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Tonight, Danny and I hosted a Wii party for a few of my classmates. I’ve wanted to have guests over for a while but the time just hasn’t been right. I decided that tonight was far enough away from finals to avoid everyone stressing out over studying.

I think we had about 15 people over including children. All of my guests brought food and we had fun playing, watching the kids play, and just hanging out.

One of the highlights was when the two-year-old discovered the kitties hiding under the covers of our bed. The kitties got pet through the covers before escaping under the bed. At one point, Danny pulled boomer out to show him to the girls. His appearance was greeted with loud squeals of joy followed by his loud hissing and struggling. Fortunately, no one got close enough to get clawed.

I’ve been busy lately. Midterms ended last weekend and I’ve been busy catching my breath since then. School is going well. I’m in the final stretch before finals and my trip to China. While I’m really stressed now, I know it will be over sooner than I expect and I’ll be on vacation after that.

In other news, my grandpa passed away two weeks ago. It is sad, but he was in a lot of pain and had been going downhill for a while. I thought about going home for the funeral, but my Dad was adamant that I stay in school. I talked to him a few times while he was with the family and then again when he got home. Daniel went and the rest of my cousins were there. I feel kind of numb about it but it probably won’t hit me until I go back to Dallas and see my Grandma.

Danny and the cats are doing well. The weather has been really nice lately so Danny and I have gone on several long walks. Hopefully this will help offset some of the damage I’ve done since all of the Valentine’s Day chocolate went on sale on Thursday. But hey, I need study fuel, right?

This post is in response to Lisa’s weekly blog challenge. List all of your pets and what made them special.

1. Daisy - Daisy was my first and best cat. My parents got him six months after I was born and determined that he was a female. He wasn’t. He didn’t care and neither did we. He was a short-hair grey and black tabby. He was the most laid back cat ever invented. We have pictures of me walking around the house with him in a death clutch (my arms wrapped around his chest with all paws facing out, back feet hovering millimeters above the ground).

Daisy grew old and fat but still loved kids. He slept on my bed every night. We’d have to put him out around 2am, but he would go to bed with me at 9pm. My brother would come in and pet him goodnight.

Since Daniel and I grew up in the country, we invented many new games including cat castle, moving circus, and baby carriage. Daisy was the star of all of our games. He tolerated cat castle (we built a blanket tent for him, placed him on a pillow inside, covered him in fake jewerly, and brought him little dishes of food and water), but he wasn’t too keen on movable circus (sitting in laundry baskets being dragged around the house, or baby carriage (you can figure that one out).

When he (and I) were ten, he developed severe glaucoma in his right eye. My parents paid for the surgery to have his eye removed. His wound healed and, aside from a slight loss of depth perception, he was fine.

Poor Daisy finally succumbed to a urinary disease and passed away under a bush in our front yard. We wrapped him in my pink satin pillowcase and buried him in our garden.

2. Slash

We got slash a month after Daisy died. Slash was a skinny black, grey and brownish tabby with a tendency to claw anyone who picked him up. He was very cute and a pain in the butt. After he got a little bigger, he decided not to shred us everytime we touched him.

After I went to college, Slash stayed gone for longer and longer. Everytime he came home, he looked healthy like someone else was feeding him. He disappeared in 2001. I hope he is still happily chasing rodents in the pasture.

3. Ginger

Ginger was my dog. She was a cross between a cockerspaniel and a poodle. Poor thing, she was smell, dumb, and ugly. She was never housebroken so she spent most of her time outdoors. My brother got a dog the following year so she had friends. In retrospect, I feel bad for ignoring her. She was a sweet dog but just not very bright. She is also the reason I will never voluntarily own a long-haired pet.

4. Doogie

Doogie was a black lab that was found by some hunters right before Christmas. My dad brought him home and we fell in love with him immediately. He wasn’t very smart either, but he loved attention. He played with Ginger and went to the creek with us in the summertime. He would stand in the shallow water and try to catch minnows.

When he was about two, he got hit by a car. He survived with a broken leg and some squished toes. For the rest of his life, when he ran he only ran on three legs. He never ran on the squished toe foot. He lived to a ripe old age and then keeled over in our neighbors yard one night. I think he was 14.

5. Feather

Feather was a small yellowish hound of some sort. He showed up at our house and we started feeding him. Mom named him feather because he had white fur around his butt that looked like a puffy feather. He was the sweetest dog ever. We think he had been abused though because he cowered whenever we made sudden movements. He got hit by a car on the road by our house.

6. Sapphire

Sapphire was a part Siamese cat with blue eyes who lived in our carport. She never wanted to come inside and was really wild. She had one litter of kittens on my bed when I was visiting my grandma. I was so proud that she’d decided to give birth on my bed. After that, we had her fixed. She lived out her days in our carport and died of old age.

7. Chester and Leo: Chester and Leo were the dogs we got to replace Doogie, Feather, and Ginger. Chester and Leo were two black lab mixes. Chesther was all black with wavy thick fur. Leo looked like a black lab. They played with each other and spent most of their time chewing on sticks in our front yard. They ran away or got picked up by someone passing by when I was a freshman in college.

8. Lulu

I can’t remember if Lulu was a stray or a cat from Greg. She was a black and white round little female. She had one litter of kittens including Cally and Grungy. I can’t remember what happened to her.

9. Cally and Grungy

Cally was a calico. She was skittish but she was my mom’s baby. She followed my mom around the house and would always sit on mom’s footstool while my mom read. Grungy was a brown and black cat. She was super friendly but had an unpleasant habit of drooling profusely while being pet. Grungy disappeared after being gone for longer and longer periods and Cally had to be put down because of cancer.

10. Petunia and Pansy

Petunia and Pansy were two sisters that were adopted from Greg’s “cat farm.” Greg was my mother’s boyfriend and he always ended up attracting pregnant female cats. He always got them fixed as soon as he could, but then another one would show up with dumplin’s in the oven.

They both had little bobtails. Petunia was a short-haired grey tabby and Pansy was a fluffy black and white cat with a fluffy stump tail. Pansy was a master hunter. One time, she caught a bird in her mouth in mid-air. We think she ran away with Slash. Petunia is mom’s new lap cat and hangs out with Milo.

11. Milo is Daniel’s cat. He adopted him one summer while he was home from college. Daniel was working as a waiter at a seafood restaurant. During his breaks, he hung out with his smoking coworkers behind the restaurant. There were some kittens that were living in the dumpster and there was one really friendly black kitty who always wanted attention. Daniel brought him home. Little did Daniel know that this cat would grow up to have the fluffiest, thickest fur ever known. Milo has a great personality and loves being held and picked up. You cannot sit in a chair and not have him in your lap. He lives at home with mom and Petunia.

12. Ralph

Ralph was a stray orange kitty that my neighbors and I fed while I was living in Austin. In the summertime, Ralph hung out in my yard and could be seen wandering the sidewalk between my and my neighbors houses. I didn’t adopt him because my lease prevented me from having pets. My neighbors already had two indoor cats and were content to let Ralph be their outdoor pet.

In the wintertime, I’d let Ralph stay inside where it was warm. He’d sleep on my bed all night and only go out when I went to work in the morning. When I moved, my neighbors agreed to keep feeding him and promised they’d take good care of him. I regret not going against my lease and just keeping him, but he was an outdoor cat and I didn’t want to transport him to a new neighborhood.

A few months later, my neighbor told me that they’d found a home for Ralph at the SARA Sanctuary in Seguin. It is a no-kill shelter/animal ranch in the country. I was happy for Ralph but sad to think that he wasn’t still sitting in front of my house in the sunshine.

12. Boomer and Boris

Boomer and Boris are my babies. I adopted them when Danny and I moved to California. After Ralph, I made it a requirement to find an apartment that allowed pets. We decided to adopt two cats so they could play with one another while we were at work. Originally, I wanted to get two adult cats since it is harder to find homes for them as opposed to kittens. I looked for two adult cats that liked each other but I was unsuccessful. One afternoon, we went to a local no-kill shelter. They didn’t have any pairs of compatible adult cats to adopt, but they did have a litter of two-month old kittens and their mother. The kittens were used to being around people and let me handle them. I wanted a male and a female, but the females had already been claimed. I took the two males that were left. They had a two-for-one special at the shelter so my cats were half price.

These are my new babies. They sleep on the bed with me every night and keep me company when I’m studying. They are also indoor-only cats. I’ve learned my lesson about pets and the outdoors.