Hoomin Note: It's been over a year now since I first let a very skinny
little spotted momma cat and her four bitties in out of the rain.
Sooo... guess it's about time to sit down and let her tell her story,
as I've done before with Little Bit, Sammy, and Rocky (RB)

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My Life, by Spotty
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Little Bit and Sammy tell me it's family tradition that all us
Touchstone cats have to sit down at some point and tell the Group
about how we came to be Touchstone cats. So, guess the time has
finally come that I should channel my story through the hoomin and get
it posted.

It all started over about a year and a half ago when I heard the other
neighborhood cats talk about this great cat cafe. Seems there was this
hoomin who operated a Kitty Cafe on his patio. Well, being a young,
adventurous outdoor kitty at the time, I was always checking out the
latest kitty hot sports. The food was great, but the atmosphere left a
lot to be desired. Don't get me wrong, the hoomin was always good for
a scritch, and he did a good job of keeping the food bowls filled.

It was those two old indoor cats who make the dining experience less
than it could have been. Always sitting in the windows, hissing and
yelling insults while I was trying to eat. At the time I didn't figure
they knew what they were talking about, talking about how superior
indoor kitties were and all, but now that I'm on the inside looking
out I have to admit they had a point - but I'm getting ahead of the
story.

Anyway, I was having a grand old time. I had a home, it wasn't much
but I didn't know that at the time. I thought things were going along
pretty good. There were some good hoomins around besides the one I'm
talking about who saw that all us outdoor cats had food and clean
water.

I had all the boy cats going crazy there for a while, and I guess
that's when my troubles started. See I started getting fat, and all of
a sudden wasn't welcome in my old home. I wasn't fat from eating too
much, I had 4 bitties growing inside me and my so-called family didn't
want to be bothered.

I was still making the ocassional trip to the Kitty Cafe, but what
with feeding the bitties I was just wasting away. By the time the
bitties were big enough to walk around without falling over their own
four feet I was awfully skinny (hoomin note: down to a little over 5
pounds when her ideal weight is about 7).

It got so that I was having to fight with the other cats just to try
to get enough to eat. Then during a fight I got bit on the leg and it
got all swollen. Things were getting kind of desperate now that the
bitties were getting old enough so they needed some solid food. I
finally decided to ditch the old family and move the bitties over to
the Cafe.

That turned out to be a pretty good move, though I wasn't exactly
welcomed into the home with open paws by Sammy and Little Bit, the two
old cats who used to taunt me through the windows. The hoomin brought
me and the bitties inside when the sky started leaking one night, and
made us welcome - he even locked away the two grouches in another
room.

He promised to find us "forever homes", but I wasn't sure what he was
talking about. I'd thought I had a home before, but when the bitties
came we were just left to fend for ourselves. For the longest time I
felt I had to guard any food that was put out. When the hoomin started
letting LB and Sam out of the other room all I could think about was
how it felt to be hungry, so I did my best to chase them away whenever
they went to eat. Eventually it started to sink in that the food
really wasn't going to run out. Any time the bowls got empty the
hoomin was there to fill them up again.

Seemed like it wasn't any time at all before the bitties had gone to
forever homes, but seemed like no one wanted me. By this time I'd sort
of made friends with Sammy, though LB still hissed when she saw me.
Sammy convinced me I had to try to make friends with her momma LB if I
wanted to stay. It sure took a long time before LB stopped hissing,
though.

It took about 4 months before the hoomin was convinced, but finally he
told me that I wasn't going to go to a forever home because I was
already there. There's always enough to eat, it's never too cold or
too hot, there's plenty of things to play with and Sammy and I play
together alot, even old grumpy LB and I get along. Yep, now  I know
what a forever home is, it's where I live.