Currently I'm living with a friend of the family, Lynn McTaggart. In an unfortunate series of accidents recently, she broke both her right ankle and wrist, and as such she needs a lot of help around the house, so I cook, clean, drive, and most importantly take care of her animals. She has four indoor cats, a tiny dog, and somewhere between two and five outdoor cats. I'll post pictures when I have them- at the moment, I'm using her computer to write posts. The indoor cats are all really strange animals. All four of them were feral before she adopted them, and they're certainly eccentric, to say the least.
Tom, the eldest, is about 12 and is certainly the king of the household. Mrs. McTaggart's daughter, Tricia, hypothesizes that he has an alternate personality that she calls Walter. Tom is sweet and loves to cuddle and be pet and be around people. Walter, on the other hand, hisses when you try to pet him, growls at the other cats, and scoops his litter from the box to the floor for no apparent reason. Once I watched him climb into the box, make a huge mess of litter all over the floor, and walk away without even going to the bathroom. Whatever his mental state may be, he's certainly the most spoiled. He gets a can of Fancy Feast for breakfast and dinner, which none of the others get unless he leaves leftovers, and moreover, he only likes two or three varieties. Usually the other cats get to share in the feast, however, because Tom just licks the gravy out of the food and leaves the rest.
Tessa is the next oldest. She's kind of a strange looking cat, mottled orange and gray-brown fur and a large orange diamond covering her face from her nose to where her eyebrows would be. Mrs. McTaggart calls her "exotic." Tricia calls her ugly. I think she's rather pretty, myself, but she certainly is unusual. Her favorite thing to do is burrow into the sheets on a bed- she looks just like a lump of covers. She'll even unmake a bed in order to crawl into it.
Lucy and Charlie are brother and sister, with long, fluffy fur and bright eyes. Lucy is white with brown and orange patches, and Charlie is completely orange. They both spend most of their time hiding under the bed in the spare bedroom in which I sleep, but whereas Lucy follows me around like a ghost, staring at me with wide eyes and fleeing when I reach a hand toward her, Charlie wants nothing to do with anyone, ever, and is rarely even seen during the daylight hours.
My goal is to be friends with all the cats, but at the moment, they're not so sure they're interested. It's made exponentially harder by the fact that none of them are interested in treats, so bribery doesn't work. But I'll persist!
