Most of the cats picked us as I found them wandering around school or wherever I was living at the time. Only two of the cats did I actually seek out.

The first one I came upon while delivering pizza shortly after I graduated high school. Someone had thrown the kitten out and a neighbor had taken it in while looking for a home. I saw it when I dropped the pizza off…. and went back after work to take it home. We originally thought it was a girl so we named her Pearl. Only after taking her in for shots and a general check-up were we told it was a boy… but he stayed Pearl until we had to put him to sleep last year at 15.

The second cat I looked for was when my husband and I lived in Las Vegas. I had found a cat (not really a kitten anymore but not full grown yet) in the stairwell of our apartment building and took it home. We decided to keep it after no one claimed it but after a few months realized that it needed a playmate because we were working and it was alone alot. I saw a flyer at my work about some kittens that were available and went to take a look. I picked one out as a surprise for my husband and took it home. Unfortunately, the two cats did not get along at all (well, mostly it was the older cat that didn’t like the intrusion of the younger one). It lasted so long that I thought we would have to take the kitten back but, eventually, they became best friends in the kitty way, hah, until we had to put the older one to sleep either in 2007 or 2008 when she was about 7.

Currently, we only have that last cat left, the one we picked out in Las Vegas, as we have had to put all the other ones to sleep over the last 5 years for some disease or illness or something or another.

The dog we got from some neighbors… they had gotten it for their sons but turned out one was allergic. I went to high school with him so the family asked if we wanted to take her and we did. We eventually had to put her to sleep because she was going blind and was always bumping into things, we didn’t want that for her.

There are probably some other cats in there somewhere… many went out and were never heard from again but most we ended up having until the end.

I would say easily 75% of them chose us for some unknown reasons rather than us looking for a cat.

My first pet as an adult, a white longhaired cat I named Isis, rather than Snowball as the then-oners named her. She was a stray that came to the door of their apartment, in a building they were super’ing. They fed her, and she went away, and brought back not one, not two, but five young kittens. Being the supers in a no-pet building they had to give kittens and mommy up. My first wife (we were then only living together) and I answered an ad. We went to see her, and she took one look at me, and flooped on her back, and waited for me to pet her. The couple told me that’s when they knew, since she had fled in fear from all the other prospects. Isis and I stayed together for 16 years, until she died of old age, 13 longer than my first wife and I did.

My current pet was essentially Providence. After Isis died in 2001, I mourned for two months, and started looking in the shelters. While my heart bled for all the critters I met, nothing was to be found.

One April day, it was raining heavily, and I happened to hear this meow coming from outside. I went to the door, snd this rainsoaked tabby ran inside. I sat down on my living room couch and he jumped up beside me, all affectionate. He hasn’t left my side since. In fact, when I suffered a stroke in 2002, he complained so loudly after the third day of no food that he attracted the attention of my business partner who until that point had assumed I had gone out of town, but was at my apartment door to see if I had a problem. Hearing this, he broke in, found my comatose form, and called an ambulance. I like to say that Torrie (Torrential Rain, to be precise, given the weather when we met) saved my life.

Plus, I can say that my dog is more “badass” than I am because she has a tattoo (of her registration letters) in her ear, and I’m too wimpy to even think of one!

we both wanted a curious, intelligent cat. i watched the litter explore for a few minutes. meanwhile, my fiance actually tested them by putting them in a box and seeing which kitten escaped first. though i had my eye on a kitten too busy exploring to be subject to the ridiculous box test, i gave in and let my fiance have his box-escaping champion. our little snowball has turned out to be fantastically curious, intelligent, and sociable, so we made a good call.

I recently rescued two cats – I really wanted only one, but these two were brother and sister and I would feel bad separating them. Coming from a high-stress home, it was hard for them to adjust, but now they’re happy and healthy. They have dumb names (Boo and Bunny) but they respond when I call them so I think the names will stay.

Well, my first adult pet was a cat that I brought from my mother home.

When I decide to have a dog, in that time, buying one was out of the question, so I went to a known society of abandon dogs and I brought the first puppy they show me (those king of first love things).

Not a very wise decision I know, but she is still with me and she has seeing a lot of my life. So a true life journey companion !

In temper she wasn’t that easy, since she was quite a dominant dog. To bend her I went through a lot and in the end was more instinct that anything else that teach me how to deal with her.
About 5 years latter, when I had my first breed dog, a Golden Retriever, and decide to attend a dog school, I learned that most of my attitudes were the right ones.

When choosing a pet one has to ‘catch my eye’ so to speak. I don’t particularly care about age, breed, or gender. There just has to be a ’spark’.

We were looking at the cats and none of them really stood out. I just didn’t feel it. Then the women who handled the adoptions said that there were a few who were just brought over from the shelter and were still in their crates. I walk over to the crates and all I can see from the outside of one of them is tuffs of black, orange, and white fur. I ask the woman to take the cat out of the crate and this big cuddly medium hair calico is rolling around at my feet begging for attention right in the middle of the store! I took one look in to her big green eyes and my heart melted. That was all it took. She went straight from the crate to her forever home.

Instantly it was like we had known her for years. Zoey fell into our lives perfectly. She’s the most social cat I have ever known and the best companion I could ever ask for. Zoey never leaves my side and has filled a void in me I never knew existed.

The one thing that breaks my heart is that so many people only want to adopt kittens. As a result it is harder for adult cats to find homes.

I may have missed out on 4 years of her life, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Then my bus came and I went to school.

Later than night, I could here someone yelling, “meow! me-ow!” outside our front door. Kitty had somehow found my home! After a brief growling match with my mom’s other cat (a beautiful white persian who is dumb as a bag of rocks) Buster moved in.

When he got bigger and strong he killed every crow in our neighbourhood.

He’s old now and mellowed out a bit, but still the greatest cat ever.