The cats in the crew are more-or-less in charge of keeping things running smoothly around the house. Whether it's keeping the dog in line, seining for fish in the aquarium, or making sure the toilet paper is properly shredded, they make sure that all of those important kitty jobs are done properly. Please allow us to introduce, more-or-less by order of acquisition, the busiest kitties in the house.

The First Wave

Shabba Ranks

Shabba is two and a half year old (1/98) neutered male blue Abyssinian. Never the biggest cat of the lot, he's usually the boss of the whole herd. Abys are wonderful pests, never late for a meal - yours or theirs. If you're interested in Abys, let us recommend you to S.A.B.R.E - a 'net breed rescue group for Somali & Abyssinians. They were indirectly responsible for us getting Tiffany and the Wiz (see below).

Barrington Levy

Shortly (very shortly) after acquiring Shabba, we made the trip to the local pet supermarket (also known as "the place we sign over our paychecks") and ran into the local cat rescue group ("Texas Cares" - no known 'net presence, or we'd be happy to link 'em). Since it seemed like a second cat would go a long way towards keeping a first one company, we readily fell for a stout little (relatively) silver tabby domestic shorthair, now three years old (1/98). He was found wandering in the cold at a local car dealership, and now is in charge of laying around the furniture to keep it from floating up to the ceiling. He's also officially in charge of naps, and sets a fine example at every opportunity. Cats sleep an average of 16 hours a day, which is a good reason to have several - so one is always on duty. When we got him Barrington ("Bear") was on the tubby side, but he's dropped his baby fat and is now a lean, mean nappin' machine.

Misty

We decided just one more cat would make our herd complete (famous last words), and so we tracked down Texas Cares again "just to see what they had". We had our hearts set on a longhaired cat, but ran into Misty instead. Misty is a 3 year old (1/98) domestic shorthair bicolor spay (to keep from having to repeat this - all of our cats are neutered or spayed. Unless you are an active responsible breeder, all of yours should be too, at the earliest reasonable age. Unaltered cats have terrible behavior and health problems. Some of these problems are lessened by breeding, but please see the section above on responsible breeding - you don't need a cat who sprays, or has "female problems", and the world doesn't need any more unplanned kittens), who excells in the excentric. She was rapidly turning into a permanent resident of the adoption display, so we finally decided to take her home. She hates being carried around, and only loves being petted when napping (when she's wide awake she remembers she hates it), but will virtually always roll over for a tummy-rub from feet.. She's also an outstanding hunter of bed-mice (those things under the covers that you always thought were your feet), and must hunt them into submission before anyone gets to sleep at night.

When we first got her, Misty was an awkward, ungainly and poorly proportioned little cat. She has since grown into her looks, and now is a fabulously proportioned, incredibly hard-bodied little bicolor. At her first show, several judges remarked how well muscled and buff she is - she weighs significantly more than you'd guess looking at her, and not a milligram of it is fat. Unfortunately, as nicely done up as Misty is, it was obvious that she would rather be somewhere other than at cat shows, so her ribbons are now hung up, and she's retired after one show, having finaled in each ring, taking 1 second best cat rosette, several thirds and fifths, and one ninth (no accounting for taste.)

When we adopted Misty, we also took an option (sight unseen) on...

(Ragga)Muffin

The cat who marks the breakdown of our dancehall reggae cat naming system, Muffin was originally named Raggamuffin, and called Muffin from day one. He's a 2 1/2 year old (1/98) blue smoke mackerel tabby domestic longhair (looks rather Maine Coon-like to me...), and has acquired an additional self-referential name of "Ralph" (Rowlf), from the sound he makes when he demands to be picked up and placed in a lap (rather than jumping). If Ralph is not immediately attended to, he will begin looking from toes-up for the first area of exposed skin to nibble on until he gets the idea across... When we adopted Misty, we heard about Muffin, who was in the vets due to be neutered the next day. We met him and the Texas Cares folks at the vet shortly after his surgery, and took the little ball of fluff home...

Muffin has since blossomed into an absolutely gorgeous cat - a fact he's aware of, revels in, and would prefer that everyone else be aware of too. When we went to our first show (more on this later), we showed Muffin in the Household Pet catagory. He finalled in every ring (as did Misty), and managed to take a first place against some stiff competition. And loved every minute of it.

Tiffany and Wizzard

Okay, we'd only planned on three cats, and ended up with a herd of four... What's to do? Get one more! When we got Shabba, we'd also been introduced to the Somali - the semi-longhaired version of the Abyssinian. These are gorgeous cats, and the idea of another cat with the personality of an Aby, and the looks of a Somali was hard to resist. We'd been pleased enough with adoptee cats that we decided we'd pursue that route first, and found the S.A.B.R.E folks out on the 'net. We dropped them a note, and discussed a Somali they had in Wyoming but it turned out that she needed to be an only cat, so we decided to keep on looking. Erin at S.A.B.R.E. then suggested we contact our local purebred rescue group, via Anna Sadler. We dropped her a note, and found that there were a pair of Somali in town that were desperately in need of a new home.

They had something of a hard-luck story, and due to the Christmas season, were stuck at the downtown Dallas SPCA. After playing phonemail-tag for awhile with the shelter director, we found out that Tiffany, a then 5 year old female Ruddy Somali and Wizzard, a 4 year old male Ruddy were owner relenquished ("new boyfriend was allergic") cats who were currently "considered unadoptable", because they were completely stressed out by being locked up at the shelter. They'd hiss, they'd spit, they didn't groom, they weren't eating well, and she was afraid they'd break with an upper respiratory infection any day. Naturally, we couldn't have this, and after another days worth of adventure meeting up with the right person at the shelter, we'd acquired cats five and six, respectively. We quarantined them from the other cats (in our bedroom), and they took a long time calming down and adjusting. These cats were a mess, both physically and emotionally. They were undergroomed, underfed, and scared to death of everyone and everything. Today Tiffany now spends her time hovering within six feet of my wife, and the Wiz (who'd been living up to his namesake's reputation) is now out prowling, and is only mostly scared of...

Byron Bassett

It's about time we mentioned Byron, our lone and long-suffering dog. As a 3 year old Bassett Hound Byron was undisputed master of the floorspace in the house until the cats came along. Never a proper basset hound anyway he's spent most of his life being hyperactive and although managing to eat everything that didn't eat him first (which is another story) he ran it all off so fast that his ribs always showed. I tried to convince him that they'd drum him out of the basset hound union if he didn't settle down and put on a few dozen pounds, but he never believed me. When the cats arrived, Byron decided that he'd missed his calling in life by trying to be a dog, and now makes every effort to convince himself and everyone else that he's actually a cat. He runs and plays like a crazy critter with the rest of them, and is sudden death on catnip mice, whenever he can manage to get one away from Muffin.

Kiddlyn's Chokoreito of Busykitty
(Rito)

At about this time, we started paying close attention to the Retired Friends page, and came across a listing for an adorable Seal Sepia Japanese Bobtail named Rito.We were beginning to think about showing in Premiership (a class for neutered, pedigreed cats), and decided to adopt Rito with this in mind. Rito is a love, but unfortunately, as you can see from the one picture we've gotten of him, he's painfully shy. We're hoping that one day he'll turn around and become more outgoing, but until then, he's pretty much just another resident lap fungus.

Feline Loco Parentis

Kittens of Darkness

After adopting three cats from them, we became fairly well acquainted with the folks from Texas Cares, and consequently the work they were doing, and the plight of the kitties they were rescuing.

Knowing how acutely short they were (and still are) of foster homes for rescued cats, we prepared an area in our home to keep foster cats isolated from our own cats, and volunteered to start helping. Our first two foster cats weren't what we'd call an unqualified success - we ended up adopting them ourselves.

Kittens of Darkness - Enter Abaddon & Typhon, collectively known as the Kittens of Darkness, The Wickersham Brothers, and (depending on who's in trouble at any given time), Abaddon & A Good 'Un, Abaddon & A Worse 'Un, or (in the case of extreme mutual mayhem), The Menendez Brothers. The Kittens of Darkness are a pair of jet black domestic "medium hair" brothers. When we fostered them, they were a pair of enormous four month old black kittens, whom we immediately fell in love with. On their first vet visit, the vet took one look and said "Two black adult cats". Thirty seconds into the exam, he decided that they weren't quite full grown. In another thirty seconds, he decided that they were four months old... His final conclusion was that they might be large kittens, but he figured they were more likely to be small moose instead :-)

At this writing, they're two years old, and 20 pounds large, with still more growth to go... Visually, the only way of telling them apart is a slight difference in eye color. Behaviorally, they're like night and day, with Typhon's favorite thing being a lap (and he's beginning to take up a lot of lap), and Abaddon's favorite thing being anything edible (and he takes up his share of that, too).