This is my cat Elijah. The picture to the right is not "real". I made it with the help of photo shop. I chose that scene because he seems to be that big! In other words, it's not all hair!! He too came to the shelter as a stray when he was a few months old. Although he was a big kitten, we never expected him to end up weighing 20 pounds! He eats a regular cat diet of hard food with urinary track infection prevention ingredients. He rarely gets moist food and he never gets people food unless it is a small piece of chicken, on a rare occasion, without the skin. He is fixed so I don't have to worry about adding to the already overwhelming population of unwanted pets. The way that I see it, if my cats had kittens and I was actually able to find
good homes for them, that would still be fewer homes for the cats at the shelter to have. Just because someone can find good homes for kittens does not mean that they are not hurting the unwanted population. In all actuality, they are hurting it! To add to that, most animals in the shelter were once loved pets who could not stay with their guardian for one reason or another.
This is Gidget just after I woke her up from her evening snooze. She yawned and then licked her chops as you can see here.
I adopted her from a low kill animal shelter I worked at in '98. She was a stray that had been live trapped and brought in to us. She was too young to be weaned but her mom was not brought in with her. She was to wild to handle. Because of her circumstances I brought her, along with another kitten named Digit, home with me. I knew that nobody would want to adopt these 2 wild cats and they would soon meet their fate if left at the shelter. I was able to tame Digit and get her health back on track (and she has since found a loving home) but Gidget remains a little wild. She is still very shy and will only let familiar people touch her. She has adopted my other cat Elijah as her best friend. They could never be separated as she would not know what to do with herself. Even though she is not a lap cat I love her the same and I'm very happy I took her in.
