Kittens!

We have Portia (11, and she's my oldest daughter, for all that she's non-human ), Allie (2ish), Gordon (2), and Roland (1). We also used to have Percy, but he dun R-U-N-N-O-F-T.

Inky and Blackberry, two twin girls about 3 years old, give or take. Not lap cats except when they are. They're mostly the perch-behind-my-shoulder cat and the sleep-at-the-foot-of-the-bed-when-it's-cold cat.

Sammy wants to be a lap cat, but he's too fat.

Gordon has his own lap, and I swear he can sit in it. That cat is HUGE.

Snowy: 11-12 years old (I can never remember). Born in our garage and captured along with his two brothers. (There was another litter in there before them, but by the time we realized they were there they were too old to catch.) They obviously had different dads; one was grey and white, one tabby, and Snowy is part Siamese. He is fat and muscular and the KING OF THIS HOUSE. All other pets answer to him. Except the bunny, whom he is nervous of. He is a lap cat when you are sitting in his chair.

Ophelia: 4 years old. My baby. Born in our friends' shed, easily captured since they were a week old when they found them and weren't even walking yet, along with two sisters and one brother. I named them all after Shakespearean characters. Her nickname until then was "Licky" because she likes to lick fingers. I did most of the raising of her and her siblings, including bottle-feeding and rubbing their butts with wet rags to make them poop. Yes, really. Hence her being my baby. She is floppy and snuggly, but doesn't often sit in my lap... she prefers my shoulder.

Razzle: 3 years old. My mom and I decided to foster kittens from the local shelter. We took in Razzle and Dazzle. They were adorable kittens who spent a lot of time sleeping on my hands. However, Razzle turned out to have health issues--a heart problem and something to do with her chest wall, I believe--that make surgery really dangerous for her. The shelter won't allow any pets to be adopted out unless they have been spayed or neutered, so while we sent Dazzle back to be adopted... we just sort of kept Razzle. She's mostly terrified of anyone other than my mom and me. She goes into heat occasionally, but it doesn't seem to make her too miserable, and thankfully has no interest in going outside where she would potentially meet intact male cats. She is a lap cat if you're sitting in the room where she was raised.

Tuula: 2.5 years old. Evil. My mom has a story about her that I can never keep straight, but basically she ended up taking her in the waiting room of the shelter so she never had to stay there. Which turned out to be a good thing, because her health issues are even worse than Razzle's. As a baby she had frequent issues with a prolapsed rectum (ew) and other issues with her digestive tract. She had to have surgery. Thankfully, it no longer seems to cause her pain to poop, though she's gotten into the habit of walking to make it easier and often poops on the floor... Also she likes to bite people. Not a lap cat.

Harri: Not sure how old he is. He's the porchcat. He's possibly more evil than Tuula, or maybe he's just insane. He will bite--quite viciously--for no apparent reason. So he's not allowed in the house. He hangs out on the porch, where he is fed and where we have a little cat house for him. We think he poops in the bushes across the street. Not a lap cat.

Can you tell I love my cats?

We also have a dog and a rabbit, but since this is a cat thread I will hold off

Tai: about three years old, bluepoint Siamese, skittish, intelligent, willful, nuzzly, playful, vocal -- nay, articulate. I thought he was clumsy due to his knocking things off my kitchen counter but more recently have realized he does it on purpose. The most physically expressive creature, from head to tip of tail, you could imagine.

Nux: 14, 3/4 lynx-point Siamese; his mom was a fancy Siamese show cat, his dad was an opportunist. Same with his granddad. Has a strong streak of opportunism in his personality. Killing machine, keeps the mice in check, or in pieces. Earlier in his life he blew about five of his nine lives in assorted ways, from being sat on as a kitten by his mom to being shaken by a nasty dog. Everything about him is large - big head, long legs, long tail, long whiskers, big heart. I saw real lynxes at a menagerie and thought, "They're Nux, sized up about double!"

I have Xena, a fourteen year old lynx-point. Aggressively cuddly, bites chins, howls a lot. Has the three big dogs under authoritative paw. A new kitten is supposed to be coming this month.

Drake and Gatsby, 9 and 13 (I think). Drake is 16 lbs, a flesh-eater, the world's nosiest purrer, and he snores. Gatsy is a svelte 14 lbs, and the prissiest cat known to mankind. Both are, for certain values of "grey" and "tabby," grey boycat tabbies.

Ooo, if we're allowed to be long-winded about our kitties...

Portia is the daughter of Autumn, a stray that was abandoned by the previous resident of the apartment I moved into. I cannot resist a kitty (although my husband at the time was rather not into cats), so I took her in. Turns out kitty was preggers. YAY FRESH KITTENS. She decided to deliver said kittens in my lap. Portia was first out, since I didn't move fast enough to get something for Autumn to birth on besides my lap. She settled for my sleeping bag for the next three. I found homes for Angel and Bowie (his fur stuck up in ways that reminded me of Jareth from Labyrinth), but Jazz and Portia ended up staying. My ex kept Jazz when we divorced. I gave Portia to my then sister-in-law when I got pregnant because I had to move into a place where I couldn't have pets, and felt s-i-l would not only love Portia, but likely spoil the cat rotten. (I was right.) She's your typical brown and black tabby cat, but she has beautiful auburn tones to her fur, and brilliant green eyes.

My brother got Allie when he lived in Anchorage, Alaska. She was abused by her first human, and to this day still doesn't trust men. I was supposed to take her in, but he ended up keeping her, then giving her to s-i-l when they divorced. She got along fine with Portia, so all was well. Then ex-s-i-l decided to move back to Japan, and left the kitties with me. Allie, we think, is blue-point Tonkinese.

By then, I had Gordon, my chunky spotted kitty who loves everyone(and I do mean EVERYONE), and Roland, my snowshoe Siamese. Gordon is 22 lbs of GIANT pillowcat. He's mostly outdoors, so while he is a landwhale of a cat, his vet swears up and down that he's not obese, just HUGE. Gordon originally came with Ramsey, a wonderful, loving kitty who had an unfortunate birth defect in his hip that made it dangerous for him to be around the kids (they were 3 and 2 at the time). I gave Ramsey back to the couple I got the boys from and adopted Percy. Percy ran off (his is a long and funny story, right until we get to the part about how I paid $2,200 to have his teeth pulled right before he ran off), and Gordon was SO RONERY, so my brother got Roland for me. Roland is my BAY-BEE. He's the sweetest, most tolerant cat ever. My kids can pick him up and carry him around, and he just *lets* them. Doesn't even make a peep. (Gordon's too heavy for them to try.)

Roland's the one in my icon. <3 I have pics of all the cats in my dA gallery.

Char, I feel that it is our sacred duty to be long-winded about our cats.

I forgot to say what the cats look like! Snowy looked like a snowshoe Siamese when he was a kitten (hence the name). Now he just looks multicolored and gorgeous--he gets a lot of compliments, especially with the blue eyes. Ophelia is black with a little white spot on her tummy, and has the magic power of being able to shed either black or white depending on what you're wearing. Razzle is white and grey spotty. Tuula is all dark grey, the color of her evil. Harri is black and white. I think it's possible he's related to Snowy, whose mom was black and white.

I have Meow, boy cat, typical Singaporean drain-cat.

I have a cat named Stripes, who is 16 years old. Obviously, there's a reason why her name is Stripes, but she doesn't have stripes anymore, she's more of a patches. She went from straight tabby to tortoise shell, so now her name is just ironic. I've had her since I was 5 and I'll be 21 in a couple weeks. She's an old girl, but she's still feisty. She's our guard cat, people are more afraid of her than they are of our hyperactive german shepherd mix.