more cats on the internet

Because there's not enough cats on the internet already, here is Malificent (the white cat, Kate named her this after the witch in Sleeping Beauty) and Alucard (the black cat, "Alucard" is "Dracula" backwards named after the character in the manga / anime Hellsing). Of course people only name cats for their own amusements because cats don't really come when you call them. For those of you allergic to cats, I apologize for this post.

Our cats are yin and yang in just about every respect. Malificent (white cat) is female, Alucard (black cat) is male. She's a long hair, he's a short hair, her meower doesn't work too good, his does, he wants to always play, she doesn't, she doesn't like other critters (except people), he does (tolerates them), he's a teenager, she's of an advanced age, etc.

Our cats adopted us, it's not like we set out to have salt and pepper cats (although I think it's cool that things ended up this way). Our white cat adopted us when we were living in our condo and we took her with us when we moved to our house (she didn't appear to have other "owners") so she's been with us for over ten years (her age has been estimated to us as being 15 years old). Our black cat has been with us for five years and he's probably a little over six years old.

The following is a true story: I first saw our black cat outide our patio window on Halloween morning of 2002 as I was making coffee. So it was probably fated that we become his new "parents" (not that I'm superstitious or anything of that nature). After seeing him a few other times over the next week or so, I mentioned to Kate that we should bring him indoors and that our white cat might like a companion. So Kate placed lost kitty notices on our local neighborhood mailboxes and after no one claimed him, in the house for the black cat it was (and I was especially happy because while I like most cats, I've wanted a black cat since I was a wee lad). Sadly, our cats don't get along, as Alucard thinks he owns the place and Malificent is too passive to kick his ass, but she's getting a little better about his being in her "space". We call our cats our "fur kiddies" - aren't cat people pathetic (grin)!?
Kate getting ready for work. Actually we don't let our cats go outside being that I'm possessive (and I worry about what some people who don't like cats might do to them if they go in their yards). Alucard just crawled into her bag - gee cats never crawl into bags or boxes, do they!?
This is Malificent after getting back from a bad run in with the cat groomer. Seriously, poor Malificent had to go to the cat doc after our San Diego trip because she wasn't being her old self. After we took her to our regular vet and they x-rayed her they had us go to a vet referal center because they found a mass close to her heart. The doc at the vet referral center anesthetized Malificent (that's why her leg is shaved) and extracted some clear fluid from the masses and determined that she didn't need to have the mass operated upon. Besides her leg looking really frail (and or that she'd been to a bad barber), I'm happy to report that she seems to be back to her old self.