Okay okay. You guys made it clear in the comments that you wanted to see the cats, even though they’re fat. There’s nothing else much going on right now, so I’m going to introduce you to my other babies. You have to promise not to make fun of them for their weight, because they’re very self-conscious about it right now.
Up first: Josephine. Josie was my very first cat. I got her when I was 20. My longtime boyfriend was moving out of state for school, and I was devastated, and I decided I would get a cat for company. I adopted Josie from a rescue when she was just a baby, and I’ve had her ever since. Wow, that’s over six years now. Josie is an absolute sweetheart. She’s very quiet, not very demanding, and just loves to be held. For years she’s slept right on top of my chest all night every night. Josie is to me what Holly is to Hef.
Second: Ashley. I got Ashley when I started grad school. Since I was gone so much, I wanted Josie to have a friend. One of my girlfriends was fostering kittens, and I was over at her house and met Ashley, and decided to take her home with me. Josie pretty much raised Ashley by herself, since I was rarely around. Ashley is the Ice Queen. She’s very independent, and doesn’t like to be told what to do or where to be. She never sleeps in bed with me; she likes her own space. She also likes boy humans much better than girl humans. She’ll never come sit with me, but if I have a guy over she is instantly on his lap. She has always been the tiniest cat, just super-skinny her whole life. She is not so tiny anymore.
Once, on a road trip from LA to Phoenix, I thought I’d lost her. I stopped at a bank, and when I got back in the car, I couldn’t find Ashley. I had three people help me search my car, which was a tiny Eclipse. We looked everywhere, including the trunk and the luggage. We also searched the property all around the bank. She was nowhere to be found. I was hysterical, but after hours of looking, there was nothing to do but leave my phone number with the bank and get back on the road. I was crying my eyes out on I-10 when Ashley popped her little head out from the back seat. To this day, I have no idea where she’d been hiding.
And last but not least: Maxwell. I never intended to get a third cat. Two was plenty. But after I broke up with another boyfriend, and was really depressed, a neighborhood boy came by my apartment with Max. He’d found him on the street, and he didn’t know what to do with him. Max was super skinny and very sick. He looked like he hadn’t eaten in weeks. I took him in, glad to have a new man in my life, and planning to get him healthy and then put him up for adoption, but he was such a sweetheart I just couldn’t part with him. When I took him to the vet, they actually found a microchip on him and said they had to call his owner and return him. I cried for hours, until the vet got a hold of the owner, who said Max had run away months ago and he’d adopted a new cat, so I could keep Max.
Max is a diva. He likes attention all the time, and he’s the only one of my cats who cries regularly. There’s been more than one night where, at 3 a.m., I have desperately wanted to throw him out the window. But I can’t, because he’s my baby. Once he got healthy again, he was always a big cat, but this is definitely the biggest he’s ever been. We think he’s about the same age as Ashley: about three years old. He and Ashley dated for a little while, but they seem to be less loverly now. I think it’s because Ashley put on so much weight. Max sleeps at the foot of my bed every night, except for 15 minutes right after I go to bed when he gets to be on my chest. Then he has to go to the foot of the bed and Josie gets my chest for the remainder of the night. They worked out this system long ago, after many months of fighting.
So now you’ve met all the Beet Babies: Josie, Ashley, Maxwell and Leo. I know, I know, I’m raising a small zoo, but I’m a very maternal person and it makes me very happy to take care of all of them. I love them all very much!
AWWW melts my heart!! I raised two baby kittens when i was younger, even fed them with a bottle cuz they were so tiny, but then i had to let them go a few years later when we were moving, it was extremely sad. I LOVE CATS!
yay! pictures! and i love the stories about them too. =) i wish i had a cat. i love cats.
Oh my God, Ashley i just the cutest thing (:
I have two cats: Morris, who is slow, fat and partly blind, and Amy, who’s small, evil and deaf. No kidding.
They try to fight, but it doesn’t really work.
Communication is a problem.
Anyway, thanks for showing some pussy (;
you’re living my dream life! i’ve been picking up stray baby everythings off the roads now, but the asshole neighbours started complaining to my parents once they discovered there were animals around so i’ve had to give up all my babies for adoption :( awesome cats you’ve got there. don’t they bully Leo around?
Im not a cat person, but i have to admit that theyre really cute! The girls dont look fat at all, either does Maxwell in the first picture. But the second picture of him… WOW!
I also think that his previous owner is an asshole. But at least you got to keep him :]
Gorgeous. I wish I had a cat translating machineyabob. I have a siamese who talks louder than I ever could. I’m sure he’s telling me about a civil war or some epidemic on the streets, but all I can say back is ‘oh bubbyboo boopboopedoo’.
My boyfriend and I have five combined cat children, and it is bliss. Thanks for sharing those pics! It’s nice to know that other people’s cats are as well-fed as ours. :-)
P.S. Aw, Beet, your cats can relax — they are NOT fat! I knew this one cat, Bird, who was basically the same size as a wombat (that’s freaking huge), and I grew up with a cat named Barney who weighed in at close to 18. Poor lil’ guy. I think it’s really easy for cats to become a tad overweight, though, and I also freak out about things like diabetes and whatnot. I don’t know what the solution is! It’s so hard to monitor each individual cat’s diet when you’ve got more than three in one household, but I do think a lot about their nutrition (I’m such a dork!).
Anyway, we have one who races to the food bowl directly after she gets in a fight with one of her brothers. She can hold her own, but she’s still an emotional eater. She eats her feelings. *Sigh.*
Who the f&%* wants to see your pu$$y. Get over yourself, you narcisstic piece of lard.
I would gladly look at photos of Beet’s pussy(cats).
Beet, that is too many cats for one person. If you were a little older you would have to worry about being tagged as the crazy old cat lady.
I agree with Donkey here… When I was single and 20-something with two cats, a 3rd stray cat decided to move in on his own. He just showed up one day thru the kitty door and didn’t leave. I was like “There’s NO way I can have THREE cats or I will NEVER get marrried!!!” So, long story short, I took him to the shelter, visited every day, ended up ADOPTING him back–they wouldn’t tell me how long til they’d put him down–, putting out an ad for a free (now neutered and vaccinated) cat, and finally adopting him out on my own. THREE CATS = SINGLE crazy cat lady! Sorry beet.
I work at the Humane Society and I approve of your love for cats
Ashley is GORGEOUS! She looks just like my cat Dusty, I got him when I was FIVE so he is a whopping 15 this September and he still runs and plays like a kitten, he can jump over my head (I’m 5’6) to get a piece of ham if I stick it to the wall. Growing up he was my bestest friend ever and I will be devastated when he goes to kitty heaven someday. Whenever I was sad (but only truly sad) he would come running and meowing at my door and jump on my lap purring and rubbing his face on mine till I felt better, and he would always sit ant the end of my bed and stand watch over me till I fell asleep then he would cuddle down on my pillow or sometimes in the winter when it was cold under the blankets :) Sorry to go on and on about my cat but I guess I just love him like you love your kitties, because they are wonderful little animals.
ugh i am so bothered by the one negative comment you got…to bring a little full house into the discussion: HOW RUDE.
i love this entry about your cats, it’s so sweet and funny. it reminds me of the cats me and my sister had over the years until about highschool when we decided we had kinda a dangerous neighborhood for outdoor cats. i miss those little moments, and it’s funny how much detail we can remember about them lol. rudy and georgie were brothers…rudy was sorta siamese-y looking, the runt with an adorable little club paw. he ended up as the portly, jolly one(our nathan lane) while georgie was always the cool customer, a quiet and lean grey and white. *sigh* thank you beet, for sharing and starting us all down our own cat memory lanes :D
Your cats are so cute Beet. And the stories about them remind me of cats I had growing up. I love it! And I’m glad they’re back with you now.
I have to tell you, I love more the stories about you babies than the stories about the celbs. Keep writting them please!!!!!
Leave it to TSS to bring us back to the real world!
You are the most normal catlady i have ever met.
i have a emo dog.
he likes to write poetry and cut his wrist.
and then he sits next to the window and ponder.
They don’t look too big but you know them better. We used to live in an apartment with crazy high ceilings. I remember when we moved in, our two looked so tiny in comparison.
My dad always threatened me that I’d end up alone and a crazy cat lady. He was super supportive in that way.
In order to reach crazy cat lady status you have to have a freaky number of cats. This, IMO, is >= 10. Until you get an entire nutsy number of cats, that’d be it.
As an aside, a critter lady (being one with an entire ecosystem in their house) is more disturbing, but less crazy than a crazy cat lady.
Also, the magic hiding kittie in your escort was likely 1 of 3 places, as I have had several cat-car searches with different girlfriends. *sigh*
Under the dash, as there are places a small kittie can go.
In the spare tire compartment, as kitties can sometimes sneak in there or the side pockets in the rear area.
Finally, underneath the seats. There are open spaces near the springs and such where they can go and hide. Almost impossible to reach with your hands and even with a flashlight and a mirror they can be a pain to spot.
And your cats aren’t fat. The last one is a little pudgy, but not horrible for an indoor cat.
I had a cat climb inbetween where your gas pedal and brake are. I couldn’t find her until the next day, when she got stuck trying to come out, otherwise I never would have known where she went.
Your 3rd cat looks a little chunky, the other 2 aren’t so bad. I think your dad may have been feeding them table scraps, cos they were so cute and missed you so much, once you have them back on schedule they’ll be fine.
My Max!!! I miss him!!!!!
There’s a giant sign in front of my house that says, “Dump Your Cat Here,” and everyone can see it but me. Cats are low-maintenance, though. Going out of town for the weekend? No Problem. Put a bag of Kitty Bitties on the floor, cut a big “X” in it with a razor blade and when you return, they’re fine. Try that with a dog: he’d eat it all at once, barf, and then eat the barf.
Just kidding about some of the previous statements. Maybe.
Dont worry, I have 3 cats and two dogs and I’m only 24 lol. I love animals and they are great company. I keep my house clean and my animals are all healthy and happy, so I see no problem. It looks like its the same with you, so screw these jerks who think its sad or pathetic in anyway.
And, I hope all your cats get along with Leo… it can make your life very difficult if they hate each other…
they are all so cute! do they get along with Leo?
Aaw, your cats are so beautiful. Josie is….wow. She looks so much like my cat Satine, who is also fond of sleeping on my chest.
Max has a hilarious expression in the first picture, like “Oh shit, you caught me. Now everyone’s gonna mock me”.
They’re all cute. =)
o these cats are not fat, until you have seen my cat you do not know the meaning of the word!
Beet, you totally ROCK! I love the pictures of the animals.
Beet, those are three cute cats. I especially like Josie, because I have a thing for black-and-white animals (I have an 18-yr-old Manx tuxedo cat). I also like your mix of personal anecdotes with celeb stuff. Have fun getting all the kids back to Seattle!
Love love love your kitties!! Thanks for sharing and good luck with your zoo :)
i have three cats too, and never meant to…
i had my two boys, sam and archie, who arrived in my life at the same time from the aspca…
archie, especially, loved to go up into my boxspring and hang out there, so i ended up having to get a new bed sooner than i expected.
when the delivery guys came to take my old bed away and replace it with a new one, i didn’t realize that archie had gotten scared and crawled into the old boxspring.
needless to say, they took my cat with them when they took the old bed out and i didn’t even think to look until they’d been gone for 1/2 hour or so… long story short, my cat was gone – not in the truck – but out on the new york city streets at the end of february.
10 days of crying and postering later, i got a call that my cat was in a building not far away… i went to pick him up – and while it SEEMED like archie – i was not 100% sure. well, turns out it wasn’t – but it WAS otto – who also needed a home – and sam needed a friend. so i had two again.
fast forward to 3 1/2 months after archie’s disappearance, and i am in a nearby pet store when on the way out i see a post for a cat adoption. timing and picture seem close, so i call. it takes a day to confirm (via one of those chips!) that indeed, it is my boy!
so now i have three boys – all black – except for the splotch of white on archie’s leg where his leg had been injured. a lifetime reminder of what he went through.
i call him my miracle child.
Cute kitties! I’m not a cat person. When I was growing up my mom was allergic & now my son is. But your cats don’t look fat to me. Max looks maybe just a little chubby but nothing to be embarresed about.
why do people name their pets with people names? i’ll never understand that.
Beet,
Can you PLEASE post a good pic of you on your site? Or send it to my email address. I’ve been reading your blog for a while now, and I’m very curious of what you look like. I think you might be hot but sometimes I don’t know because of your claims of always being home alone on the weekends. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, send me a pic so I can stop obessing over this!!! lol
Wow! I’ve never seen photos of cats before. Thanks for posting! Oh, and for all you chicks out there bragging about how many cats you have — just so you know, it is used as a monitor to rate how fast a guy should run away in the other direction. Here is the standard: (this isn’t applied by the artsy, fartsy sensitive males, of course — they think your cats are just swell):
1 cat = Okay…maybe okay, anyways (proceed with caution)
2 cats = Get your Nikes on, do some stretches, and be prepated to bolt. Almost always means that a third will be added to the family within a year’s time.
3 or more cats = Be afraid, be very afraid.
Cat Lady. I’d say Cat Woman: a Wonder Woman who has a heart big enough to share with her feline/canine companions and her human counterparts( her readers). She’s nipping and clawing celebrity gossip one moment and the next moment sharing what’s close to her heart, her furry companions, with her readers like a big bowl of warm milk. You do have a good niche going here beet. I check in and read mostly, don’t comment as much. Thanks for sharing. Very cute cats. Not that HUGE, but that last one is a def fatty looking. It’s alright you’ll have em up and in-shape in no time.
Screw the crazy cat lady and “never get married” comments, Beet. There are dudes out there who love animals, too. I was in my late 30s and met my husband when he was 40. He had 2 cats, I had zero. By the time we got married he had 3, I had 3. Right before the wedding we adopted 3 more babies we had to hand feed. We get attached and just can’t let them go. Now we have 9 cats, 1 frog, a bird and a Chinese Water Dragon. Two of our cats are bloated beasts. But they are still better company than most people. There are too many cats in my house, I agree, but we sure do love them.
Your cat Josie is almost identical to my cat Muffin. They’re called tuxedo cats. She’s fourteen and still runs around like a kitten. I inherited my parents cat, Pepper, when they both became too ill to care for her. These two cats do not like each other and are always fighting to the point that I have to keep them separated. Muffin ( even though smaller) is almost always the aggressor. Even after Pepper gave her a slightly bloody nose ( in self-defense ), Muffin still chased after her and wanted to fight some more. She’s got more guts than brains. When my girlfriend would come over to watch a DVD, Muffin would jump up on the sofa and wedge herself between the the two of us. Pepper is a big baby and cries to make sure she gets an equal amount of attention (which she does.)
viva la kitteh parents!
I’m a kitteh mom times three, also — and i take plenty of sh!t for it. i’d take in 33 more if i could.
I even put that fact in my match.com ad b4 I met my sweet baby, just so there would be no misunderstandings.
Cat lovers unite and stop taking crap for it!
My hubby prefers cats to dogs. Smaller food bill, they don’t need to be walked and smaller turds.
Your cats are not that big. You seem to really have a thing about weight. Get a grip. Thanks for sharing the pics though.
i’m definetly not a cat person, but i just have to say looking at your three cats make my heart melt!
they’re so cute, even if they’re a little chubby (they arent huge)
i want one!!!!
Adorable. I’m glad you get to see them again. I haven’t seen my cat (the one in my picture) for a year now. She’s living with her grandma.
Your female cats aren’t fat, you’ve just lived in California for too long. :)
Aawww, kitties!!!
Josie is my favorite! Great to see her looking just as fabulous as Java!
Awwwwwwwwwwwww!!! They are so cute Beet!!! My fav wuld be Max, i love his tummy i wish i could kiss him all over, you have no idea how much i love cats, i wish i had one :( …
They are so cute Beet. We have 2 wonderful cats – my oldest, Mz Kitty, since I was in university, she’s been with me through lots – and our baby, Dizzy (after Gillespie – he plays a mean trumpet) my boyfriend and I got together from a farm. I look forward to seeing them everyday after work. They bring so much joy to our home! God, I could gush about my cats all day – it’s no small wonder that you post about your animals. Can you imagine if you had kids?!! LOL
YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY! Finally we get to meet some Beet pussy! Your kitties are absolutely adorable! I love all three, but I gotta say I’ve got a soft spot for Ashley… ;) LOVE the name! haha They are soooo cute & I loved reading about all of their different personalities & how you ended up with them & stuff. Thanks soooo much for sharing!
We have 5 cats here at my house…that’s all I have to say, huh? :)
Cats rock, that’s all I gotta say. We’ve got 3: Luna, Rennie and Ralphie. Rennie weighs around 20 lbs., has an eating disorder – she’ll eat everything in sight, vomit, then eat some more, but she’s still my “little baby.” My husband put his foot down at 3 cats, but I managed to sneak in some pseudo-cats: a rabbit, 2 rats, a cockatiel and of course our little weiner dogs. Busy, busy life. You go, Beet!!! Looking forward to more pix/stories.
Don’t give them a complex! They’re not THAT fat…. trust me I’ve seen worse….