Alternate title: Things I would have a lot of if Branden would let me.

Today is my day to post in Daydreamz WeBlogIt challenge thinger. This weeks theme is pets. I see it as another opportunity to let you in on a little of my crazy. Because really, there’s a whole lot of crazy going on here, and you just can’t handle it all at once. Let’s get started.

My foray into the pet owner world came later in life than most. I didn’t have a pet at home when I was born, nothing I grew up bonded with. My grandparents had an adorable little schnauzer, Mikey (Michael Patrick), and he was my buddy after they got him. But I never had a pet of my own.

When I was in first grade, we moved into our trailer. It was in a trailer park. A nicer trailer park than some, but there were still your typical hooligan children running around barefoot (I was totally one of them), run down and rusted steel side trailers, and of course, the ever growing population of stray cats. I guess people didn’t care about taking care of them, but they were around. And every year there seemed to be more of them. And I wanted one. More than anything in the world. I begged and pleaded with my mom to let me get one. Every time she said no, you’re too young, you won’t take care of it.

And then, when I was in fifth grade, on Christmas day I got one of the most anti-climatic presents you could ever give a child that wants a pet. I got a litter pan, a scoop, a food bowl, and a box of litter. I even got some cat food. But you know what I didn’t get? A CAT!

This present came with strings attached. “If you behave, we will get you a kitten in January.” And so I waited. The wait for school to start back up has never been so long, people, let me tell ya. Usually as a child on Christmas break, you don’t want it to end, but this time… I wanted that cat more than anything, so I wanted the time to fly by.

And then, one day after school had started back up, I came home and my mom said she had seen an ad for free kittens in the paper. She called the lady up and we drove into town to pick one out. She had a litter of six or seven grey and black tabby cats, mixed male and female. I got to choose the one I wanted! It was so exciting. I still remember the ladies house. It smelled really bad, like you’d expect a cat lady’s house to smell. Like poop and cat food. Totally nauseating.

But I picked out a sleepy little guy and brought him home. I named him Tigger, and my mom added the middle name Joseph. He has been one of the best things I’ve ever been given in my life. He knows me so well it’s unreal. He’s more than a cat. He had to have been human in a past life. He reads emotion better than any animal I’ve ever seen. If my mom or I are upset, he’s right there nudging your hand for a cuddle. All I have to say is “Jojo, come here” and he’s right there, purring like a chainsaw. And he drools. When he’s really happy (when you rub under his chin, for instance) he will purr and drool all over you. He must be part dog too.

We got Tiggy in 2000. And about a year later, my parents were going to rent a movie. I was staying at my aunts house for the weekend. On the way to the car, the heard a tiny little meow. It was coming from underneath my dads truck. So they looked underneath, and there was a teensy little gray kitten sitting there shaking like a leaf. They took the kitten with them to the video store, and brought it inside. It was never the plan to keep the cat, but I guess the next day while my mom was at work, the kitten climbed up on my dads chest and fell asleep. He couldn’t say no after that.

This kitten started out as Shadow Elizabeth. I say started out because my mom is fail-tacular at identifying genders. Thank goodness for our vet, since our HE would have remained a SHE for life if he hadn’t told us. So Shadow Elizabeth became Shadow Lee.

And who would have thought that the tiny gray kitten they found would turn into a huge, 19 pound fatty fat. It’s true. Shadow turned out to be not only the most annoying, meowing non-stop from the time my mom gets up in the morning until his food is put in his bowl, but also the fattest cat I’ve ever seen. We later found out that he’s worth kind of a lot of money. He’s a Russian Blue/Tabby mix. The only spot on him that isn’t a silverygray is his tail, which has darker gray stripes all the way down. And in true Russian Blue tradition, he is a big fat fatty. Shadow is more my moms cat than he is mine, but I claim him anyway.

Then we have the love of my life. The cat I miss with all my heart, Pippin Lew. Pip came into our lives unexpectedly. A friend of mine saw him outside when she was walking home from the park, so she picked him up and carried him home. Only she wasn’t planning on keeping him, since her parents wouldn’t let her. So he was roaming around the neighborhood meowing his head off because he had no idea where he was.

I couldn’t just let him stay outside, it was cold at night then, and after having two cats, I had a soft spot for the warm fuzzies. And boy, let me tell you. This guy was a warm fuzzy. He had long hair. It stuck out from between his toes and his ears. And he was tiny! I brought him inside when my parents were at work. It was raining, and he was soaked. So I gave him a bath to get rid of his fleas (In Dawn dish soap- the best flea killer on the market.) and toweled him off. He had the funniest meow. It always sounded like he was losing his voice, because his meow was so tiny.

When my parents came home, they decided we could keep him, and I was ECSTATIC. Tigger was my cat, but he slept in my parents bed. Pippin was the first cat I had that actually slept in my bed and cuddled up to me all night. He was such a sweetheart.

And then one day he stopped eating. You couldn’t pick him up because you could tell it hurt him to move. He laid on a pillow in our living room all day. We took him to the vet. The vet said it was a UTI and gave him medicine. The problem never went away. He would feel better for a couple days and then be back to feeling poorly.

This went on for like two months. The doctor kept saying it was a UTI and giving him the same meds. They weren’t working, and the vet wasn’t doing anything else to figure out what was wrong, so we switched to a new vet. Dr. John originally thought it was a UTI as well. He gave him stronger mecidine.

And then he started to get better. He was feeling better for about two weeks until he all of the sudden went back to the way he had been before. My mom took him to the vet, and he finally figured out that Pip had feline leukemia. And he wasn’t going to make it. My mom decided to go ahead and have him put to sleep, so he wouldn’t be suffering anymore. I never got to say goodbye to Pip, and sometimes I still cry over missing him.

Now I’ve got two kitties of my own. And I’ve written about them from time to time, but if you don’t know they are Barlow James and Sylas Severus. They are my babies, my furchildren. When we’re away, I miss their antics and their fighting. When I’m at home they get on my nerves, digging in the trash, or trying to fight the bug that isn’t there. They absolutely hate each other, but love me and Branden, so I guess it’s all good.

My mom has a little decorative plaque in her kitchen that says “Cats leave pawprints on your heart.” And it’s very, very true.

No, really. This past year we’ve had absolutely awful internet service. We originally thought we would be able to keep our service with Comcast and everything would be just the same as it was in our apartment. We found out the DAY we moved (also the day we were scheduled for installation) that we couldn’t have digital plus cable, couldn’t have a phone line, and couldn’t have broadband internet. Um.. yeah. Poor business practices, Comcast! Don’t tell me I can keep my stuff the same if I can’t.

It turned out that we couldn’t have anything but the most basic cable they offered. As in, not even a cable box. Just a cord running from the wall to the TV. So we said screw that and decided to go with DirecTV. For internet, we really really lost out. We had to downgrade from super fast Comcast broadband to really crappy Verizon DSL. On a good day with Verizon, we would get  maybe .75Mbps download. And upload? Forget it. Unless it was low-res pictures to facebook, there was no way you were getting anything up online.

Recently, though, a new company came into the area. They’re called Prime Cast, and they work a lot like Comcast. The main difference being that they’re a DirecTV provider as opposed to digital cable. So we have cable internet, digital phone, and satellite TV. We went through a lot of crap during the switch-over, since no one told us our regular DirecTV wouldn’t work anymore. All our HD channels went bye-bye, and I missed the season start and season ends of some of my favorite shows.

But it’s all ok now! Because today, we finally had our new services installed. Today I reclaimed broadband internet. TODAY I HAVE 15MBPS DOWNLOAD SPEED. (That’s the max, it’s actually around 5mbps, but fuck, when you’ve been living with what we have, this is SO MUCH better.)

So I’m really really happy now. I’ve kind of gone on a downloading spree, but don’t tell the people who monitor that crap. lol I’m finally able to watch youtube videos without having to wait 10 minutes (or longer) for them to load first. More than one person can finally be online at a time! Today is a good day!