For the last few weeks before this one, I have been having a recurring dream. In it, I had a cat. Each dream the cat was different. I don’t remember anything else about the dream, but every time I woke up I remembered the cat. After the dream on May 3, I decided to do something about the dream and finally get a cat for my new apartment.
I’ve had pet cats for most of my life. The first one I can remember was Squeaky. She was there before I was born, so I don’t remember much of her, but I do remember the second cat that we got: Periwinkle.
Periwinkle was a sweet cat. She liked laying on laps and for some reason she really liked licking people’s ears and earwax. She liked going under the covers in bed and sleeping next to our legs. She moved with us to every house, and I’m sure it stressed her out, but she always warmed up to the house.
(She was also the first can I saw catch a mouse, and she was declawed before we got her as a kitten too)
We had Periwinkle for the longest time. Back when I was around 5 we got her as a kitten, and she grew old with us through the years and moving to different houses, all up to when I was a sophomore in high school.
She liked sleeping under the covers in bed, green olives, and licking ears. She was a good cat.
When I was in 7th grade, we briefly had a new cat, Paige. She was a sweet tuxedo cat. We lived out on the highway by a farm at the time, and she was found very malnourished sleeping inside a tractor. We took her in and fed her and helped her get better. Periwinkle and her never got along too much, but Paige was very sweet too. And pretty young, but not a kitten
I unfortunately don’t have any pictures of the next set of cats, but a few months after we got Paige we got a trio of orange kittens, two boys and a girl, who were supposed to be outdoor mouse hunting cats for the highway farm house.
They never really succeeded in being outdoor mouse cats.
My brother said he’d raise the kittens and train them, but we ended up just having them in the garage and couldn’t get them to go outside and stay.
We moved a year later, and we couldn’t have five cats at our new house, so we kept Periwinkle with us and gave the other four cats to a nearby farm home. I don’t know all the details of what happened to them, but I do know that some aren’t around anymore. Paige did have two kittens, and sadly later Paige was ran over by a harvester.
We decided to take one of the kittens in with us, and that cat is one that is still with the family, Mocha.
Mocha is a very sweet and cuddly cat. She likes curling up and sleeping in the gap in legs. I probably have a hundred pictures of her. She likes flowers, and I mean REALLY likes flowers. So much that we have to hide them whenever we get new ones because she always knows we have them and tries to eat the leaves. Mocha is currently about nine years old at this point.
She is certainly my dad’s cat. They’ve definitely bonded and every time he goes to bed to take a nap she goes up and follows him to bed.
A little over a year ago, my mom passed. When she started hospice care some of her friends came by with a new kitten. I think it was to try and cope with losing mom, and it helped a bit as a distraction. We decided to name her Domino, and she is a goofball. She is only a year old, so it makes sense, and she’s adorable.
We got a tall cat tower for Mocha and Domino, and since Mocha has been here for years without it she doesn’t use it as much, but Domino loves using it.
It was rough introducing her to the place and to Mocha, and they still fight and wrestle at times, but they’ve learned to live together, and even sleep together at times.
I moved to Topeka back in November, and away from the cats. It honestly has been lonely in the apartment by myself. Exactly a week ago, I decided to go to the animal shelter and get a cat for myself. I didn’t want to just pick and choose a cat at random, though. I wanted to actually feel a connection when getting a cat. I went with a friend on the 3rd of May to look at cats at the shelter, and there were a lot of sweet looking cats, but then I found her.
She was the friendliest cat that I saw there, and on the drive back I thought a lot about it, and decided on her. So the next week, I went back to get her. I already had everything set up and ready for her, and I was so excited and honestly a bit nervous, hoping she’d like me and her new home. The shelter had her name as “Tinkerbell” and I wanted to change that. I decided to go with a similar sounding name, “Bella”
She warmed up almost immediately. She was rolling around the carpet, sleeping with me in bed, and all around super friendly and cuddly. I hated having to go to work and be away for the first eight hours, but it all went well and I discovered that she likes burying herself under the covers.
A week in, and she is starting to get a routine. The last couple days she has woken me up at 6:00. She also likes laying on the couch next to me when I’m there. I’m so glad I have her in my life now, and I hope there’ll be a lot of years of good memories.
Kristopher K. Online 