| Growing up on the farm, we always had lots of outdoor cats. We also always had a dog or two, and sometimes the dogs were kind of rough with the cats. We took one particularly roughed-up cat to my Grandma Hansen to get it away from the offending dog, and Grandma became very attached to the cat (Socks). One winter Grandma came to stay with us, and she brought Socks with her even though my Dad didn't like the idea of animals in the house. Socks had kittens that winter, and when spring came and it was time for Grandma to move back to her own farmhouse, we begged Dad to let us keep one of the kittens as a housecat. Dad finally gave in, and we (make that my brother) named the chosen kitten KissyPoo. KissyPoo was with us for a long time, and wrote me letters when I went off to college. When he died, Mom and Dad said "no more house pets." That didn't last for long, though, because some of my college friends had a cat they couldn't keep, and asked if my parents would take him as a farm cat. Mom took one look at Smetana (renamed Rufus) and said he was too nice of a cat to be an outdoor kitty. Nevertheless, Rufus apparently likes the farm quite a lot, and made Mom promise that she wouldn't ever send him back to live in the city. That meant, of course, that Rufus couldn't come with us to Salt Lake City, so Steve and I had to get our own cats - Merry and Pippin, named after two of the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings. Unfortunately, Pippin came down with FIP which is a really nasty cat disease that has no cure. Merry was very unhappy without a playmate, so we got him a kitty: Pippin, Jr., a.k.a. "Little Kitty." |
