Today, once again thanks to my west coast brother for the info, is "International Rescue Cat Day." While I have no intention of rescuing a cat at this point in my life I do have a long history with cats. I really don't know if my first two family cats, Heathcliff and Hercules (my father was the one who named the early pets in our family; our first dog was named Mable) were rescue cats but I suspect they were. Cats had my mom spotted as a softy from day one. When I was a little older and we moved to the country we had barn cats, at times many, many barn cats. While they didn't come in the house they were tame-able. Especially since Mom put food out for them. For a while my brother and I had Mike and Yerk, short for My Kitty and Your Kitty. Mine was My Kitty, obviously. Then came Midnight, all black with a tiny white spot on his chest. Eventually the barn cat population declined and I moved on to college and beyond. Fast forward to married life. From fairly early in our marriage, we had two dogs but cats didn't come on the scene until we moved to a country place in Ohio. Our next door neighbor girl came knocking on my door carrying a little kitten. It had been left along the side of the road and she couldn't keep it because their cat didn't like it. Well, how could I resist that little tear streaked face? I took the kitten (a rescue if I ever heard of one) introduced her to the dogs and the rest of the family who all accepted her and she became Buckeye, because of a black spot on her left shoulder just the size and shape of a buckeye. Our vet, an Ohio State grad, loved her. We moved Buckeye with us back to Fort Wayne. Then followed Olympia, Athena, Clair and Frances; all rescues, all with their own stories, but never more than three at a time. So there you have my cat history. I loved them all but feel absolutely no guilt about not rescuing any more.
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