Cats...

I've had more cats than I can count in my life.  All through childhood, all pets were outdoor pets.  Every one of them, dogs, cats, goats...you name it, if we had it, it was an outdoor pet.

Except the parakeet I had when I was 8-10 years old.  He was an inside pet, and a real pet--he loved sitting on my finger, head, or shoulder and being lavished with affection.  My sister had a parakeet, too, but it was an evil little shit that liked to bite. 

Oh, Mom's cockatiels were indoor pets.  She had to sell one to raise money for a lawyer to regain custody when I was very young, and the other (given to her while I was in college) she had to give away because it turned out my younger sister was allergic to the feather dust. 

But until I hit high school, all dogs and cats were outdoor pets only.  And then, we got some indoor/outdoor dogs.  But never cats.

My first indoor cat was Binx.  We got her in 2003, right before I started in on my Master's degree classes.  She was an incredibly sweet and well-behaved gray tiger tabby.  Who'd been left at the humane society because her previous family thought she was pregnant. 

She wasn't.  We found out when we took her to get her fixed that she'd already been fixed.

She was about a year and a half or two years old when we got her.  She got sick and passed in 2012, after teaching my children to be incredibly calm and careful around kitties, and to be very, very gentle.  Since she tolerated them and didn't like them (she also didn't actively dislike them), they had to be superbly behaved around the cat to get a chance to touch the kitty at all. 

She was an excellent cat.  And I loved her very much, and still miss her.  She passed in May.  The imp, who was 3 1/2, barely remembers a really pretty tiger kitty that wouldn't let him pet her much; the pixie, who was 15 months, doesn't remember her at all. 

We adopted the two crazies we have now in July of that year. 

Right from the first, it became obvious that the two kittens (milk sisters--Shadow's mom gave birth in the humane society, then adopted Cricket's litter, which had been brought in after their mother was hit by a car) had an average two cat brains between them, but that the split wasn't even.  At all.  Shadow was much smarter than the average cat, while Cricket...well, to put it kindly, Cricket wasn't all there.  The two kittens would get to playing chase, and Shadow would jink left, and Cricket would miss where she went and spend half an hour looking for her. 

Cricket still isn't all there.  She misses about half her jumps, falls off of things, drools when she's happiest, loves sitting on laps, being petted and scritched, but hates being picked up or held close.   

She also has some really weird habits: she doesn't pee in the middle of the litter box.  She backs up to the wall and goes on the wall of the litterbox.  And sometimes, she backs up too far and pees over the edge of the box. 

Like this morning.  I went back to clean their box out, and found a puddle on the plastic bag I'd put on the floor under the litter box day before yesterday, when I cleaned up that part of the utility room. 

Shadow, on the other hand, is nearly the perfect cat's cat: she's very loving, adores the kids, snuggles, and goes with the imp to go sleep in his bed every night.  She loves playing mind games, usually with Cricket as her chosen victim, and loves exploring out in the garage. 

Yes, we also have a dog, and yes I do love her very much, but I greatly prefer the cats.