Cats are collies too!

We realized that we have never spoken about the feline member of our family!

Pumpkin is our kitty.  We had two others, Autumn and Spice, but lost them to old age.  Pumpkin was born semi-feral, but we adopted her at such a young age, she never truly became feral.  Her mother was a barn cat, and her siblings were being killed by raccoons.  So it was urgent to get her out of there, so we adopted her when she was only 6 weeks old.  At the time, our collie Lad was very sick, he had cancer.  Pumpkin attached herself to Lad, and was never far from his side.  Whenever I had to catheterize him, or give him injections, she was always there to comfort him.  It was a very heartbreaking time in our lives, Lad was everything to us.  We lost him about a few weeks after Pumpkin to live with us.

Around that time Ryder, Kori and Luke were born.  Pumpkin was only six weeks old when they were born.  The puppies eyes opened and they began playing, right around the time we lost Lad.  So Pumpkin attached herself to the puppies, and became an “honorary” littermate.  She would curl up with them to sleep, and when they began eating puppy food, she would eat out of the bowl with them!  She would wrestle with them, and they would all play chase.  Eventually the collies were too big to play with, but Pumpkin still loved them.  So whenever they would go outside, Pumpkin would sneak outside with them.  We caught onto this, and prevented her from running out the door.  So she then learned out to open the screen door on the back porch, and she would let herself outside.  We began keeping the inner door closed, which opened with a doorknob, and that put an end to that.  So clever and determined kitty that she is, Pumpkin figured out how to push aside the extensions on the sides of the air conditioners, just enough to squeeze out the windows.  We have now secured them so she can’t do move them, and she has not been able escape outside for a few weeks now.   

She wants to be outside, but our street is just too busy and we can’t trust her to stay in the backyard.  So this is why I think she deserves to be on the naughty list!