In response to Welcome to the Cat Cafe:
Jedediah, as a cat lover and owner who is also allergic to cats, I can feel your pain. I eschew allergy meds since they tend to make me drowsy, but I do make full use of my handy-dandy allergy eye-drops.
Mr. Tibbs, our family cat has been with us since the Spring of 1998. His very pregnant mother showed up on our back porch – on my birthday, it so happened and Tibbs and his three siblings were soon born.
Mr. Tibbs was the cutest and his mother’s favorite, so we kept him – the rest we gave away. After he grew up, Katrina – his ma, came to see him as a rival for our attention, so she banished him to the outdoors. Mr. Tibbs soon earned the nickname “Nature Boy” because he spent all his time outside where he became an expert hunter. I’ll never forget the time we found a rabbit head in our shed. I’m pretty sure that was Mr. Tibb’s doing.
We always figured he preferred the outdoors – he never came when I called him to come inside. One of my daughters took a liking to Tibbs, and occasionally tried to coax him inside, but Katrina would hiss at him if he dared. We put his food and water out on the back porch.
One day, I let Katrina jump up on my lap for some pets. For all the years that we had had her, I couldn’t really pet her as much as I would have liked because of my cat allergies. But this time, I let her stay there for an hour, and I gave a lot of love. She had seemed a bit out of sorts for awhile – slowing down – doing weird, erratic, unfortunate things like having accidents on the floor, jumping on the kitchen counter and sleeping in the napkin holder.
The day after the long pet, she went outside and took a walk – and never came back.
After that, Mr. Tibbs started coming inside. He now sleeps in my daughter’s room every night. It’s his turn to be the king of the house.
A little over a year ago, we got a Sheltie and the easy going Mr. Tibbs and the pup get along just fine.