durkeema's Discussions

I prefer mixed breeds, same like dogs, the cats seem to be healthier and not as prone to genetic diseases. All my cats are a variation of the tiger striped. One with short hair, and the other two with long full hair. All three of them are easy going and loving.

I bet everyone had encounters during their childhood that they still remember. The encounters that were unpleasant, traumatic, stick with you through your whole life and occasionally you relive them in your dreams.

I don't have any pet rabbits, never did. But I always had a soft spot in my heart for wildlife, and if they destroyed the food we wanted to eat, I felt sorry for the animals that got caught by my grandfather and killed. There were a lot of mice tunnels crisscrossing the garden and when my grandfather turned over the soil with a spade, I could not watch him hitting the escaping mice with the spade.

Our neighbor killed chicken that he raised in his garden. I had watched him several times cutting the head of a chicken and letting the chicken run away. the running headless chicken gave me nightmares. Growing up at the end of WWII was not easy, especially since almost every night we were woken up by alarms and we had to hide in our bunker in the back of the garden.

Bunnies are adorable, especially when they sit in your vegetable garden trying to decide what to eat next. They love to tops of carrots. They look so cute when they bite of the fresh greens and daintily eat every leave. And then they hollow out the top of the carrot only stopping when they hit dirt. Then they start on the next carrot. The other thing they love is the lettuce. The fresh greens is heaven for them. So how can you call them scungy rabbits? They are a part of our world that we share.

I did not have any cats until we retired 16 years ago. The first one showed up at our house in the Winter of 2001. I fed her outside, she was too wild to come inside. I put a house right outside the glass doors for her and put plates of food outside. And then it snowed 2 feet overnight. The cat was gone. I found her inside the barn and finally managed to talk her into coming our garage. Then I started training her and named her Mieze. She was our companion for the next 11 years. She died of cancer. During that time, we tried bringing several other cats into our home. Mieze refused to take in any other females, and the males stayed out in the barn until Mieze approved of them. The first male cat walked in on us as a baby. A beautiful tomcat that we raised for 1 1/2 years, and then he left us. Broke my heart. We had named him Sunny. We found him at a neigbor's dairy barn 2 miles away. We called for him and he answered from the rafters but did not want to come home. In 2007. we picked up another tomcat from the dairybarn. Also a kitten that someone had dropped off there the previous night. He was scared, and could not asset himself there. He was bullied by the cats that were at home there. We still have him and call him Tanny. He is still a fearful cat, but very loving. Loves the outdoors and the comforts of living inside.3 months later, on one of our walks around the neighborhood, another young tomcat followed us and refused to leave us. At that time, we were at the bottom of our loops, about 4 miles from home. The cat followed us and tried to make friends with us and climbed all over us when we sat down some place. When we were about a mile from home, he could not walk any further and threw himself at our feet. We could not leave him there, so far from the place where he started following us. So I picked him up to carry him, but he was already heavy and I could not carry very far. Wolfgang had a napsack and we put the cat in there with just the head sticking out. Wolfgang carried him  home the rest of the way like that. The next day, we went back to were the cat started following us and asked around the neighborhood if he belonged to anyone. We found out, that the cat had been dropped off by someone who did not want him. So we took him in and named him Ullie. Ullie made friends with Mieze and Tanny and still live with us. When Mieze died, we started looking for another female cat. After 2 months, a neighborhood stray cat had three kittens, one of them was the runt of the litter. She was so tiny and scrawny that she would have died had we not taken her in. After cleaning her up, I started housetraining her and getting her used to the 2 tomcats. She now thinks that she is the boss and rules both boys and they love it. We call her Dally.