Animals are kind of my family's "thing." I mean, my grandmother was on the board of directors for our local Humane Society for years, and recently joined up again. When I was a kid, she always had animals in and out of the house -- everyone in the family did.
When I was born, my parents had a black lab named Thunder. We had to have Thunder put to sleep when I was in 7th grade. In the meantime, we'd also acquired a stray cat, named Elvira. We finally had her put to sleep when I was about 22. It was a rough experience, mostly because I was on vacation away from home, by myself in a hotel room when I got the call.
At that point, we had no animals. At first, that was okay. We needed a chance to heal. Soon, though, I started to chafe at not having some sort of animal around. I didn't like it. Fortunately for me, at approximately the same time that I started the campaign to get another cat, we had a stray show up that adopted us and vice versa.
Fast forward a few years...I move to California. My boyfriend has a turtle. We're too busy to have a dog. Karl is allergic to cats. I start dealing with some anxiety, mild depression, whatever you want to call it. I finally realized that I wasn't sure I could go for years and years without a cat, and I convince my boyfriend he's okay with it. We make arrangements and realizations to hopefully mitigate his allergies -- wood floors downstairs, so we plan that the cat won't be allowed in the bedrooms. We plan to get a short haired cat. We plan to get a youngish cat, so we can start giving it baths from the beginning and hopefully get it used to it. We plan to have a large cave,
We start browsing at the shelters, and end up at the local pound on Halloween. And there we find Lexi. Originally named Sophie by the pound, she was a two to three month old tabby kitten. I fell in love with her personality, and that was two years ago now. She was spayed, and came home later that week. We pretty quickly had to put her on antibiotics for a respiratory infection, along with a vitamin supplement to help her fight it off. She'd been home a week when she fell/jumped from our second story to our first, earning a trip to the emergency vet to ensure the obvious -- she was fine.
She's not a cuddle-er. She'll never (or rarely) be a lap cat....only in the middle of the night does she purr and curl up against you. She's very vocal, talking back to you, talking to the birds, looking for you when you leave a room. She loves to steal elastic hairbands, and loves playing with bouncy balls. She bites, particularly if picked up or if you pet her belly. She also attacks and bites out of nowhere. Oh, and did I mention that my boyfriend isn't allergic to her, in some lucky twist of fate?
I can't imagine my life without her.
