A couple of years ago, my youngest daughter the tree hugging vegetarian, decided she wanted a cat. Not just any cat, a cat that had been rejected by all others. So she and my wife made a trip down to the pound to check out reject cats, presumably awaiting a fatal demise.

So she perused all the available cats, and settled on a black/white tabby caged with it’s sibling. Unusual. They were brother and sister, ensconced in the same cage as the keepers had discovered they basically refused to be parted. So when it came to pulling one of them out of the cage, they both entangled themselves with each other, wrapped themselves around each other and simply refused to be separated. It was incredible. Finally, after much yowlling and hissing, the keeper finally said it didn’t look like they were going to separate them, so they would need to be taken as a two-cat unit or not at all.  So, she took both of them. Then after about a month, she developed a new roommate with a cat, and the cats didn’t get along so in the interests of maintaining the kid’s domicile, we inherited the two cats, both appropriately neutered and spayed.

These are two VERY strange cats. The male is proportional white face on both sides and mottled black body (Kitty1). He acts just like a male lion in the wild. He lays around all day, sleeps and eats. He frequently sits on his front paws and surveys his world dispassionately. You rarely see him. The female, half white face (Kitty2), is like a lioness in the wild. She struts around all over the house looking for anything to get into. No one can do anything without her there gawking. Sitting on laptop keys a specialty. She’s everywhere and a big pain in the ass.

When it comes to feeding time, she always eats first; he waits his turn. When she’s eaten exactly half of the ration, she exits licking her chops and he finishes. Sleeping arrangements- the male sleeps on my wife’s side of the bed I’m not on, about six inches from her. Evry night. The dog (standard Poodle) sleeps at the foot of the bed on my wife’s side and every night reliably chases the female off. I have no idea where she sleeps. He never bothers the male.

When I get up in the morning about 0700 hours to go to work, I plop down on the John and the male cat reliably follows me in there, plops down on his back, exposes his underside and looks as if to say “It’s not gonna scratch itself!”. He accepts some belly scratching and that’s it. Never gives me the time of day again until the next morning. The female has no interest in petting at all and will run off every time I try.