Hello, my name is Heidi, and here is the background story of my cats and A little bit more about me.
In the spring of 2003, Ted (my husband) and I decided to adopt a kitten.
Our friend’s barn cat had kittens. We planned to get 1 kitten, but once at the barn, we decided that if we got two (Lina and Kilala) so they could play with each other and we would each have one to hold on our lap.
And so our life with cats began.
Did you grow up having cats?
I did not grow up with any cats. My first long term experience with a cat was house sitting when I was in college for one month for a professor who had one cat.
This cat did not want anything to do with me, regardless I enjoyed caring for it. This cat was an indoor/outdoor cat and I would pray each time it went out, that it would come back unharmed! The cat went out the window and 15 to 45 minutes later it returned.
Ted’s family had small dogs but no cats.
When did you become a cat lady?
For the first eight years, we only had Lina and Kilala and I felt like a normal cat owner.
In 2011, Buster showed up on a very cold winter day. He was starving and once we let him in the house, he never left.
Three cats felt somewhat typical.
Everything changed in the summer of 2014 when a mom cat brought kittens to my backyard.
The first stray cat with kittens
What do you do when you see five kittens in the yard? At this time, I had only heard of Trap-Neuter-Return because Buster had an ear-tip already when he moved in.
The mom cat (Violet) wasn’t super friendly, but she wasn’t feral either. And the kittens learned to enjoy my attention.
Once the kittens were weaned, we brought them into the house along with their mom. We found homes for three of the kittens and kept the mom cat and two of the kittens (Jake and Elwood).
So, I started to feel like a cat lady.
The sick cat in my sister’s yard
In the fall of 2016, my sister’s dog found a sick kitten in their yard. Eventually, the kitten ended up in my care and we kept him (Taco). His eye needed a lot of treatment, and many trips to the vet. He has chronic sinus issues and a little scar on his eye left behind from the eye ulcer.
The feral cat with kittens
And then in the spring of 2017, a feral cat had five kittens in my yard.
I didn’t know where she came from or why she choose my yard as we stopped putting cat food outside once in 2014 when we brought Violet inside.
After talking to many people in the neighborhood, I found out that her regular feeder lived 10 houses away.
Since she was feral, the kittens did not naturally warm up to me.
I learned how to do TNR so that we could get the mom cat fixed. And then for the first time ever, I socialized kittens!
We kept one of the kittens (Nacho) and the Humane Society found homes for the other four kittens.
And then I helped TNR many other cats in my yard and neighborhood and for a couple of friends (more than 30 cats in total).
When my friend moved and couldn’t keep her cat
At this point in 2018, we had 8 cats. My friend was moving and I had arranged for her outdoor cat to go to a barn. But the barn connection didn’t work out, and it turned out that Charlotte was very friendly. So, Ted decided that we should keep her.
When my sister found a cat in a parking lot
In 2020, near the end of September, but sister found an abandoned cat in a parking lot. The senior citizens feeding the cat said it had been living in the lot for at least 3 weeks and was rumored to have been a “kicked out cat”. After contacted four rescues that were full, we decided to keep him. Rocko has been our easiest integration of a new cat so far. He is how we did it.
The cat colony in the yard
Once you have cat food out in the yard, cats will come to eat it. We currently have three cats that call our backyard home.
There have been several cats in the yard. Some didn’t come back after they were TNR’d, or for whatever reason choose to move on to be fed elsewhere in the neighborhood.
And there was Other Buster 2, who kept getting into fights after he was fixed. He turned out to be friendly after a few months of hanging around. We were going to bring him inside after he was bitten by another animal but he tested positive for Feline Leukemia. After fostering him for several months (isolated from my other indoor cats), he moved into the sanctuary at Leuk’s Landing and now lives in one of their foster homes.
Helping other cats
And then I started helping other cats in need. My home isn’t great for fostering (small, and no extra rooms), but I’ve been able to get by with a cat playpen in my garage.
I’ve held friendly strays for a friend until the Humane Society could take them in (we are at our limit for indoor cats) and a mom cat with kittens for a few weeks (they were born in my friend’s shed). And a feral cat that needed a broken, infected tooth removed.
Also, as mentioned above, I’ve helped with Trap Neuter Return projects.
More evidence of becoming a cat lady
Shortly before launching this blog in 2014, I discovered cat shirts! Most days I wear a cat t-shirt. And in 2020, I started designing shirts.
My collection of cat socks is also quite large.
And we have more cat kitchen dish towels than fit in one drawer! Yet, we still impulse almost every new cat towel we see (some don’t seem cute enough to buy).
Summary
I became a cat lady in 2014 when we increased our number of indoor cats when taking in stray cats from the yard. That’s when I went for a normal cat owner to a cat lady. We adopted more cats over the years, and have been a temporary foster for many others.
To learn more about being a cat lady, read through this list of cat lady signs.
All cats have a story! Even those that are not Internet famous. You can meet my cats here.
I send out a weekly cat tip based on my experiences of caring for 12 cats (and helping other cats) in The Caturday Newsletter every Saturday.
It’s free and you can sign up for it here.
Thanks for reading!
Heidi
