Introducing Julius, Moody Rescue Cat

I've always been a sucker for animals. Something about being around them just makes me happy. Of course, I'm allergic to most of them, but that's a mere inconvenience compared to the joy and satisfaction I get from their companionship. We had a wide array of pets when I was growing up -- dogs, barn cats, guinea pigs, hamsters, gerbils, parakeets, rabbits, fish, newts, and once, for about six hours, a box turtle we had found in the yard. When I moved away to go to college, find my first job, and start my life as an adult, I missed them a lot.

Enter Julius... he was our first addition to the Russell Family Zoo. He joined us fifteen years ago, when Phil and I were newly married and living in a tiny, one bedroom apartment with drafty, single pane windows, and a toilet that regularly backed up. We were broke. We lived in a place that didn't allow pets. Of course it made perfect sense to adopt a kitten.

Awww... Wasn't he cute? Little did we know he was a paper-eating, shit kicker.

Because we weren't technically allowed to have a pet, and because our apartment was adjacent to a very busy parking lot, Julius was to be an indoor cat. We bought him a harness and a leash and would occasionally sneak him outside for a quick run around the shared green space, but he spent 99.9% of his time inside the apartment. We found out pretty quickly that he would have preferred to have a bigger space to roam, because when Phil and I would return from work in the evenings, we would regularly be greeted with a grinning kitten and a room full of shredded newspaper, paper towels, magazines, or toilet paper. I don't know how he did it, but he would manage to find paper no matter where we had tried to hide it.

You won't let me out of the apartment? Take this!

He also had a thing for missing his litter box, kicking it onto the walls, and pulling the doormat over the part that would land on the floor. There were a couple of feral "dumpster cats" (whom we named Marsha and Steve) that lived outside in the parking lot. They would regularly come to our bedroom window at night when we were sleeping, and moan for Julius to come out and play. Of course, he couldn't go out, and he let us know every night how much this bothered him by calling and whining back to them... loudly.

It was becoming apparent that adding this cat to our life had been a really, really good decision.

Even though it would have made sense to return him to the pound, neither of us could bear the thought of what would likely happen to him if we did it. Despite all of his idiosyncrasies, we loved the little guy. He was here to stay.

When we moved to a house in a quiet neighborhood without much through traffic, Julius became an indoor/outdoor cat, and that helped calm him down quite a bit. Getting outside gave him the freedom to explore and run out some energy. He'd generally go out in the morning and come back in time for dinner. If he stayed out late, he would climb up a tree, hop onto the roof, and meow at our bedroom window until we let him in. The first time this happened, it really freaked us out, but after a while we got pretty used to neighbors knocking at our door to let us know there was a cat on the roof.

Excuse the quality of the picture. We took it back when cameras had FILM in them!

Over the years, Julius has become more and more comfortable being outside. When we moved again to the house we live in now, he has especially enjoyed prowling around our wooded backyard and sunning himself on the deck. Every once in a while, he'll bring us a present... usually when he's been stuck out in the rain overnight.

A present just for us!

About once a year, he will disappear for a couple of weeks. For the first few years, we would call the animal shelter and post "missing cat" signs all over the neighborhood until someone would eventually call to let us know he'd been visiting their yard. He has come home with some battle scars a few times. His ears are both torn in a couple of spots, and he has a snaggle tooth. Last month, he came home with a missing patch of fur and a cut on his head. Despite the injuries and the trips to the vet that result from them, he still wants to go outside every single day.

Snaggle tooth Julius.

As time has gone on, we have discovered that he has a couple of "summer homes" (one of which is on the nearby lake... can you blame him?) that he visits on occasion. Now when he goes missing, we just call the Boris and Regan families and ask if they've seen him. Nine times out of ten, one of them will reply that he's been sitting on their porch sunning himself and enjoying the attention from someone besides our family.

So, that's Julius. He likes us... sometimes. He prefers to stay somewhere else on occasion. When he is in the house, he hisses and swats at the dogs. He sleeps in Natalie's bedroom at night, and enjoys snuggling up with her. He's moody. He's sweet. He's kind of a jerk sometimes, and we love him for it.

Maybe adopting him wasn't such a bad decision after all.

St. Nicholas Clearly Wants Me to Go to Target

My family has celebrated St. Nicholas Day for as long as I can remember. I come from a strong German Catholic heritage, and it's just one of several fun family traditions that I learned from my parents. Even though I no longer consider myself to be a Catholic, I still hold onto these traditions with a tight grasp, and I hope my kids will do the same for their own children one day.

Instead of Santa filling our stockings on Christmas Eve, St. Nicholas fills them for us on 12/6. This is a blessing and a curse. Blessing: It's really fun to wake up on 12/6, even if it's a school day, and find some cool treats. Curse: It means digging through the Christmas decorations early to find the stockings. Extra bonus curse: sometimes (ahem, today) it's really hard to find those stockings, and it's difficult to remember if I had stashed them in a really safe place, or if I possibly (probably) may have thrown them out because we had mice in the basement last summer and some of the Christmas decorations fell victim to the little rodents.

Natalie was REALLY concerned about this last night. She helped Phil dig through the storage room, an attempt that was made in vain. When I woke up this morning, I found this taped to my computer screen:

Considering that the original stockings are still MIA, I think I need to make a trip to Target (which just happens to be my favorite store of all time). In fact, I got a 20% off purchase of $100 or more coupon in the mail yesterday, too. Missing stockings plus note from child plus awesome coupon? It's like the universe is VIOLENTLY SHOVING ME to the nearest Target! It simply cannot be helped.

I am doing it for the kids, after all.

Diving in Tail First

It's funny how technology (and life) move so fast.

I'm 29 39 so blogging is not something I grew up with. In fact, the mainstream Internet wasn't even around until I was in college, and even then it was in its beginning stages. Can you imagine!? I can barely even picture my life now without the Internet. E-mail, message boards, Google/Bing, and social networks have become a part of my daily routine and I figure a blog is the next step. I've always felt like my age group is just on the cusp of the computer curve. We "Gen X-ers" can either embrace it and move forward with the rest of the world, or cling to typewriters, checkbooks, and printed newspapers and get left behind. I mastered the ins and outs of Word, e-banking, and online news a long time ago, but am a little late in joining the blogging bandwagon. Please be patient!

Diving in "tail first" is more apropos than "head first" for me because we have pets. A lot of pets: two rambunctious rescue dogs, a bearded dragon, several fish (two tanks and a pond), a frog, the occasional salamander or toad, and a fifteen-year-old, very temperamental cat. My husband, Phil, and I also have two children: Natalie (almost 11) and Owen (almost 9). Our house is a bit like a zoo most of the time.

My friends have been encouraging me to start a blog for a few years. Apparently my life is amusing to them. With the daily happenings in our house, I simply can't imagine why.

So... here we go!