Can One Be Proud Of Their Cat?
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Because I'm proud of my cat. When we found her at the shelter, she was a "rescued stray". Meaning some good hearted person spotted a bunch of wild kittens foraging for food and took them to the ASPCA animal shelter (they took the mom cat too). The shelter decided that the kittens were young enough to be tamed (but not old enough to be adopted yet) and put them on display.

Meanwhile, across town; my hubby and I were buying a house. When we moved in, our cat lost all the fur on his butt and around his tail. The vet said he was healthy, and the fur would grow back once he got used to his new environment. We decided that Yellow Kitty was lonely, and began the search for a new cat.

A friend of ours was doing some carpentry work at the ASPCA and spotted the kittens, so he gave us a call. This was on October 24th, 2000. The only kittens left were black and the ASPCA wouldn't let them be adopted until after Halloween. So on November 1st, my hubby-man went there and adopted a tiny bundle of black fur. We had to wait another 2 weeks for her to be old enough to go home with us. Turns out she was born right around the time we were buying our house; which was on a Friday the 13th. No. We're not superstitious. :D

In honor of her blackness (she is a true black cat: black nose, black ears, black underfur, etc.) And the possible date of her birth, we named her "Friday" short for "Princess Friday the 13th of October".

This is a tradition begun with Yellow Kitty, who my 3 year old son named "Mine Little Yellow Kitty Cat". Each cat since gets a long name and a short name. We currently also have "Hunter of Things In The Night" (Hunter) and "She Hides In The Shadows Of The Moon" (Moonshadow, or just Shadow) Although I think we got their names reversed, because Hunter will persistently hide in shadowy places, whereas Moonshadow lays right out in public and kills every moth that gets in the house.

Anyway, back to Friday. She has a trait that you often see in strays, she's an opportunistic eater. If there's food, she eats it. She can not walk past a food bowl without stopping for a nibble. And Yellow Kitty was naturally thin. He was 10 lbs of lean muscle mass, but looking at him you'd never believe he weighed as much as a bag of flour, much less two.

Having a skinny cat makes it hard to put the fat cat on a diet. And Friday was FAT. Over the years she has gone from a delicate pile of fluff to a rotund blob, to something so heavy she can't jump down from the sofa without a muffled "oof".

We worried about Friday. We knew her weight was shortening her life, and we knew she was miserable. We asked the vet about Kitty Prozac. We searched the internet for behaviour modification techniques. The best we found was the suggestion to put the food in a box and make the hole too small for the cat. We joked about it, but would never do it.

In the end, Friday learned all by herself that food would always be there. She became mother cat to the kittens Hunter and Shadow, and always tried to leave food in the bowls for them. (3 cats = 2 small food bowls and 2 small water bowls)

So now Friday looks fat. but isn't. She has hanging skin. She can jump again. Yesterday, I saw her sitting on the arm of the couch; with all her feet on the arm! I noticed it because she had a flap of fur hanging into my coffee cup. But she actually fit on just the arm of the couch!
And today, she was crouching on the foot rail of the wet bar downstairs! She can do kitty things again! I'm so proud of her.

And yes, it is funny when she runs across the room batting at a cat toy, looking like furry black jello during an earthquake.