Happy Birthday Tasha!

Even though we picked Tasha up from a shelter, the vet at the time told us that her 6 month teeth were not quite finished growing in.  Therefore, we estimated her birthday was somewhere at the end of October/early November.  Tasha is now 15 years old!

Absolutely amazing for a cat that had such a rough beginning.  Her trust needed to be earned, but her loyalty has never been doubted.  One year, when we went on vacation, we had a friend house sit.  Apparently Tasha didn't like him very much, because she disappeared on the 3rd day of our absence.  I found her only an hour or so after we came home.  She had decided that it was better to live under our neighbor's shed, where she could watch our driveway, than to deal with a stranger. 

On another vacation, a friend offered to watch all of our cats.  We put them in a 4' dog cage and brought them to his house.  When we returned, all of the cats had gotten out.  There was no sign of the others, but Tasha preferred to stay inside his house, torturing him by howling every night while remaining hidden.  She very happily came to me to be brought back home.

Tasha was only a year or two old when we had to relocate.  We were living in a camper at a campground.  Our clothes were located in bins on one of the unused bunks.  She would curl up in one of the bins, and it would never fail that whichever of the 3 bins we would pull out, she would be in.  It became somewhat like a shell game - who could get their clothes without being hissed at?  The trick was to pull out a bin halfway.  If you heard a hiss, or it felt heavier than usual, push it back in.  Pull it back out and it would only have clothes in it.  It took a while to figure this out, especially for my husband, but eventually it all worked out. 

Happy Birthday, Tasha!  Thank you for all of your 15 years of purrs, howls, and yes, hisses. 

Meet the Players Part 1 - Tasha

Currently our house is the desired home of 4 cats:  Tasha, Sidewinder, Haggred, and Clea.

Tasha
At age 14, Tasha, a Siamese cross, is by far the oldest and has been our friend the longest.   Fifteen years ago I had asked the local shelter to contact me if any Siamese came in.  At the time, I had recently lost another long time Siamese friend who came to me from a shelter.  I wanted to continue the tradition I had started.

Anyway, the shelter called a few weeks later to tell me they had rescued 3 Siamese kittens, whom I could go see at the animal hospital.  The police had checked out an apartment that had an odd smell, where they found a deceased man and the kittens - 2 male, 1 female.  I brought my then 6 year old daughter with me that same day to go see them.

The 2 males were fat and sleepy, lounging together in their cage.  They showed absolutely no interest in anyone or anything.  The female, known to the staff as "Yukon 3", was in a separate area as she was severely malnourished and dehydrated.  She wouldn't be ready for adoption for at least 2 weeks.  I asked to see her anyway.  When we were about 3 feet away from her cage, she crouched down in her litter box as far as she could go and hissed, spat, and growled with everything she had.  I smiled and said I would take her.  My daughter looked up at me with big, wide eyes and asked, "You want THAT one?  Are you sure?"  "Of course,"  I responded, "She's the one that needs us the most."

For the first year and a half after bringing her home, she was known as the "ghost cat".  I renamed her Tasha once I got her home, and only ever saw her around midnight when I got home from work and she was venturing out to eat her food.  Yet I was the only one in a family of four that ever saw her.  She finally let me touch her at about the 4 month mark. 

All that changed when we moved.  By the time we had her two years, she was confident and talkative.  She has stayed with us, through good times and bad.  Now she is older and sleeps more than anything else, but she is still in charge.  Just ask her.