Proof of this can be found below:
OK, to be fair, it's not a photo of kitties, per se. But I was amazed that my cats, who usually fight and argue and claw and hiss at one another as their kitty form of entertainment, would stretch out their paws as they soaked up the sun on the back of the couch and gently touch one another.
I guess they really do love one another.
Karla, the grey-brown tabby on the left, was rescued as a stray and then passed along to us. She also had two siblings, neither of whom were ours, who have subsequently passed away. When we got her back in 2000, she was this tiny little slip of a cat. She wasn't yet spayed, so we took her in to the vet near our home to have that done.
Now THAT was a fiasco.
When we took her in, we were told we could call after a few hours to see how she was doing. I called that afternoon, and the receptionist had no idea what cat I was talking about. The way she was speaking, I'm not even sure she knew she was working at a vet's office. It's like she was surprised I was asking after a cat. Then she put me on hold to go find out how Karla was doing, and ten minutes later she picks up the line again, asking how she can help me. I again ask after my cat, and again she's surprised that I'm wanting to know the status of my cat.
Karla had to stay overnight at the vet's office, but when they put her in the kennel, they did not put a collar on her to prevent her from licking her stitches when she came to. As a result, by the morning she'd licked out every single last one of her stitches.
The vet then repaired her with staples and wrote her a prescription for an antibiotic. I then had to pay for the surgery, as well as the new staples and this expensive antibiotic. I was a bit peeved about that. Had they put a 2-cent collar on Karla after surgery, I would have been saved over $100. Grrrr.
After she healed, Karla began to gain a lot of weight. I've never been one to keep a full dish of food out for my cat because I have a dog who would scarf all that food down. So I feed my cats twice a day, and I know what they're eating. Karla also has a lot of scar tissue on her belly, which I'm thinking is from the surgery. I seriously think they botched her surgery, and it makes me mad.
A while after this happened, my dog slipped a disk in his back, and we had to take him to the vet in an emergency situation. The vet where we'd taken Karla for her spaying was closed for lunch, as were most of the other clinics in the area. (That, I never understood. Apparently all vets in southern Virginia are closed from noon to at least 2pm for lunch.) The only one that was open was working on a kitten rescue, and he'd be happy to see us once the kittens were stable. As he was checking out Koolit, we explained our experience at the other vet's office, and he told me he hears that a lot, that the other vet doesn't really seem to know what he's doing. From then on, we switched to this new vet, partly because of that, but mostly because he did such a good job diagnosing Koolit.
In the summer of 2002, I think it was, Kurt came home with a kitten. He'd been at class at the community college when one of his classmates told him there was a kitten stuck in a storm drain. Kurt being the big, brawny, manly man that he is was able to yank the metal grate out of the surrounding grass to find a tiny, baby kitten. He brings me home this squalling, yelling kitten who was as pissed off as he could be because he was HUNGRY!
We tried to keep this new kitten, whom we quickly named Storm, away from Karla, but in a one-bedroom apartment it wasn't easy. We got a same-day appointment to see the vet to check him out, and the only thing wrong with the little bugger was he had a minor flea infestation, which was easily taken care of with a flea dip. We then brought him home and let him hash out his territory with both Karla and Koolit.
Storm was about five weeks old when we got him. He was this tiny little thing, so young that his tail still stood straight up. And let me tell you, he marched straight up to these animals, both of whom were at least twice as big as him (and Koolit was probably five or six times bigger), and Storm told both of them what was what! He didn't take crap from anybody!!
Now Storm is my psycho kitty. He's the one who's offended by plastic bags and shreds them if I leave one out.
This morning I was awoken at 4:45am by some strange sounds. As I fought my way upward towards consciousness, I tried to figure out what the hell I was hearing. Finally I realized that the cat was inside Grace's laundry basket standing empty in the hall, waiting for her clean clothes to come out of the dryer. I tried to go back to sleep, but the noises continued. Finally I grabbed my glasses and went to investigate.
Sure enough, Storm was in the laundry basket. But he'd also tipped the basket over, and now the opening of the basket was flush against the bifold doors of the laundry nook. The poor kitty couldn't get out of his laundry basket prison! So I righted the basket to let him leap out, and he then began to preen himself, as if he were saying, "I didn't just do that stupid thing, really I didn't!"
What would we do without kitties in our lives??