Since we're still getting to know each other here on the blog, I thought I'd introduce you to my cat. (What can I say? Most blogs introduce you to their kids. I don't have kids, so you get my cat. I'm just that cool.)
This is Ghost.
I got him as a stray, but I'm pretty sure he's mostly Turkish Angora. For reference, this is a Turkish Angora.
(Picture shamelessly stolen from Petfinder.com)
You can probably see why I think he's mostly that breed.
He lives up to his name. I know all cats can sneak up behind you without you knowing, but holy cow is Ghost good at it. He is also amazing at hiding. If he doesn't want to be found, he's not going to be found. He's very skittish, and my adorable neurotic ball of fluff. With one exception (and I was flabbergasted by it), roommates meet him at least a week after I've moved in, usually two. He's there in the house or apartment, he just hides. I'm fairly certain he was abused before I got him, since he's a bit hand shy sometimes, he's had a few major panic-run-into-walls-trying-to-get-away episodes, and he's terrified of men. If I can find his previous owners in the afterlife, we're going to have a little talk.
The story of how I got Ghost begins with my previous cat, Tippy.
Tippy used to be an indoor/outdoor cat before we discovered she had FIV (feline equivalent of HIV). She became an indoor-only cat after that, and was not very pleased with this turn of events. Fast forward a bit. I moved to an apartment in Orem, Utah and brought Tippy with me. One night, she managed to dart past me, out the door, and into the night. She didn't come back that night, or the next day, so I put up fliers and started dropping by the animal shelter to see if she had been picked up.
A couple of weeks went by. The day after Thanksgiving I got a call from a kid who said he thought he had my cat. I had gotten a few false alarms in those weeks, and the boy was obviously just reading the description directly from my flyer. What made me think this was the real deal was when he said the cat they found had a black tail with a white tip at the end. Those words were also directly from my flyer, yes, but that was Tippy's defining characteristic and how she got her name.
I showed up at the house, and the kids came out holding Ghost. Now, my fliers had full color pictures of Tippy. Scroll up and take a look at her photo. Scroll up further and take a look at Ghost's photo. I can understand them thinking Ghost was female because he was so very fluffy it was hard to tell, but come on. Those are obviously not the same cat. Disappointed, I told them it was the wrong cat and started to leave. That's when the mother came out and said, "Well, can you take the cat anyway?"
Ah-ha, I thought, all is explained. Your kids found this cat and wanted to keep it. You didn't want it, but didn't want to say no to your precious babies. After internally rolling my eyes, I said I'd take him. I had been planning on going to the shelter that day to look for Tippy anyway. I set Ghost in the car, took him right to the shelter... and they were closed. It was Friday, and they weren't going to be open until Monday. I figured I had a cat for the weekend, took him home, fed him, and gave him a bath. (Poor Ghost was so dirty he was gray, except for a white patch on his upper lip where he had been licking. He turned the bath water gray.) After the bath, Ghost kind of looked around then flopped on me like, "Ah, I'm home!"
I'll have you know I lasted a solid hour before I decided to keep him.
As a really cool final note, I found Tippy six weeks to the day, almost to the hour, from when she ran out the door. Animal control had picked her up and brought her to the shelter. Turns out my fliers did no good because instead of going the easy direction, which is where my fliers went up, she had crossed two major roads, one with five lanes and one with seven lanes. I don't know how she survived the crossing, let alone living on the streets for six weeks. The girls at the shelter were amazed and delighted for me. (They knew me pretty well since I'd been coming in twice a week for all that time.) They felt bad they still had to charge me the $25 fee to get her back. I was just glad to have my kitty. She passed away about a year and a half after that, but she was fourteen then and had lived to a good age.
