My Cats

note: this page is image-heavy! i love my cats!!



St. Jimmy
2007-2023

jimmy, named for the Green Day song, was my very first pet, who my family got for Christmas 2007. i'd been begging for a cat for months- i'd fallen in love with them due to the computer game catz 5- and my dad finally acquiesced. (true to the stereotype, he ended up being his best friend and constant companion while he worked from home.) while we we were looking around at the animal shelter, jimmy managed to unlock his cage and swung out into the aisle, clinging onto the cage door. we all knew then that we had to bring him home. he was a chill old man, happy to just sit on someone's lap for hours, but in his younger years, he was- as you can imagine- full of energy, a decent amount of which he put toward climbing up screen doors. when we brought ianto home, the two hit it off, and many times i'd go downstairs at night and find them snuggling on the sofa. you could almost say he was ianto's support cat.
he was put to sleep in ugust of 2023 due to the gradual wear and tear of 16 years of catting. rest in peace, scrunkly old man. 🖤



Olive
b. 2010

olive was the first cat who was my cat, though in her later years she's come to prefer my sister. i developed dermatillomania when i was quite young, and it quickly became a real problem. in an attempt to combat it, my mom promised me i could have an anole lizard if i could beat it for a month (i'd raised one for class, but i hadn't been able to take it home). my dad wasn't thrilled about the idea of having a reptile in the house, so he proposed a second cat instead. i was quite thrilled about the idea. one month later, i was going to the shelter with my mom to pick out my new baby kitty. olive was there with her siblings and her mom, having been found in a barn at two months old; she had just been spayed, and while my mom was signing the adoption paperwork, she fell asleep against my chest. she's a fierce little kitty, both in hating the other cats and in loving my family (she kneads with her claws out. It's kind of a lot.) and is the only one of our cats to have a prey drive. for a while, it was pretty common to wake up and see a dead mouse on the floor. i wonder if she's sad that our current house doesn't have mice ...



Ianto
b. 2013

ianto definitely has the funniest backstory of any of my cats. i was going through a really tough time in my life, having taken on some stuff that was way more than a 14 year old can handle, and my parents thought i might chill the hell out if i got a cat to focus my energy on. apparently, october isn't a very good time for kittens, so we went all around the metro trying to find me one. (if i had a breakdown in public about not being able to find one, that's nobody's business.) eventually, my mom and i found a kitten named bacall at a shelter about half an hour away from home, so we headed out there to meet her. unfortunately, bacall was a sickly little lady, and all we got out of that encounter was cat shit allll over my skirt. after i was done scrubbing it off in the bathroom, we came out to see that two new kitties had arrived: mac and cheese. desperate for literally any kitten, i chose the one that was awake (cheese) and sealed the deal right then and there. it was a good risk to take, though! ianto is deeply high-strung (to the point of having a skin condition from chewing his fur off), but he's also the sweetest cat i've ever met. he loves to snuggle with my mom, but he always seems to curl up in my lap just as i'm about to get up. i can't really hold the inconvenience against him, though.



Teddie
b. 2019

TEDDIE!!! the light of my life! my horrible dickhead son! he's my emotional support cat, but it goes both ways- if i'm out of the house for more than a few hours, he wanders around all mopey (or so i've been told), and sometimes when i stand up to go get water he starts crying. he has petting aggression, which is mitigated by just giving him scritches on the head, but he's also kind of a jerk outside of that- he's very fond of biting legs when displeased. it's fine, i love him anyway. he's actually curled up on my foot as i type this! he's the snuggliest, funniest, and biggest cat i've ever met, and i would be lost without him. i love his big dumb head, cuz there's no brain in there, just lots of room for kissies.