Cassie

[centuryplant]

I have a new cat and a new camera, so if you don't like cat pictures you better run.

That little bald spot in front of her right ear is a burn scar. She was brought in at the age of nine months with a burn all the way down the side of her face -- "like hamburger," I was told -- and a separate small circular burn on her neck. Also she smelled strongly of cigarettes. These facts lead to an obvious conclusion, but I have trouble believing she was an abused cat. She has no discernible fear of humans and no twitchiness about being touched, even on traditional I-don't-think-so areas like the belly and feet.

She's really a very sweet and well-behaved cat, and it's hard to imagine why anyone would ever give her up. But the guy who adopted her before me must have had a better imagination than I do: he brought her back after three months because -- I am not making this up -- she didn't sleep under the covers with him like his other cat.

I don't even know what to make of that. People lie about these things, of course. My poor Jordan was kicked out of her first home at about six months because her people thought they might move at some point in the future, and since their next home might not allow cats, they thought they had better "take care of it now," but I'm fairly sure that really meant "we only like kittens." Cassie must already have been around a year old when he adopted her. And if he was lying you'd think he'd have come up with a better story. But it's a fact that on her first night here, when I went to bed, she dove under the covers as if she'd been waiting her whole life to try it. It's a ritual now: I lift up the covers and she goes in, turns around, then falls over so that her back is against me. During our freakish March heat wave she sometimes came back out after a few seconds, but on cold nights I've woken up hours later to find her still in there, obviously blissed.

I guess you just have to have the right bed.

Comments

[centuryplant]

I'd never even seen a tabby-tortoiseshell when I was eight. It seems like when I was four cats were solid black or gray, and then I lived in a neighborhood where *all* the cats were orange and white (someone was very prolific), and only later did all these other variations start to show up. I'm sure that's a very local view. But I still think of tricolors and brown tabbies as fairly unusual even though they're really not.

pretty torbie

[auroramama]

She's ravishing. A lot of striking orange on her, which is a little unusual, because many torties look like brown tabbies with a flash of red hidden away somewhere. Her face is almost half-and-half, with the tabby M divided black/red and the "lazy pi" markings red and black. The and-white markings probably helped the effect, making distinct patches instead of finely mingled colors.