Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

This blog will pay for itself.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

‘Museums aren’t America’s attic for its racist shit.’

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

“Why isn’t this Snickers bar only a nickel?”

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Every day Vance writes another chapter in the book called “Worst VP Pick Ever”.

Elections aren’t won by handwringing, cowering, and/or bashing your own candidates.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Cat Blogging / Early Morning Open Thread: Love At First Sight

Early Morning Open Thread: Love At First Sight

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From commentor El Tiburon:

There was always a cat or two around the house when I was growing up. We seemed, for whatever reason, to gravitate to black cats. Blacky and Black Cat (very original, I know) are the two I recall the most vividly.
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The college and post-college years are not the most conducive to pet ownership, so I didn’t pursue it too much. At age 30, I was suddenly married and entering the “settling down” phase (or so I thought) of my life. So to help make my house a home, I began a cat search. Pre-Google days the local animal shelter was the only place I searched. I would venture down to the ‘pound’ every few days or so searching out a suitable selection. My only demands that the cat be friendly and black.
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The cats were kept at the back of the facility, so you had to walk past all of the dogs in their cages. It was heart breaking to hear all of those yelps and barks of all of those discarded and lost dogs.
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A few weeks in, it was looking kind of hopeless. But one day as I was scanning all of the cats, I came upon a cage at the end of the row. Inside was a small, black kitten. I walked up to the cage and stuck my hand up to it. The kitten, a female, immediately approached and the purring kicked into overdrive. That was it: love at first sight. I took her out and held her and she eagerly reciprocated all of the love and attention I was giving her.
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Going on 15-years Allie has been a great comfort and companion. She is very affectionate and scampers up to me when I arrive home. Most nights find her snuggled up next to me and during the day she is never to far away.
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I am on Wife #2 with a child, one on the way and a dog. But Allie maintains a special place in my heart and she always will. I know the cliché is old, but it is so appropriate: I didn’t so much save her as she saved me. And she does every single day.

Reader Interactions

22Comments

  2. 2.

    abo gato

    Black cats have always been my favorite cat too. My last black kitty died three years ago at 16. With two crazy JRTs right now, I am sorely missing a cat.

  4. 4.

    Luci

    What a lovely cat! Well, all cats are lovely, but this one is just glorious! :) This IS a sweet story! Thanks!

  6. 6.

    jayjaybear

    They look just like our Pud (full name: Princess Chocolate Pudding…I did NOT name her). Which means they’re probably Bombay cats. Lovely breed…a little prone to trouble-making, but very affectionate and intelligent. They have an interesting voice, too…I can always tell the difference between Pud and our other two (American shorthair) cats because Pud’s voice isn’t a “mraow” so much as a kind of mid-pitched warble. Sometimes she sounds like she’s trying to talk.

  7. 7.

    comrade scott's agenda of rage

    Black cats have their own unique personalities. I’ve loved everyone I’ve come into contact with.

    And old cats are the bestest cats.

  8. 8.

    rickstersherpa

    Almost the spitting image of our late Charlie Charcoal. Charlie made my wife her person, and eventually evicted her sweet sister, Princess from the bed. She would also let out the most blood curdling yelp if threatened by the tomcat, Junior, who moved in with us in our German village, and who made me his principal staff person. But there was nothing nicer than cuddling and petting Charcoal.

  9. 9.

    WaterGirl

    @jayjaybear:

    a little prone to trouble-making

    My black kitty resembles that remark! Oh my gosh is my guy willful when it comes to food and getting on the counters but he is also a happy go lucky boy and a big snuggler, so of course I forgive all of his ventures.

    In the early morning hours yesterday he got on the counter (forbidden) shattered the ceramic kitty food container by pushing it to the floor, even though it had been protected by other items in front of it. I cleaned up the shattered mess, filled up a metal container and put their food in that. Went out to a meeting for about an hour, came home to find the metal container on the floor and most of the food gone.

    I worry, though, that one of these days he will hurt himself with one of his ventures. Like when he hops up on my ceramic top stove, even when there is something cooking.

    WereBear, advice for working with a willful kitty?

  10. 10.

    jayjaybear

    @WaterGirl:

    That sounds familiar…when Pud first adopted us, we used to have some heavy glass tchotchkes on top of the entertainment center. Things were fine until she discovered that she could get up there. She liked it up there…she could see EVERYTHING from that perch. But there were these…THINGS…that were taking up HER space.

    We cleaned up a lot of glass the first couple of weeks with her.

    Unfortunately, I have no real advice…we pretty much surrendered. Food and treats are in plastic storageware with lockable lids. There are no fragile decorating effluvia in our house, anymore. And we have three squirting water bottles, one in each of the downstairs rooms, which deter her for about five minutes. I don’t really mind her walking on counters or the table (we wash and disinfect before we use them, anyway), but we try not to let her get the mindset that we don’t care what she does.

    A somewhat less self-accepted capitulation to the pets in general is that we don’t really decorate for Christmas anymore. The first year we had the cats we put the tree up as usual and I think we lost more decorations off of it than we ever expected. That’s not counting the tree just plain coming DOWN because someone wanted to climb to the top. I do sometimes wish we could decorate like we used to, but compromises must be made…I love our pets too much to pick cosmetic stuff over them.

  11. 11.

    bystander

    I didn’t so much save her as she saved me.

    That ought to hang as a greeting over the portal of every rescue facility. It’s too reliably true to be trite.

    With a nod to (reportedly) Winston Churchill, There is something about the outside of a companion animal that is good for the inside of a human.

    Blessings on the Allie cat and her human companions.

  13. 13.

    CatHairEverywhere

    She looks like my Onyx! He is a naughty, naughty boy, even at 12 years old, but we love him so much. She sounds like she is as affectionate as he is, but I hope she’s not into sudden, vicious, “affectionate” bites like Onyx is…

    Nice story! So glad you focus on black cats- they need the good press!

  14. 14.

    WaterGirl

    @jayjaybear: Shorter version: mostly try to change their surroundings rather than try to change them?

    My house looks a lot different than it used to. I really miss having beautiful things around, and I especially miss the vases filled with flowers! Now I have 2 small wall vases for flowers, and most of my beautiful things are tucked away, but I have 2 beautiful kitties who add so much more to my life than any of the things I have had to put away.

  17. 17.

    Yutsano

    Obligatory KITTEH!! And one guaranteed to make wifey squee as she has two mischievous black boys of her own.

  19. 19.

    thalarctos

    @jayjaybear and @WaterGirl:

    you two are reminding me of a conversation from one of my favourite stories:

    “…anyway, there were no sheep in the [Prince’s] park, but there were lots of little pigs running all over the place.”

    “What colour were they?”

    “Black with white faces, white with black spots, black all over, grey with white patches, and some were white all over.”

    The storyteller paused to let a full idea of the park’s treasures sink into the children’s imaginations; then he resumed:

    “Bertha was rather sorry to find that there were no flowers in the park. She had promised her aunts, with tears in her eyes, that she would not pick any of the kind Prince’s flowers, and she had meant to keep her promise, so of course it made her feel silly to find that there were no flowers to pick.”

    “Why weren’t there any flowers?”

    “Because the pigs had eaten them all,” said the bachelor promptly. “The gardeners had told the Prince that you couldn’t have pigs and flowers, so he decided to have pigs and no flowers.”

    There was a murmur of approval at the excellence of the Prince’s decision; so many people would have decided the other way.

    Saki’s “The Story-Teller”, http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/392/

    ETA: FYWP.

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