We had Phantom for a long time, he was a good cat. Then as Diana got older she helped in the naming and we had the princess kittens. One of the last batches had one named Piggy. As I looked through the pictures, I was surprised at how similar the kittens look through the years. We could always count on at least one grey stripey one that looked like Zena. Even though they looked similar, let me assure you these are not pictures of the same kittens, over and over. Zena had from 2 to 3 litters a year for seven years. I figure the it must have been somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 kittens. Good Grief, Charlie Brown! Yes we had some fun times with them, but really it is quite a lot of trouble, ie: peeing on the carpet, cats spraying, and males cats stalking the house when Zena was in heat. Not to mention the disruption to ones sleep. The kittens would often start off in my closet and I remember one time when they had gotten to the stage of pouncing. Let me tell you, it is not fun to be sound asleep and have a kitten pounce on your face. I did have a linen closet that was the kitten birthing room. Zena would insist that I sit next to her box when she was in labor. She would tell me in no uncertain terms that if she had to go through this, so did I. And who can forget the many breech deliveries I had to help her with. Thank heavens, her first few deliveries were normal, so I was only there for moral support. When the next one did not go like usual I could tell that something was wrong. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending of your point of view, I had read the books All Creatures Great and Small. The vet in that book, talks about many breech cow deliveries. And so I knew that I would need to help her get the kitten out. Somehow I managed to help her and with much complaint on her part, we got the job done. She probably had about 4 breech deliveries in all. One time I pulled too hard on the poor kitten's tail and actually pulled it off. Yikes! But he turned out to be such a cute little kitty and somebody took him willingly when we sold them. And so while there are some great memories from the "cat years" of my life, I am not ready to go back. So at first I picked the song "Bye, Bye, Bye" for the song to this slide show. But in order to have the song playing, I had to have an annoying little small video box at the bottom of my slide show. After further deliberation, I decided to just have no music, since I couldn't find the right thing. So listening to the message in "Bye, Bye, Bye," I will try to stay strong in my decision to be catless.