My Furbabies

2013 seems like the year where everyone I know is having a baby. You know those years. Sometimes everyone you know is getting married and you have six weddings and you can't wear the same thing to all of them, and then you need to buy six wedding presents and you're broke and... yeah. This year I'm pumping out little bassinet/car seat sized knitted blankets like nobody's business.

So I thought, since everyone is doing it, I'd properly introduce my babies: Will, Hope, and Jasper. They are our adopted kids, our parents' grandbabies, and our source of four-legged love and affection. At times, they can drive us crazy and then they can be sweet or silly just as suddenly. They are sometimes demons and sometimes angels, trapped in small furry bodies. And when I say I'm going to spend a whole blog post talking about my cats, I suddenly am reminded of this:

This might be the MLP moment when I realized... I AM Rarity. But I digress.

We'll start with Will. He's the oldest of the three, having been around since long before Matt. He is my rescued baby that has grown into a beautiful but kinda obnoxious senior cat. He was named Will because when I got him it was iffy as to whether he'd live. I promised him, "Where there's a will, there's a way. You will be okay", and the name sorta stuck. As he grew, it evolved into "Will Help", because he thinks he's people and will help you do everything you don't want help doing. Lying in the dirt pile while you sweep the floor is a speciality of his. He's actually more like a dog than anything else - he begs for food, meets you at the door, fetches bits of paper and plays soccer with me. When he was young he broke his hip (I still don't know how), so he is now without a ball joint in one of his back legs. This means he can't jump as high as the other cats, but he's cleverer than them so he figures out how to get up on things pretty well. We are the crips, Will and I.


Hope is next oldest. We adopted her shortly after I got out of the hospital. Will was waiting for me at home when I was released, but it was pretty clear that he needed some feline companionship. Her name is completely a product of how I felt at the time - I needed a little hope. And she is little. Weighing in at just 4 lbs, she's the tiniest cat I've ever had. When we brought her home for the first time, she swatted Will, ran by him up the stairs, and then waited for him to follow, kind of like they were playing tag. This is Hope's personality in a nutshell. She is the most feline of the three. She will hide in boxes and bags, randomly self-pet but then run away if you try to actually pet her, and every once in a while she turns into a vicious huntress and pounces, teeth and claws out, on your feet under the blankets. Her favourite things include being up high and drinking out of the fish bowl. Her one quirk is that she doesn't make any noise when she purrs. You can feel her vibrating, but she is silent. She also fiercely protective of her people. If I could make her into a jaguar I would, because aside from that being epic, I think that's how big she believes she is.

Jasper is the baby. And not just because he's the youngest. If he could change himself into a baby human, I think he would. He loves sleeping on his back in your arms, is extremely needy, and very vocal if you are somewhere without him. He runs to the bathroom (which is down at the end of the hall) and sits on the toilet, waiting for me to get there. I have to push him off to use it. He doesn't like cheese or any other human food for that matter. What he does like is belly rubs. Hours and hours of belly rubs (and also being a complete crazy pants when the thunderstorms are rolling in). Matt brought Jasper from Kingston, ON to live with us after a stray that my mum took in had kittens. He is, of all of them, Matt's cat. The hilarity of having a cat named Jasper while living in Jasper House on Jasper Avenue is not lost on us, but it is a well-suited name for him. He's lazy, sleeps under the bed at my head, and if I walk into a room where he is, I always get a "Hi mom!" meow.

My kitties keep me company on my good days and my bad ones. They sleep with me when Matt is gone so I have some warmth in the bed beside me. There are days I couldn't imagine life without them, and there are days I want to sell them to the circus. But I love them all - they are my babies.