Readers’ cats

As today is International Cat Day (for reals!), this morning I offered to put up the first five pictures that readers sent me of their cats.

Well, I didn’t have to wait long: within half an hour I had received five, and put up a note to hold off.  People like to show off their moggies, and I don’t blame them.

Here are the winners (there’s an extra photo of feral kittens). Readers’ notes are indented. The first one is from reader Jon Butler:

T​his is Lucy – known in the family as “that mean cat.”  Someone abandoned her in the middle of the night near our house five years ago—she was apparently just weaned. We heard her yowling and crying all night; the next morning​ she wandered out of the woods and found us. She moved in that day.

Reader Reese Vaughn first sent some wild kittens that he’s trying to catch and adopt out, but I reminded him that the rules said “reader’s cat”, so he sent one of those, too:

Three wild kittens.  My granddaughter and her friend have named them, from left to right, Olive, Raspberry, and Cider.

At the moment they are no one’s cats.  They live under a vacant house with their even shyer mother now called ‘Nilla.  I am feeding them and trying to get them tame enough to trap the mom before she comes into heat again and have her spayed.  Right now the kittens are still nursing.

And his own cat:

This is Mocetta, aka Miss Dirtyface. Mocetta was a stray who appeared as a kitten with her brother Pinto, who was adopted by the couple across the street.  Mocetta was named for an Italian cured meat — the granddaughter heard the word at Central Market and liked it.  She is our only cat now.

From reader Mark Perew we have two pictures:

Here is my little black guy,  Houdini.    He loves to ride on my shoulder as I move about the house.   He was a stray that got dumped on my property in North Carolina. At first I tried to keep him locked in my screened porch.  But he kept getting out.  The doors were locked and the screens were intact.   There was no escape path for him that I could find.

When I decided to keep him, the name was obvious.  It was nearly Halloween, he’s dressed in black,  and he’s an escape artist.  What else would I call him?

From reader Hugh Britten in Vermillion, South Dakota. He reminds me that I saw this cat when I visited him on my Big Car Trip two summers ago, and I remember a cat, but I can’t remember a black one:

Here’s a picture of Jedda, a female rescued cat of unknown ancestry.  You may recall Jed from your first stop on your Big Road Trip a few summers back.  Just as a reminder, Jed’s jurisdiction is in Vermillion, SD.

Finally, we have Plushie, the fluffy black cat of reader Keira McKenzie in Australia. Plushie has been featured several times on this site before, but not this new photo.

You requested cat photos, so I present the ever lovely Plushie, here cursing me for taking photos instead of feeding her lemon grass.

It’s odd that three of the five cats are pure black, one is black and white, and the other gray and white (I’m not counting the feral kittens). Coincidence? I think not.