My Name is Kelly and I Have Two Cats (“Hi Kelly!”)

I’m almost embarrassed to blog about my cats. I’m afraid anything I share will make me sound “cat lady-ish.” I’m NOT a cat lady, despite the fact that I unashamedly enjoy my feline pets.

Our fam has two cats. I’ve been known to extol their virtues at length. I’ll talk about the distinctiveness of their personalities as well as their fighting styles. Heck, I could tell you how uniquely each uses the litter box, but what’s the point? It would only serve to make me sound like a cat lady-ish, and if you really wanna know about my cat’s poophavior you can have a litter-box look-see for yourself. I’m not a cat box tour-guide and I’m not a cat lady.

My cats are good company and I interact with them at least a dozen times a day. I love watching them play together. I wear jammies with a drawstring just to lure them near first thing in the morning. You might say we have coffee time then, or call it “ Mommy & Me.” (Bas*ards at MOPS wouldn't let us in though.)

I sometimes fear that my cats might be intellectually superior to me. They’re certainly more even-tempered, but I never let on. I can use a spray bottle. I just wish I could run faster.

I brush and groom my cats. I share a blankie with them when we watch movies together. I’ve even been known to extract a kittycat eye-boog with my bare finger (transferring it to tissue, of course.)
I know that sounds cat lady-ish, but I’m not.

My cats don’t have cat beds, or any special spot that’s all their own. Certain areas and activities are forbidden, and cats in my fam are punished for going against the rules.
They don’t have collars or “bling”. They’re not tagged. If they escape for a stroll they’re goners.
I don’t keep them updated on shots. They’re indoor cats, and if something inside is gonna kill ‘em I got more to worry about than a trip to the vet.
I’d never buy a kittycat nativity set or rent an apartment for my felines. I don’t own a six-foot high kittycat condo.
I don’t buy canned food or even give ‘em treats. They fart terrible if they get anything out of the ordinary. They don’t get people food, but I do let them drink out of the toilet. Yes I do.
If you spent fifteen seconds in my 2’x3’ bathroom on the receiving end of a kittycat cursedown you'd raise the lid too. Don't you judge me.

There’s no denying that eventually I was gonna blog about my cats, so I’m gonna break this cherry and move on.

I think the shame I’m feeling stems from the fact that my oldest daughter has a “thing.” Her “thing” is this: she has two cats. She’s Young Married, and just like me the Newlyweds enjoy their cats.
They recognize their cats’ individual personalities enough to change their names on a monthly basis. They’ve created feline-related words for non-pet parts of their lives, and they can't deny it’s because Their Cats Rock Their World.

Since the DINKS are kid-free; the kitties make for good company. Their feline antics never fail to entertain. The cats play and fight with a screeching-hissing-growling ferocity that would scare me into an early grave if I had to hear it often. When Daughter recently observed my well-mannered kitties doing their silent kittycat kung-fu she inquired how we’d know there was interaction occurring, since there were no sound effects. (I didn’t say, "It's kitiquette; a little something that wouldn’t hurt those grandkitties," because as Gammy I always keep my opinions to myself.)

My Girl and her Guy had an automatic litter box, but it was cramping one cat’s style, so they returned to manual. They even sing to the aforementioned Nervous Dumper. (It's "Big Pooper" to the tune of Notorious B.I.G.’s “Big Papa”; “I love ya when ya call me Big Pooper…” It’s real, and now I’ve got it in my head.)

The Newlyweds are yet to realize the extent to which their cats’ intelligence rivals their own, but the evidence is undeniable. The cats are jobless animals that poop in a box in a sweet condo on the fashionable side of St Louis. They enjoy extended cable channels on a skillion inch plasma HDTV, Xbox, Wi-Fi, and PS3 with all the best games as well as a subscription to “Game Informer”. They get “Entertainment Weekly”. They have TiVo.
Grandkitties have a self-filling food trough just yards from where they clean their butts with their tongues.
They sleep all day while their Masters earn the dough to pay for an endless supply of ‘nip. There’s not a spray bottle to be found in that house. The ill-mannered cats steal pizza off the countertop when the munchies attack and Kit’n Kaboodle’s not enough. (I mind my own business, despite this flagrant disregard for good order, since I'm not one to interfere.)
Daughter and her Hubby are intelligent, hard-working, goal-oriented, and someday they'll come to realize; them’s smart cats.
[Gammy’s sidebar: One cat has taken to backtalk. I don’t think it’s right, but I’m the mind-my-own-business kind of grandparent as I said earlier.]

Daughter dresses her cats. (This is where the crazy begins, but it’s her crazy, so I have no hesitation about disclosing it on my blog. She has the reading attention span of a gerbil, so it’ll be ourlittlesecret.)

Girl doesn’t dress her pets because they’re especially adorable when clothed. She doesn’t parade them about, unless it’s to model something particularly a-DOR-able for Gammy and Gampy. She dresses the cats for the laughs. Being raised right, Daughter knows that tormenting pets is like tormenting spouse; a suitable outlet ‘til kids come along.

Daughter dresses her cats primarily because one of them is so enormously fat it’s hilarity. Fat Cat looks like a sausage stuffed into kittycat fashions. Tubby has some high end stuff. She has jammies, tops, tees, even buttless cheetah-print chaps.
I suspect Heavy K has a preference for graphic tees. They display her wild side (in a way her SUMO suit cannot). Her graphic tees allow her to glory in her Fattitude.
Kitty’s so obese everything turns into a half-top. She has a particularly flattering number that says “I’m a Food-Aholic.” Squeezed up around her kittycat armpits, it appears to read, “I’m an A-hole.”
If I donned such a garment confessional no one would bat an eye. Then again; I could go full-blown Lillian Vernon with my cat fancy, and it’d be nowhere near as embarrassing as having a loved one wear a shirt like that.

In the end, what my “thing” boils down to is this; despite the fact that our felines bring real joy to our lives, Daughter refuses to display the glorious fruit of her efforts on her social network and she won’t appreciate me bloggin’ about mine. She doesn’t want it to seem like we’re cat ladies.

That’s a woman who pays overmuch attention to feline companions. Perhaps you’ve heard of it..?