Big Kittens!

This past Saturday Cats 101 on Animal Planet featured my cats' breed the Ragamuffin. It didn't really tell me much that I didn't already know about these furry little members of my family. However, I did learn one little fact that is still somewhat blowing my mind...Ragamuffins don't reach full maturity until they hit the ages of 4-5 years old. My cats are three. This means that my cats--my very large cats--are still technically kittens for another year!

Finding the "perfect cat"

I always had idea of what I would want out of a perfect pet. I thought that this was an impossible to fulfill dream until I saw an episode of Cats 101 on Animal Planet. Here I learned of a breed of cat called a "Ragdoll."

A Ragdoll seemed like my idea of a perfect cat:

• It has long and super soft "bunny like" hair
• It's a larger breed (20lbs for a male is not uncommon)
• It's playful
• It's laid back
• When you pick it up it goes limp like it's namesake--a ragdoll.
• It is a total lap cat.

When we got home from our trip after saying goodbye to Toast I logged on to Petfinder.com to search for this type of cat in any local shelters (getting a pure-bred was waaaay too expensive). I didn't have much luck though. The closet was on the other side of the state and I just didn't have the means or the time to deal with that.

After a little futher internet research I learned of a similar breed called a "Ragamuffin." The shortest version of the story is that the Ragamuffin is basically the exact same thing as a Ragdoll, but it started from a different breeder and they allow more outside breeding with other types of cats--or something like that. How it came about didn't really concern me. It gave me a second chance to find my "dream cat."

I went back to Petfinder.com and lo and behold! Ragamuffin brothers! Only 45 minutes away! I hadn't thought of getting more than one cat, but I couldn't separate them. (It did take a tiny bit of convincing for Mike that we needed two cats). I also couldn't imagine why on earth someone would get rid of them. Maybe because they were meant to be with me. I immediately filled out the online adoption application. Within two days my husband and I were on our way to go meet the "little" fluff balls.

It was love at first sight. We spent quite awhile playing with them in a little room at the SPCA before filling out all of the paperwork and paying the adoption fees. We took them home that night. We were so excited to find what we hoped would be our perfect cats.

Stanley & Leonard--My Ragamuffins.

Toast

This was my Toast. Despite the problems, I still miss him.

My First Pet

The first time I picked him up he purred. I was in love (as much as a person can love a non-person). Because he was the first pet everything he did I thought was wonderful. He was the most cuddly. He was the most playful. He was certainly better than anyone else's cat ever. Most of all. He was mine.

During my time with Toast I learned a few things about (most) cats (and especially this cat) that I didn't know before.

• A cat cuddles on his own terms. When he is done, he is done and if you do not release him the claws will come out.
• If you do not pick the appropriate litter, the cat will not potty appropriately. In fact, anything at all off in the potty department can cause disastrous results (more on this in a moment).
• If you allow the cat into your bed at night the cat will come into your bed at night. It will lay on your pillow and meow in your ear and unholy times of morning because he thinks it's time to get up. Meowing increases in volume and duration especially after the alarm goes off. Now he knows it's time to get up.
• Once a cat gets accustomed to something it will never change. Move his food dish or favorite toy from it's hiding spot and suffer.
• A cat will not greet you at the door after a long day wagging its tail and being excited to see you now that you're back. A cat will ignore you as punishment for leaving it alone.

The last point is especially true. Toast became so upset  and stressed with being left alone when I went away (for my honeymoon, weekends at my parents etc) that became constipated. He would cry when he had to go. Bathroom time became a very unhappy time for him. It progressed to the point that it affected his mood. He was the sassiest cat that I'd ever met.

I loved the fact that he was so big and fluffy. I loved the moments when he wanted to cuddle. I could help but hope that someday I would get a cat that would just want to cuddle all the time, let me hold it like it's a baby, carry it around etc. However, after this experience I learned that cats in general do not enjoy such things.

I got to my breaking point with Toast when he started hurting going to the bathroom so much that he would look for softer places to poop--such as my couch, bedspread, floor etc. I was mad at him at first until I took him to the vet and learned the behavior was a result of his medical problems. The solution would have costs us thousands of dollars in vet bills and even then they couldn't guarantee that the behavior would change now that he was accustomed to those potty spots. After weeks on end we made the extremely difficult decision to have him put down.

I still feel a little guilty when I think about that day, and there are many things that I will still miss about Toast. I do however strongly feel that we did what was best. We took his pain away. After that though, I was certain that I wouldn't get another pet for a very long time. We went away for the weekend right afterward to visit my family up north. When we came home the house just seemed too empty....

A "brief" history...

I am a cat lover. I wasn't always a cat lover. In fact, I wasn't allowed to have pets growing up. My parents always told me that when I had my own place I could have my own pets. This was always an obvious statement. Of course I could do whatever I wanted once I was on my own. I think my parents were just trying to give me hope in the pet department when there was none. I never failed to remind then that all of my older siblings got to have pets when they were younger and it's not my fault that I was born last after they were "done having pets." It never worked so needless to say, my childhood was somewhat pet-less.

Well, that's not even entirely true. When my brother moved back home for a while he brought his dog Lestat--an overly hyper dalmation that would rip off the heads of my Barbie dolls and tear around the house with them in his mouth quickly enough that we couldn't tell what it was he had. I wasn't sad when that dog died. I was sad for my brother I suppose, but no tears shed.

Later, that same brother came home again with Cody, a well trained, super friendly, rotweiler. Again there was a pet in the house--despite my parents continued arguments against myself obtaining a furry friend of my own. They argued that my brother was an adult and fully responsible for the critter, but that if the pet were my own that they would end up doing the brunt of the work. This dog didn't take much work though. He was completely potty trained. You could leave a plate of food on the floor and he wouldn't it eat unless my brother gave him the signal. I loved that dog. When my brother went away for the Marines he couldn't take Cody with him and my parents wouldn't let him stay. They gave me the speech that he went to live on a farm which I thought was code for dead. It turns out that he really did go live on a farm, and he's still alive today. I cried a lot when Cody left.

Fast forward a couple years. I was in college moving into my first apartment without roommates. I went to the pet store with my fiance (now husband) to pick up something for his family's cat. While we were there we saw the cats waiting for adoption. I fell in love immediately  with a cat named Toast. He was a giant maine coon/ American long-hair mix. Needless to say, I made him my very first pet.