The Insane Cat Posse

So I thought I'd do an introduction of the malcontents.. I mean, of all the furred and feathered folks that more or less peacefully abide here at the ol' homestead.
First up, The Insane Cat Posse

I'd like to make if very clear that I didn't start out being a crazy cat lady. I had two cats when I arrived in The Good Land. TWO older, well behaved cats  When we moved here my girls were almost 15 years old.  The Big Man had two younger boy cats. We figured they would fight it out and establish a peace. They did and everything was going along just fine. Total of four cats = doable and reasonable.

Aahhhh... but I hadn't expected the dumping factor. The country. Where people come from miles around to drop off their pets when they are tired of them or cant afford them anymore.



You know that beautiful, manicured farm that city folk drive by and think, "Yes, this is it - I'll drop Fluffy off here and she can live right here on this nice farm"???

Yeah, well. That guy is two lanes down from us and he don't take 'em. So instead all the misfit cats come on down here following the apparent-to-them neon flashing sign above our house that reads:

ALL UNWANTED CATS. PLEASE COME HERE. BUT ONLY SHOW UP IF YOU HAVE SOME KIND OF MENTAL DEFECT OR VERY EXPENSIVE VETERINARY PROBLEM.

So our tidy "four" cats grew exponentially.  We even have 'frequent patient' points at the vet - she gives us a heck of a discount as a kind of pay off so we don't try and leave these wanderers with her.

In fact, of all the cats - and we passed the rational number of cats a long long time ago - we intentionally went out and got only one. Our vet suckered us into taking one of their dropped off kittens as a playmate for our abandoned at birth, bottle raised baby kitten. The learned doctor said the bottle baby would we 'weird' if she didn't have a similar age playmate. She should be selling used cars. Sheesh! The kitten we got (Pepper) turned out to be the weirdest one of them all. I swear Pepper can see into other dimensions and is in regular contact with The Mother Ship. And she didn't help our bottle baby at all - she is equally weird. But in other ways.

Anyway.

I have 3 wishes that will just never come true as long as I am surrounded by a constant sea of cats:

1. To eat a plate of food without being swarmed by felines
2. To be able to go to the bathroom ALONE and without anyone trying to crawl under the door
3. To wake up for once without someone's litter box paws in my mouth.

I would love that but it didn't happen today, didn't happen yesterday, and tomorrow isn't looking good either.

We've come up with ways to outwit them. During the winter we have a heated mattress cover for the bed. We just flip on that sucker to "high" and its an instant cat magnet.  I can actually be ALONE for a few minutes. In fact, I'm going to go and turn it on. At this writing I have Little Mo in my lap, Nicholas is tormenting the dogs, Teddi Grumpkins is pawing at me futilely with her clawless paws (it should be a caning offense to dump a older, toothless, declawed cat btw...), and I just heard a suspicious crashing sound from the other room. I'd better go check it out....

Here are some of them. From the other day, titled "Hey Honey - do you know where the cats are?"