Every morning I wake up, the first thing I see is myself surrounded.
By kitties.
I walk down the stairs and I'm followed. They surround me. They watch my every movie. They see me go into the kitchen. They watch me open the refrigerator. They see me go onto the back enclosed porch behind the kitchen. They climb on the extra dining room table. They go into the kitchen and then run back again.
And I come into the room with their food.
I fill the container sitting on the table. I go back into the kitchen. I fill a bowl of milk and put it on the table. And they surround me. My kitties.
As I go back into the kitchen, I look over my shoulder. And I see them watching me. I reach into the cupboard. I hear them meow. I reach down and get a couple of cans of food. The meows get louder. I open the cans. I grab a fork out of the drawer. I close the door.
And then I open the cans of food.
The kitties meow. It gets louder. I fill the plates. I fill a bowl of water. One by one, I take the food into the dining room. I put some of the plates up on the table. I put the others on the floor.
And I look down the hallway.
Staring out the front door, I can see under the curtains. It's him. Our little lion kitty.
His name is Joe.
He's one of our many porch kitties.
It's a beautiful sight. We have Joe. We have Jojo (I call her Momma because she's had so many kittens), and we have little Mandy. And before you start wondering where all of these kitties come from, let me explain something to you.
It's all for the love of... kitties.
We have our porch kitties. We've had Joe. We've had Jo Jo. We've had Mandy. We've had Snickers. We've had Twix. We've had Lucy. We've had a bunch of others. They've come and gone And we love them all.
I've replaced the carpet on the enclosed front porch. We leave the door cracked open in the dead of winter. The porch is cold, so we plug in a heater. We make sure our porch kitties are warm. And we feed them. In the morning and at night, we put a big bowl of hard food mixed with soft food, a big bowl of hard food on its own, a bowl of water, and a bowl of milk.
And we take care of our friends. All for the love of... kitties.
As I walk back into the house, I see all of my indoor cats eating. There is Boots, Tora, Bagel, Poptart (you get the idea - We like naming our cats after food). But the coolest thing? We get to watch them grow from little baby kitties into full-grown cats. We get to feed them, take care of them, and watch them live.
And I thought I'd mention that we have a little kitty named Donut, too.
It's all for the love of..... kitties.
The coolest part about having a houseful of kitties? I get to see them welcome me home every single day.
I get home at different times. Some of the days there is nobody home. I have to come home and feed my little furry friends. Other times, I come home and they've been fed. Their plates are clean. The hard food bowl is half empty. The water bowls are empty. The food on the front porch is half eaten or eaten entirely from the porch kitties.
On occasion, I see Mittens stop by. He lives next door. But he still comes over and eats food out of our porch kitty bowls.
And then there are times when I walk in, and one of our other little kitties Miggy welcomes me. She walks in. She struts down the hallway. And I reach down to pick her up.
I also wanted to make sure I didn't forget about my little bobcat. The vet told us that Olaf has some bobcat in him. He's one of the coolest cats that you'll ever see. He's got a huge head and he's a big ball of fur. He sleeps at my pillow. He spends the night in my bed with me a few evenings a week. He'll lay on the couch. He'll go outside sometimes and adventure back in the woods. He growls at all of the other kitties but I love him so much. And I won't even talk about when I first brought him in and I couldn't stop him from peeing anywhere he walked. Oh for the love of... kitties.
They are all litter trained. You'd never know our house has all these indoor cats. You'd never know that we have all of the outdoor porch kitties. But I'm here to tell you, I wouldn't trade it for the world.
I've always had a dog. I've had one since I was born. I never had kitties until I was in fourth grade. My brother and I were swimming in the lake in the little town we grew up in. Some kid was throwing a kitty in the lake off the dock. And at the age of 10 years old, I gave a kid a lot bigger than me and a lot older than me a black eye. I punched him in the face. I punched him in the nose. I knocked him into the water. And I brought the kitty home.
I think that was the start of my love for kitties, and life has never been the same.
I wouldn't trade it for the world.
My house kitties. My porch kitties. My furry friends. All of my kitties. They are my friends. They are the loves of my life. And I do it all for the love of....
Kitties.