Sunday Scribblings: Family and Camera Critters too

The Sunday Scribblings prompt this week is family. With this topic I could have focused on my immediate family, school family, or my extended family. Instead I chose to focus on my pet family. If you have read my blog at all you know we have two dogs and seven cats. Each of them provides entertainment and unconditional love on a daily basis. Here is our critter family tree: starting at the top left is Finnigan, Sweet William, Lily, McDuff, Annie and Shelby, Kit and Isabelle, Kit, Iris, and Isabellebaby McDuff
I love to call JEJ the cat whisperer. He has a certain way with cats. When he moved across the street to my house when we were married, he tried to bring his cats. They did not appreciate our dogs and never really made the move. That was eleven years ago.Ten years ago our neighbors had a mamma cat that would just show up at their house to give birth to kittens. We decided we were ready to have cats, thus Cosmo and Camille came home with us. They are no longer with us, but they turned me into a cat lover and I saw what a cat whisperer JEJ really was.


A year later that same mamma cat showed up at our neighbors to have kittens and we knew we HAD to have two more kittens. McDuff and Finnigan came home to join their siblings and they are now almost ten years old. It is hard to imagine all four of these cats came from the same mother.

In the spring of 2001 I got a call from my sister saying that The Princess had found two kittens in a box behind the grocery store. They couldn't keep the cats and she wondered if there was any way we could take them. Welcome home Iris and Poppy. Poppy vanished as cats often do a few years ago, but Iris is the Queen Bee of the household now.In the fall of 2005 we were down to three cats and we saw an ad in the paper about abandoned cats that needed a home. We went to rescue Isabelle and Lucas. A few months later we were all saddened when Lucas died of feline leukemia. Isabelle still misses him, but Kit has helped fill that void.
That following spring our dear friend SH died. She had two kittens that were about five months old. They had been inside a enclosed porch and had really just had each other. Her grieving husband didn't know what to do with the cats. He was afraid to let them go outside because of wild animals and he already had an inside cat. We knew what SH would want. She had loved those kittens to pieces. We brought a part of our dear friend home the spring of 2006 when Lily and Sweet William became part of our cat family.Did we ever realize another kitten would need to be rescued? Are we just the kitten magnet house or what? Kit showed up in a tree last fall and needed a home. He was not in good health, but had a personality even in sickness that won our hearts. Now we have quite a cat family. Four of the cats are mostly outdoor cats and three others come and go inside and out. They have all been fixed so we don't repopulate the neighborhood. They have all been a blessing and I have began training as a cat whisperer myself. (The last picture with all three dogs before we said good-bye to Lucy.)
Added to this critter family are two dogs. After the death of my dog Lucy we had two older dogs at home- Bluey and Emily. We were at WalMart on day and saw a woman holding a blue heeler puppy. We stopped to ask her about the dog and found out their were more in the litter. All the rest were red heelers. What I learned that day is that JEJ had always wanted an Australian Cattle Dog. The rest is history. We visited the farm and fell in love with Shelby. She is now three years old. We lost Emily in December of 2004. I didn't really think I was ready for another puppy, but when I was reading ads in January 2005 one caught my eye: springer spaniel puppies for sale. After much discussion I made the call to Garfield, Washington and that week-end we took a trip through blowing snow to find our dear Annie. From the first trip home with Shelby they have been loyal friends. Shortly after that Bluey also died so we enjoy the companionship of two dogs. Bluey taught Annie and Shelby "the ropes" before she left us. What a mentor she was!


You can read other Sunday Scribblings about family here. You can see other Camera Critters here.

Comments

  1. You are TOTALLY my type of person!!! Look at all those critters! Heaven - absolute Heaven. This is a fantastic post! Full of critters and absolutely awesome!

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  2. I'm a critter lover too so I loved getting to know your animal family. I'd hate to pay your vet bill. ;)

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  3. Great, as usual, photographs!

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  4. So many of them! And old lovely. Love the one of them in the couch heheh

    Pets are wonderful, very entertaining but also demanding (if a person tells me a dog is not demanding it's because they're not taking care of it properly)...and it's such a loss when they die. My dog died last year and it's hole that can't be filled.

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  5. Wow, what a big heart you have!
    What an enjoyable read and I find it interesting that a new creature was always waiting in the wings before a loss.
    Thanks for sharing all the great photos too.
    Happy week!

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  6. I enjoyed reading about your feline and canine family. Theya re blessed to be with you, and I am sure you feel blessed by their presence.

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  7. you are a true animal lover. really what a heart and you get the best becasue you love them so ..

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  8. lovely family of the heart

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  9. What a fantastic furry family you have! Thanks for sharing about them - excellent post.

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  10. lovely photos of your pet family, beautiful creatures all of them - do you still have a rabbit too?

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  11. I love this response to the prompt "family". It was fun to get acquainted with these four-legged family members and to learn the history of each. Keep whispering!

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  12. Anonymous5.5.08

    Another animal lover here - I really enjoyed 'meeting' your pet family. They really do become part of the family!

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  13. i have three cats, all rescues, and each with their own distinct personality. and two "grandpups," my daughter's, that come every weekend from friday to sunday to spend it with us -- she lives in an apt and we have a large yard that they can get to be outdoors all weekend running to their heart's delight. i absolutely love animals, so we are indeed kindred spirits. dna-wise, i did not skip the gene that our father passed on to us re. animals -- he was a "collector." saving every stray he came across. my husband who NEVER had a pet growing up -- NOT ONE -- is now the biggest mushball and biggest defender and protector of the furry kingdom. his father once asked me what i did to his son...and that i ruined him...LOL :)

    if you want to see my happy brood, link here.

    i loved the pictures...and all those beautiful, beautiful little bundles of happiness.

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  14. Thanks everyone for the lovely comments. It was good to do this post so I could do a bit of a timeline about our pet family.

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  15. How nice to learn about your pets. You have a loving home to take in so many animals who need someone.

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  16. What great companions you have!

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