As a large family with lots of young children, we tend to leave crumbs everywhere.  We also have farm animals that leave feed everywhere.  Unfortunately, this tends to encourage the mice.  And even more unfortunately, Mom and I hate being surprised by mice.

Soooo… We have cats.

We have had LOTS of cats over the years. We decided that outside cats would be J’s, and the inside cats would be G’s.  Outside cats stay outside and inside cats stay inside.

One of the first cats we have ever had here in Indiana is Georgie. I tried to get a picture of Georgie, but he is our shyest cat.

Actually, he is our only shy cat.  He loves Fletcher the most, but he’s getting a little friendly with me now.

This is John-Boy the first:

He was an awesome cat, but he left us while we were on vacation. We came back, and he was gone. 🙁

These kittens are John-Boy the Second (grey) and Jason (black):

Unfortunately, John-Boy the second also disappeared one day.

This is John-Boy the third:

Can you guess what happened?

Yep, he also disappeared.

Are you sensing a pattern?  By now, I am convinced that it is just the name and do not want to name any more outdoor cats John Boy.  (But Daddy says it’s not the name).

Then we noticed that Georgie was having a tough time keeping up with all the mice in our house. So we got two more kittens for inside.

Gypsy:

And Ginger:

Both of them are really snuggly.

We were eating dinner one night, when Dad said, “There is a cat on my legs!” I jumped up, and saw this:

It took awhile for all of us to stop laughing

Now all of our cats are grown. Jason is an amazing mouser, loves cars, and will do almost anything to get you to scratch him.

Gypsy has turned into a sweet cat with a tendency to hide from people. But if she is in a good mood to snuggle, then she will snuggle all you want.

And this is Ginger. Ginger will streeeeeech herself out (like in this picture) so that you can rub/scratch her belly. She will follow you around nonstop. And at night, when everyone goes to bed, for a minute all you can hear is people clicking and snapping their fingers trying to get her attention. She will snuggle with you, (especially if you are sick) and she just loves people.

Mom says that Ginger thinks she is a dog.

Ginger also adores Jade and will seek her out despite Jade tossing her around til she’s comfortable:

I don’t have any pictures of Jim-Bob, but he is every bit as sweet as Jason. Except he has long white hair that sheds like crazy. So, pet him at your peril.

I love all of our cats. I hope that, when we get another John-Boy (Dad says we will just re-use the name), he will last a little longer!