We have three cats. First there was Puddy. Jason found him when he casually walked up to the main gate at El Toro. He was a sweet little kitten and I was home all alone. It was apparent to Jason that we needed each other =). He brought Puddy home the day before Thanksgiving in '93. It was early in the morning and I was still in bed. He came in and said "I have a surprise for you.". The real surprise was when the sweet little kitty peed on my bed 5 seconds later. We kept him anyway. He used to chase us around the house and bite our knees. He'd wait around the corner and jump out just as we came around. He still likes a good round of hide-and-seek now and then. He doesn't like having the base of his tail touched AT ALL! He won't take action immediately, but he'll wait about 5 minutes until your guard is down and then jump on your head and exact his revenge. He doesn't play with us much anymore since we brought home his sister, Kit-Kat. He's very much a lap cat, and he will ONLY drink fresh water from the sink. When the sink is empty he cries and cries until we come and fill it. This is lots of fun at 4 am!

Kit-Kat, or Kitten, adopted us in the summer of '96. She was one of many kittens that live in the fields at El Toro. She somehow wound up at the PX on base, where a nice person scooped her up and took her to the veterinarians office. The vet called the kennels (Jason was a K-9 handler) to see if anyone wanted her.  Jason brought her home. She was a MESS! She was infested with fleas like nothing I've ever seen before. We set her up in the bathroom for awhile so she could get used to us. She spent 24 hours a day hiding behind the toilet. She was the tinniest little thing, you could completely cover her with a washcloth. And she had this tail that was amazing! Everyone commented on how long and fluffy it was. She slowly ventured out to the bedroom and hid under the bed for a few days. Then one day she came out and got up on the couch, curled up with me, and fell asleep. She hasn't left us alone since! She talks non-stop, follows us into every room, and can't wait to go to bed each night. We've trained her to sit and lay down, and we're working on rolling over. If only she'd play dead =).
 

          

Last (hopefully!), but not least, we have Connie. Jason brought Connie home from work in the fall of 2002. Is anyone else sensing a pattern here? lol. We thought he was a girl, so we wanted to give "her" a name that would reflect the fact that "she" was born and raised on the grounds of a prison. Well as it turns out, Connie is a boy. Oops. He's a great kitty, especially for the kids. This poor cat lets Adriana haul him around like a sack of fur. She is his little Mommy, deciding when he should sleep and wake up, when he should eat, and when he should get shoved through the cat door in order to go potty, whether he needs to or not =). Everyone who meets him comments on how beautiful he is. He's a good kitty for the most part, he only has two really bad habits. One is that he MUST sneak into the kids' rooms when I go in to check on them at night. He then MUST hide out under their beds until I get down on the floor and reach around for him. The truly annoying part is that he runs out from under the bed, but not out the door. Instead he runs around the room, back under the bed, around some more, etc. until I finally snag him and toss him out. Bad kitty. His other bad habit is that he's a thief. A sock thief to be exact. A tiny-little-kid's-sock thief. He always takes them under our bed to "kill" them. Have you ever tried to get down on your belly and reach a tiny kid's sock that has been left under a queen sized bed, exactly in the middle? Have you ever tried it when you're very pregnant? It's not fun.

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