The new family member

Well we've had our new cat a little less than a week and I'm already in love. His name is Buddy for short, Buddy Holly is his full name. Named of course after the late musician, not the Weezer song - although I do like the song as well. He's definitely my kind of cat, we understand each other; he's not all up in my face 24/7 and I'm not all up in his face 24/7 either. I like the kind of cats that just seem to 'know' when you want their attention and vice versa, he stays near my feet and curls up otherwise. He also acts as a secondary alarm clock; no joke. Every time my alarm goes off in the morning he comes up and paws at my chest until I turn it off or hit snooze - he continues to do this until I finally get up in which he follows me to the bathroom to make sure I stay awake then when he sees I'm getting dressed he runs back into the bedroom and sleeps some more - who could want a better cat? He's very well behaved with no jumping on counters or tables, he's declawed but the first time I've even seen him try to 'claw' with his imaginary claws at something was today otherwise he hasn't even tried it. He's not loud and he doesn't meow even his purrs are soft and quiet.

I will mention and stress again that I adopted this cat from someone, he's 5 years old and the most fantastic cat I could ever ask for - please, please adopt animals before supporting pet stores! I know those adorable baby kitten eyes at the pet store beckon but don't support them - most pet stores are helping to contribute to some sad problems with animals including not feeding them properly, not giving them flea shots and just neglect in general - I know that just makes it even harder to not take one home but when you give them money your just supporting them and allowing them to continue it on. Not to mention most 'older' animals never get the chance they deserve a lot of them wind up abandoned by their owners or (God forbid) put down before they even have a chance to go to a loving home. Supporting your local animal shelter by adopting a cat or dog is always an awesome thing especially since most animal shelters are no-kill so your helping them to keep the pets alive. Also adopting animals that you find in the 'free to a good home' section of the classifieds is always a good choice too because as much as I know we like to think nothing but decent thoughts about people, a lot of those people may 'dump' the animal when they can't find a home for them. Its sad but it happens. So if your looking into any kind of pet think about adoption first, sometimes you can even find pure-bred puppies/kittens at a shelter because someone didn't think twice about the responsibilities of owning an animal and dumped them instead of having patience.

Well that's mostly it for my spiel about animals this week.

Thanks for reading,

Heather