Not everybody knows this about me, but I had cats before I had a dog. My very first apartment with my soon to be husband, then ex-husband LOL, didn’t allow dogs. I was dying for a pet. One of my employees had a cat that had a litter of kittens and I got my first cat.

We named her tipsy because for a cat she wasn’t quite so graceful. She would be walking across the back of the couch and just fall off. I loved this cat. She was just dopey like me. A week later we took her litter mate and sister Abigail. My employee named her Abigail and for some reason it just stuck.

Abigail was the queen of the house. She allowed the rest of us to live there. I think that’s why she had the regal name of Abigail, never Abby, always Abigail. Abigail loved my husband, tipsy loved me.

When I was first diagnosed with MS, that week that I got sick back in 1998, it was tipsy that started sleeping behind my head on the pillow. She purred me to sleep every night.

Sometime later in 1998 or early 99 my husband and I had a fight and I ended up with two more cats, Bucky and Bonzi. They were brothers and they were probably two of the most amazing cats.

I think these cats were part dogs because I never knew cats could do stuff like this. I had them separated from tipsy and Abigail when I first got them and I remember walking in the room with a cookie in my hands and they just walked right over and ate the cookie. Little kittens. I was shocked. Abigail and Tipsy would never eat a cookie. Bucky would come to you as soon as you call him. When my daughter was young she wouldn’t go to sleep without saying good night to him. I would have to call “Bucky boo I need you” and he would come running from wherever he was. both of them were really great cats.

After another flight towards the end of our relationship came Oatmeal.

Oatmeal’s name came as a joke from frosty the snowman. When all the kids are trying to decide what’s your name frosty and one kid says Oatmeal. For whatever reason my ex and I used to always joke around about that line so when we were deciding on a name were like oatmeal and that became his name.

When I got Boomer I had all five cats. When my ex and I decided to divorce I knew I couldn’t go anywhere with a dog and five cats so we had to split the cats. I took Bucky, Bonzi and Abigail. Unfortunately where he was going to go had cats and Abigail was going to be a little too prissy to fit in and the concern was fights. So I unfortunately lost my tipsy.

Unfortunately Bucky died of a mouth infection at a very early age. Bonzi died a year later of the same thing. Abigail lived till 16 years old. If you would believe all the time that I owned my cats, I was allergic. I lived on the spray and allergy pills but I didn’t care I loved them. However when they all passed I stayed with the dogs.

Unfortunately all the pictures were before cell phones and really good cameras.