Tiger and Baron

Once again, a stray tabby cat started showing up in the back yard of my house. Once again, I was giving treats to a hungry stray. My parents had said not to feed it or it will hang around. It was too late, I had already been feeding him. He was a brown and black tabby, like our first Tiger was, but a little smaller and he had a very high-pitched meow. My parents thought he was kind of a wimp because of that high-pitched meow. Also, he didn't seem as smart as Tiger or Tiger 2 to them. I think if he was able to survive on his own for any length of time, he was smarter than he appeared. Somebody started calling him  'Crybaby.' I'm not sure how that got started. He was a very sweet cat and didn't mind being picked-up, although he didn't want to be held for long. Tiger 2 (who we were calling 'Tiger' by this time) was not thrilled about him hanging out in the back yard. The back yard was not exactly Tiger's territory since he didn't go outside so there wasn't much he could do about it. Crybaby endeared himself to my family and I because he was so sweet.

We took him to the vet and the vet said that 'Crybaby' wasn't a very good name. We were having trouble coming up with a good name. The vet suggested we call him 'Baron.' That sounded good to us, so from then on, his name was Baron. We did eventually take him into our house. Before that happened, one warm day, I heard a commotion over by our shed, the 'Garden House.' I went over to see what is was and Baron was doing battle with a large family of Norway rats that had taken up residence under the shed. That cat was no wimp. Those rats are nasty and aggressive and he rooted them out of there. He looked like  he was enjoying the whole thing.

Baron liked to be in the car. I have never had another cat that liked to be in the car. We had a Chrysler New Yorker sedan and Baron liked to get in the back and sleep next to the back windshield. One morning, my mom got up and was looking out the window when she saw the cat stretching in the back of the car as he was just waking up. Fortunately, it was cool out, a typical Ohio early Spring day. She had to go open up the car and let him out. We had to watch him around cars after that. At least he never got up inside the engine like some cats do, he preferred to be next to the back window where he could see out and the afternoon sun would warm him up. He also used to like to ride in the car and look out the windows. People would look at him and smile when we drove by. As long as we weren't going to the vet, and were just going for a drive, he loved it.

Baron and Tiger

We had to introduce Tiger and Baron slowly. We kept them confined to different parts of the house at first. We made sure Baron got his shots. Little by little, we put them together more and for longer lengths of time. Neither cat was happy about meeting the other. There was some hissing and growling as there always is when introducing a new cat to the household. Tiger would get jealous if we payed attention to Baron, so we had to give them both attention at the same time. Tiger and Baron learned to tolerate each other, even to the point of being on a bed at the same time. They would fight  sometimes in play and sometimes for real. They did mostly play fighting. They wouldn't admit it, but it gave them something to do, especially when we were at school and work. This kind of fighting wasn't as noisy as a regular knock-down-drag-out cat fight. They would be rolled up in a ball, biting and kicking each other until one of us would break it up or one of them decided that was enough. One time, they knocked over a box in the basement with an Easter bonnet my mom had made and worn one year. When I found them, the Easter bonnet was upside down in the box and the cats were in a ball inside the Easter bonnet, kicking and biting each other. Needless to say, my mom was quite unhappy that her Easter bonnet became a fight venue.

Mom wearing the Easter bonnet that Tiger and Baron were to have a fight inside in the future.

Baron also liked music. My brother, Dan, liked to play records on his record player. Baron would come into his room, lay on his bed and listen to the music. Dan always played different kinds of music. Baron seemed to like classical music, which delighted my mom because she loved classical music. Dan and Baron had this love of music in common and Dan grew quite fond of Baron. This was special for Dan because he was never really into animals. He liked Tiger and would help feed Tiger, but never got close to him. Baron was his special companion.

My dad had decided that the neighborhood we were living in was going down hill, so he said that we should move to a nicer neighborhood. My mom didn't want to move, but my dad convinced her in his own way. In other words he told her that he was moving and she could stay, but he was moving. Needless to say, she started getting ready to move. We had to put our house up for sale and this meant lots and lots of cleaning, painting, wallpapering. There was a brand of wallpaper called 'Wal Tex' which was wallpaper with a fabric backing. Dad and I started putting Wal Tex on some of the walls. We had to keep the cats away from the wallpaper paste. This was the 70's, we put up mirror tiles in the dining area to make the house look bigger. There was also the matter of getting carpeting put in. We had hardwood floors, but they weren't that great looking, they squeaked and groaned when we walked across them. I hated them because my mom was always yelling at me for scuffing them up and I would get in trouble if I spilled something on them. In those days, if you wanted to sell a house, you had to put in carpeting, which delighted me to be free of those stupid, ugly wood floors. The two cats stayed clear of all of the fixing up. We kept them in the basement when the carpeting was installed  and they didn't like all of the noise. They especially didn't like all of the vacuuming that followed the installation of the carpeting, they both hated the vacuum cleaner. I think we had to board them at the vet's place when we had an 'Open House.' I don't exactly remember, but I know we couldn't have had them loose in the house with Tiger's tendency to attack strangers he didn't like. That would not go over as a good selling point for the house.

Our vet had moved to a new location and the new office was nice and sparkling clean, but it didn't stay that way  for very long. This guy was the only vet we knew of in the area. If I knew what I know now, I would have shopped around more. Fortunately, in the new place, there was a boarding place that was separate from the cat patients that were sick. I remember once I had to bring Tiger in to stay overnight. I think it was to get him fixed, but I'm not sure. I remember walking back with the vet technician to put him in his cage. The cage did not look real secure and the latch looked like one that Tiger could figure out in no time. I asked the technician if that was secure enough. She nonchalantly said. "Oh he'll be fine." The next day, when I came over to the cage to pick Tiger up, they let me come back to his cage.  I noticed it was secured with twist-ties all around the door. Tiger sat there looking totally innocent. I asked them if Tiger got out, but they wouldn't admit it. Some time later, I had to bring Baron in to get 'fixed.' When I brought him in, there was a different vet technician there. She said, "Is he an escape artist too?" I told them that he wasn't, but it was then I knew that Tiger had gotten out that one time he stayed there. I could imagine them chasing him all over the place. When he got out, he was not easy to catch, he was smart and fast. I'll bet they didn't make that mistake again!

After much looking around and checking out different houses on the market, my parents found a house in Gahanna, Ohio and our old house sold. The house in Gahanna required some fix-up, the basement had a crawl space with no door and we didn't want the cats wandering in the crawl space, so we had a door put on it. Also, unfortunately, it had  hardwood floors. We covered those wooden floors up with carpet almost as soon as we moved in there. Moving day came and once again, the cats had to stay at the vet's boarding place for a day while we moved. Moving is always such a mess, we had boxes everywhere. We brought the cats into the new house. We introduced them to the basement first and showed them where their cat box was. The next room they learned about was the kitchen, where their bowls were. Then they discovered the family room. This family room had a sliding patio door. Our old house didn't have one of these. The cats could comfortably sit on the floor and watch the bird activity in the back yard. The cats were delighted with this. They had fun playing in all of the moving boxes, it was like a new adventure to them.

The next thing that happened has always been a mystery to me. Tiger got deathly ill. All of the hair on the top inch of the tip of his tail fell off. He wouldn't eat or drink and he ran a fever and lost weight. I took him to the vet and the vet put him on antibiotics.  The vet thought he got into something in the new house. I had to take Tiger's temperature several times a day, which meant gently wrapping him in a towel and carefully sticking a thermometer in his rear and writing down his temperature. I would also give him water via a hypodermic syringe without the needle to make sure he stayed hydrated. I called in sick from work so I could take care of him around the clock. I fed him watered down baby food with the syringe. I was scared that we were going to lose him. I felt like a mother looking after a baby, even though I'd never actually been around a human baby.

Tiger gradually got better. He started getting a mixture of cat food and baby food and started eating on his own. We also knew he was getting better when he started putting up a fight when he got his temperature taken. He fully recovered and never had whatever that illness was again. Baron never got sick, he was fine the whole time. He did not show any symptoms whatsoever, which made me think that Tiger did get into something in the house, but we never did figure out what it was he got into.

In the evenings, Baron would hang out in Dan's room, listening to Dan playing his records. Tiger would hang out on the corner of my bed. If we were watching TV in the family room, Tiger found the spot on the top of TV console that was warm and that was where he would sleep. Both cats got put in the basement every night so they wouldn't get into fights upstairs and break mom's glassware. She had a collection of glassware on this credenza in the living room. Tiger was always able to get around the glass items so he could sun himself in the window sill. Baron wasn't quite as coordinated, but I think it was because he was getting really big. He got up to 15 pounds or more. Tiger knew when it was bed time and time for him to go into the basement. We would have to chase him around the house to catch him. This really frustrated my brother when I wasn't there and mom asked him to catch Tiger. With Baron, all we had to do was pick him up and take him downstairs.

For a while, Tiger used to like to get on top of the refrigerator.The top of the fridge was warm. The stove was right next to the refrigerator, so he would jump up on the stove and hop to the top of the fridge. It was an electric stove and Tiger walked across the burners without any regard to whether they would be hot. He must have singed a paw one day, because he started walking very gingerly around those burners to get to the top of the fridge. 

We had a bunch of plants that we put over by the patio door in the family room. One thing Baron loved to do was eat plants, so we had non-toxic plants, still, I did not like him eating my plants because he was like a feline lawnmower. One day Tiger came up to me in my room and started meowing. Then he started to walk away and looked to make sure I was following him. I followed him and he kept looking back as he walked down the stairs to the living room, to make sure I would follow him. He led me to the family room where Baron was chowing down on my plants. I yelled at Baron to get away from the plants. Tiger had a very satisfied look on his face. Tiger told on Baron.

One time my mom meant to ask Dan something, but instead, she had yelled out just as loud as can be, "Tiger, do you know where the potatoes are?" We all had a good laugh over that, especially my dad. Tiger, it turned out, did not know where the potatoes were or at least he did not tell us.

Tiger and Baron were such good company. It's hard to believe that I didn't have pets as a kid, pets make a house whole and give it a happy, comfortable feeling. It was fun during the holidays, my grandmother would come over and make the most amazing meals. The whole kitchen smelled so good. On Thanksgiving, the cats would spend all day in the kitchen. I always got them at catnip toy for Christmas and would give Tiger a treat of dried beef. Baron wasn't that crazy about dried beef, he preferred chicken.

Tiger still did not like strangers and when I went out on a date, I would not only bring the guy home not only to meet my parents, but also to meet the cat.  There were some he liked better than others, but he never attacked any of them. Tiger was also real fond of my dad and would sit near him when he would sit on the couch and read or watch TV. Tiger and Baron were real special cats and members of our family. Tiger and Baron's stories will continue, but first, there was another stray that showed up at our door. Along came Princess.

Tiger 2, A Gray, Part-Siamese Kitten

Six days after we lost Tiger, on a Friday, a kitten was brought into my dad's office. A lady that worked under my dad had heard that dad lost a cat, so she surprised him and brought this tiny kitten in a box to the office. She didn't ask him beforehand because the person who had the kitten was going to take him and his litter mates to a river and drown them in a bag. She had become attached to this little kitten and didn't want that to happen to him, so she saved his life and brought him to work. Apparently, a Siamese cat had gotten out and gotten pregnant and had a litter of kittens that weren't Siamese. This kitten was part Siamese. He was tiny and was the runt of the litter. He was only six weeks old.

We hadn't planned on getting a kitten, I didn't know that much on how to take care of kittens and we had planned on adopting an adult cat. My dad brought this little fellow home in a box and this kitten immediately showed us his personality. He was very vocal and bright-eyed. He was a little gray-striped kitten. He was so tiny that we were afraid he'd get lost in the house and might get trapped somewhere, unable to get out. We tried to keep him in a laundry basket, but he kept escaping. We tried putting two laundry baskets together, one on top of the other and stuffed the spaces between them with towels. The kitten sat on the towels and used his weight to push the towels down through the holes between the two laundry baskets and escape.  This was one smart kitten. So, we went out to the pet store and got him a small cage to stay in at night. We put a litter box (a foil pan with cat litter in it) and gave him water in little foil pans that you would usually put a baked potato in. We wondered what we should name him. My dad suggested 'Tiger 2' and we liked it, so he became Tiger 2. He became my best friend.

He was very lively and playful. He jumped at anything that moved and he was fast. He was so smart, you could see that right away, in his eyes. His eyes were blue when we first got him, but over time, turned into a beautiful light green which looked stunning with his silvery-gray fur. He had dark gray stripes and as he got older, the stripes faded a bit, but they were always there. He could also be very noisy, he had an unusually loud voice for such a small kitten. My parents said it was the Siamese in him. At night, we would put a blanket over his cage so he would be quiet and go to sleep, but in the morning, he would demand loudly to be let out. I loved playing with him and he loved to play. We had to watch him with his teeth. He loved to bite when he played, but we knew those teeth would not always be that tiny, like little pins. He also liked to climb legs whether they were clad in blue jeans or panty hose. I think he got separated from his mother too early. We had a pink shag bathmat that we'd drape over the side of the bathtub. Tiger would suckle from that bathmat the way a kitten would suckle from his mother. We called the bathmat Tiger's 'pink mother.' Years later, my husband and I took it with us when we moved with Tiger to Fort Worth, Texas.

We took Tiger 2 to the vet and the vet wasn't very impressed with him because he was a runt, but Tiger 2 never was very impressed with that vet either and let him know it under no uncertain terms. Tiger 2 could put up a  good fight for such a tiny kitten. I wasn't real impressed with that vet either, I like the vet we have now much, much better, she is so much cleaner. We wanted to give Tiger 2 good care from day one. We got him his shots and we took good care of him from the very beginning. This cat would never be let outside to roam the neighborhood.

I remember when I went to summer camp that year, I was going around camp and showing everyone pictures of Tiger 2. My parents wrote me a letter at camp and told me all that Tiger 2 was up to. When I got back from camp a week later, Tiger had gotten a little bigger. Tiger 2 was helping me to cope with the loss of my first Tiger. We eventually dropped the '2' and started calling him Tiger.

Tiger grew quickly as most kittens do. He outgrew the cage quickly. He became a really beautiful cat. We got him a silver collar with little fake jewels on it and it looked great with his gray fur. He was still very active, playful and kitten-like.  He got big enough that we started keeping him in the basement at night like we did our first Tiger. We had a doorway that led to a landing and on one side was the back door and on the other side was the stairs leading to the basement. At night, we would put Tiger behind that door and close it. Tiger figured out how to open that door in a very short time. We would no sooner put him behind that door and he would open it and come back out. This door had a door knob, not one of those handles like you see on many doors nowadays. We had a portable dishwasher that we could roll across the kitchen on wheels and we would use it to block the door so that Tiger couldn't open the door back up when we put him in the basement. We had his litter box and bowls down there. It was a nice, big basement with that comfy sofa, so he had a nice place to hang out. He would still rather be upstairs with us, but at night, he tore around the house and made a racket when my parents were trying to sleep.

Tiger was a lot of fun. He also sassed my mom. That was fun to watch. My mom could be kind of overbearing and a little bossy sometimes. He would get up on the kitchen table, which was not allowed and my mom would say "Tiger, you get down off that table right now!" Tiger would look her in the eyes and give her a great big meow. It sounded like he was saying, "Make me!" She would tell him not to sass and he would meow back. This would go on for a little while until she finally picked him up and put him on the ground and he would still meow at her  after he got put on the ground. Tiger was stubborn. He had to get the last 'word' in.  My mom said that her kids didn't sass her but our cat did.

As Tiger got older, we had to get him 'fixed.' He was becoming aggressive towards certain strangers that would come to the house. In those days, my mom had groceries delivered to the house, she would phone in what she needed and they would bring them to the house. Tiger did not like the grocery delivery man and would bristle up and hiss when this guy brought the groceries into the house. Little did Tiger know that this delivery guy was also delivering his cat food. Tiger would yowl at the mailman when he came to drop the mail in the mailbox on our front porch. Tiger also did not like the meter reader either and we had to keep the cat out of the way when the meter reader would go into the basement to read the gas meter. Nowadays, it's all computerized, but back then, a person had to read the meter. One day, my mom was at work, my brother and I were at school and my grandmother was at our house. She did not know about Tiger's aggressive tendencies. The meter reader came to the door and grandma let him in. Tiger (who was full-grown by now) puffed up, hissed and chased the guy down the stairs. Then the guy ran back up the stairs with Tiger close on his heels.  Grandma held something in front of Tiger so the meter reader could escape. The meter reader left a red tag on the front door saying the meter reader couldn't read the meter today because -there was a list of reasons provided with the last one being a blank line. It read that the meter reader couldn't read the meter because of a "bad cat" which was written in on the last line. I can still remember my grandmother telling me about it when I got home from school. We had to mark the readings on the meter and mail it in. Getting Tiger 'fixed' did keep him from spraying but he always had aggressive tendencies towards certain human visitors he didn't want coming into his territory. He tried the aggression with a neighbor lady who visited us once, but she was experienced with many animals and she talked back to him and he stood down and let her pass.

Tiger had a fascination with running water. He didn't want to touch it but he liked to watch it. He liked to watch the washer fill. Our washer had a window in the lid (it was a top loader) and he would sit on top of the washer and watch it fill. He was also fascinated with the dishwasher. We had a portable dishwasher. The house we were living in was built in the 1950's and didn't come with a dishwasher. Even in the 1960's, a dishwasher was a rare thing. When my mother developed an allergy to dish detergent, her doctor said that dad would have to wash the dishes. Dad went out and bought a dishwasher. It was a Kitchenaid, it loaded from the top. We had a large, square kitchen and kept the dishwasher against the back wall until it was time to load it and hook it up to the sink. Tiger liked to catch a ride on it, so he would jump up on top of the dishwasher and one of us would roll it over to the sink. Then we'd load the dishwasher and hook it up to the faucet. There were two hoses attached to a big nozzle that would hook up to the faucet. Fresh water would run through one hose and used water would run through the other. When the dishwasher went through the rinse cycle, a large jet of water would spew out of this nozzle into the sink. Tiger loved to watch that. He would sit up on the dishwasher and wait for the rinse cycle, then he would watch the water spew out. After that, the dishwasher would go into the drying cycle and the lid got warm, so Tiger would sometimes curl up on top of the dishwasher until it got too warm.

Mom standing next to that old dishwasher that Tiger liked. Mom would have a fit if she thought this picture was up here, she didn't like the expression on her face in the photo.

Tiger was beautiful, smart and a lot of fun. He followed me around everywhere in the house and we bonded. He liked to hang out with me in my room, or in the basement, where I did my homework and studying.  We had a long hallway in that house where the bedrooms were and Tiger loved to take off and run like a wild cat down that hallway. At the end of the hallway was the bathroom and Tiger would run down the hallway and then slide down the slanted part of the end of the bathtub. One day mom was drawing a bath for my brother when Tiger took off down the hallway, slid down the back of the bathtub and landed in the water. Fortunately it wasn't very full and my mom was there. She and I caught Tiger and had to dry him off. I don't think he did the sliding into the bathtub thing after that.

Tiger could be very sneaky too. My mom and dad would leave for work early and take my brother to my grandma's where he would walk to school from there. I would be at home until the school bus came for me later. Every week day, my mom would call home from work, probably to make sure I was up. I would usually be fixing my lunch for school when she called. In the kitchen, we had an old wall phone with a very short cord. The cordless phones hadn't come out yet. One day, I was making a dried beef sandwich and had just laid the dried beef on the bread when she called. I answered the phone and the cord would not reach the counter where I had been making the sandwich. Suddenly, Tiger jumped up on the counter, took the dried beef off of my sandwich, got back on the floor and ate it very quickly. I was impressed with how he figured the whole thing out. I would usually give him treats of dried beef when I was making a sandwich but that day, he helped himself. It was very salty and I couldn't give him much, but he loved the stuff.

There was another time, after we had moved to Gahanna, Ohio, that my brother was on TV, on the news. It was something to do with the training school he was in and his job and how they are able to accommodate disabled people. It came on the evening news around 6 PM just as we were about to sit down to dinner. There was a hunk of corned beef sitting at dad's place, he was about to serve it up to the family. We all went into the family room to see my brother on TV. Tiger got on the table and took the corned beef right off of the table and started chowing down. I forget who caught him, but he got in big trouble for that and had to spend some time in the basement. That was his 'time out.'

My mom had a friend at work who really, really loved cats. She had several cats at home and these cats really had it made, she took the best care of them, like they were her kids. She was a kind, sweet lady and  I remember she sent me a beautiful card when we lost our first Tiger. Mom invited her over to our house one day. It was during the holidays and our Christmas tree was up. When this nice lady came over, Tiger knew right away that she seriously loved cats and really liked him. He took an instant liking to her. He showed off and went on a wild tear around the house. At one point he got into the Christmas tree and shot out of the middle of it. Of course this lady loved Tiger's antics. Tiger was always wary of strangers, but he knew she was no stranger and knew what a nice lady she was. There was another time, after we had moved to our house in Gahanna, Ohio, that my mom had friends over who didn't really like cats, they were 'dog people.' Tiger was all over them, getting on their laps, rubbing against their legs and stuff like that. They were nice about it, but didn't go out of their way to pet him or anything, My mom had me put Tiger in the basement so they wouldn't be so uncomfortable, but I still thought that was amusing.

It wasn't long after Tiger had grown up, that another really pretty brown tabby started hanging out at our house.  My mom said not to feed it because he'll start hanging around the house. I had already been feeding him treats. Tiger did not like seeing this strange cat show up at the door but he didn't feel threatened by him.Tiger was about to get a roommate.

Tiger Part 2

Tiger was our cat, he stayed with us, but he'd still go outside during the day. When my parents and grandmother were growing up, pets stayed outside. My grandmother lived on a farm and cats did the job of rodent control on the farm, cats did not live in the house. Also she thought the cat would be happier outside. Our neighbors left their cat out most of the time. Even my friend who had the black cat named 'Cinders' let her cat outside. You didn't keep cats inside then, apparently not even the pampered Persians on the cat food ads. Nowadays, our cats do not go outside, it's too dangerous, what with cars, unscrupulous humans and the occasional coyote, hawk or owl that visits the neighborhood. Back then, when Tiger wanted out and got let out, he would often be gone most of the day but would come back in the evening. Sometimes he would be gone for a couple of days and I would worry about him and call for him late at night. He would eventually return and I would be so relieved that he was back.

He would also eat the neighbor's dog food. The dog would be on a leash and barking wildly while Tiger polished off the food. My mom thought, if he likes dog food, she'll get him a can of dog food, but when she did, he turned it down cold, it was the challenge of having a dog after him while he ate that he enjoyed. The vet also told us not to give him dog food, that cat food was better for him. When Tiger first came to live with us, he would eat anything, but now that he had lived with us for a while, he got quite particular on what he was served for dinner. His favorite was 9-Lives Tuna and Egg. He also decided he no longer liked dry cat food.

He was getting into fights with other neighborhood cats and picked up all kinds of illnesses and injuries. We found a local vet. His office had a funny smell to it. Our current vet's office is like a doctor's office, it sparkles and has no smell. I met someone who worked there for a while and said the vet wanted everything perfectly clean, so I really like our current vet. Anyway, this vet we took Tiger to was a great big guy and he had a small practice on the east side of Columbus and it didn't have the clean feeling our current vet's office does. We didn't have a carrier, so we'd bring Tiger in on a leash. We couldn't find a cat collar that would fit him, so we bought a dog collar that fit him just fine. We had a heavy chain leash that looked like it was more for a large dog. Tiger, like any normal cat, didn't like going to the vet's and would growl the whole time he was there. We had to stay clear of other patients in the waiting room so he would not start a fight. Tiger would put up a fight when he got his temperature taken. Back then, the thermometer was placed in the rear, an indignity that no cat appreciated. Nowadays, they have a gadget that you just stick in the ear for about a second, which is easier on both the pet and the vet. When Tiger got prescribed pills to take, the vet tried to show us how to give Tiger a pill. Tiger spat the pill out with a vengeance each and every time the vet tried to give him a pill. Tiger would hiss and spit at the vet and would wriggle and fight like a wild banshee. By this time, Tiger had gotten really big, he weighed around 18 pounds and could really put up a fight. The vet finally gave up and said to crunch the pill up in his food. That worked for a while until Tiger got wise to us adding things to his food and wouldn't eat after we added medicine to his food.. After that, we had to get the medicine in liquid form and try to shoot it into his mouth with a hypodermic without the needle as fast as we could. We visited the vet's office frequently and my mom said that the vet bills were higher than the pediatrician bills.

One time, Tiger went out and didn't come back for three days. I thought for sure that we'd lost him. I would call for him several times a day, much to the annoyance of other people in the neighborhood. I was so afraid that somebody had taken him or he was trapped somewhere. Then, one afternoon, he finally showed up at our back porch, dragging one back leg behind him. The back leg was twisted in a sickening way. We don't know what happened to him, but wondered if he got hit by a car.  It was amazing that he made it back to our house because he was obviously in pain and it was hard to walk back, dragging that leg behind him, but I was glad that it was our house he came to. He knew we were his family and that we would make him feel better. We took him to the vet immediately. He had a broken leg and so the vet set it and put it in an ace bandage with a metal brace. He said Tiger's foot would always stick out now, unless we had a pin put in the joint. That was a very expensive procedure and we couldn't afford it. The vet said that Tiger wouldn't be in any discomfort, his foot would just stick out.  We decided we had to opt for that. After that, Tiger didn't go outside on his own any more.

After his leg healed, Tiger still wanted out. He would sit by the door and meow frequently. I would take him for walks around the neighborhood with his collar and leash. Actually, a harness would have been better, but I didn't know it at the time. He was the only cat I've ever had that would walk on a leash. He did, however, take me his way, through bushes, around yards, the places he used to go when he went outside on his own. He loved to check out the neighbor's dogs but could no longer irritate them by finishing off their food. He would take me through the neighborhood on days that it didn't rain. I didn't want to go through shrubbery when it was raining.

One time, he bit me, I forget why, but animals react with their instincts when they feel threatened, even domestic animals. We were out on a walk when he did. Why our vet hadn't given him a rabies shot right away is a mystery to me because every vet I have ever taken a pet to always makes sure our animals have had their shots. Anyway, Tiger got loose and we couldn't find him. I was afraid he would have to be tested for rabies and I would have to get the shots in the stomach (back then, rabies treatments for humans were administered to the stomach).  Thanks to some helpful neighborhood kids, Tiger was found in a basement window well and they held him there until we could pick him up. Tiger never developed any symptoms of rabies and I didn't have to get any shots, but Tiger got rabies and distemper shots after that. Tiger also didn't go out on any more walks on the leash.

Things started to get a little better for me. I was growing my hair out and found out ways that I could iron my hair and set it in orange juice cans to make it straighter because I hated having curly hair when the style was straight hair.. The straightening devices that are used nowadays didn't exist back then. I no longer had to wear corrective shoes and got some new glasses. My mom got a full-time job, the first she'd had in years and seemed much happier. I was involved with a youth group with my church and had a few friends. Best of all, I had Tiger and he was inside all of the time, I didn't have to worry about anyone taking him from me or him getting hurt. He seemed quite happy too.

Tiger continued to get more beautiful every day. Since we started feeding him, he got bigger and his markings became darker and more distinct. My dad would like to hold him, but Tiger didn't like to get held for very long and would growl and the growl would grow and my dad would have to let him loose. Tiger spent a lot of time on my bed, or I would spend time with Tiger in the basement on his sofa with him. It was nice when I was sick and Tiger would keep me company. When we made dinner, especially if it was chicken, he would sit out in the kitchen and make demands with that low meow of his, for some chicken. He always got some chicken scraps and on Thanksgiving, he would get some turkey. It was so much fun having a pet around during the holidays. Tiger didn't mess with the Christmas tree, we always had a real tree. He loved to sleep behind the tree. He liked to sniff the branches and just be around it. It probably reminded him of the bushes he sought solace in when he was on his own and liked the wonderful pine smell that it had.

We enjoyed Tiger tremendously and he seemed to like being with us. He didn't meow any longer to go outside, he preferred to watch the outside from the comfort of the window. I began reading as much as I could about cats. I had a book on cat and kitten care and frequently got 'Cat Fancy' magazines. I also got cat books from the library. I learned so much about cats and wanted to learn more. I talked about my cat more than my friends probably would have liked to hear, but I loved having a cat. My gym teacher was an older lady who loved cats and loved hearing about Tiger. Back then, gym classes were divided, the girls were in one class and the boys were in another. A lot of the girls didn't like the girls's gym teacher because she was old and could be very strict and firm. She had rules and didn't take any crap off of the popular girls. I got along with her just fine and she was always nice to me and this other girl in the class who liked cats. She would tell me about her kitties and I liked her.

Summer came and school ended for the year. At the end of July, my family and I took a trip to visit Appomattox in Maryland,  Williamsburg, Virginia, Virginia Beach and to visit my Aunt Bonnie and Uncle 'Tode' in Roanoke, Virginia. We boarded Tiger at the vet that we took him to while we were gone. My mom and dad loved to visit historical places and I loved Virginia Beach and visiting my cousins. When we went to Virginia Beach, it was my first time seeing the ocean and I loved it. My mom hated it because she was deathly afraid of the water. We had a balcony attached to our hotel room and I loved to sit out there and watch the waves roll in and out, while it made my mom a nervous wreck, the wave motion was soothing to me. When we came back to Columbus, we picked Tiger up at the vet. The vet noticed that Tiger had thrown up, which I thought was probably a hair ball but the vet was very alarmed about it. I think he ran some tests on Tiger or put him on medicine, but I don't exactly remember. Tiger got very sick and stopped eating a few days later. We took him back to the vet and the vet kept him overnight. The next day, I was at my grandma's house and mom called and said the vet called, she told me, "Poor old Tig didn't make it through the night." I was devastated and heartbroken. It was the first time I'd ever lost anybody, human or animal and this was my beloved cat. It really tore me up and and Tiger's loss upset my parents and brother as well.

A necropsy had to be done on Tiger at Ohio State University. A necropsy is like an autopsy, but on an animal, it's called a necropsy. The results showed that his kidneys had given out. It was called 'Chronic Nephrosis.'  What I think happened is that Tiger had FIV, Feline Immunodeficiency Virus. Nobody knew anything about it back then but now it is suspected that cats got it even back then and veterinary scientists didn't yet know what it was. Cats get it from getting into fights with infected cats. When the infected cat bites the other cat, the virus enters the bloodstream through saliva. It breaks down the immune system much in the same was HIV does to humans. Tiger got sick a lot and he got into a lot of cat fights, especially with that one feral long-haired cat. There is no cure for it, even today. There's not even an effective vaccine, although there are vaccines, they are not effective on all strains of FIV. I learned all of this from having a cat I had in the early 2000's, named 'Slinky' who was FIV positive. What I think happened is that Tiger, with his weakened immune system. he perhaps picked up something at the vet's office and his body probably just gave out from all of the stresses on it. He was only about 2 or 3 years old. Here is is 2013 and he's up on the Cat Channel on the internet. Tiger will not be forgotten.

Sometime after Tiger died, a neighbor called and complained that Tiger was eating their dog's food. Mom told her that it wasn't Tiger, that Tiger had died. It was that long-haired feral tiger cat, he was also going around eating the neighbor's dog's food just like Tiger had done. This cat showed up on our porch a few times and I would put some food out for him, but he never let me touch him. Tiger would have been furious to think that cat was coming around to his territory. After a while, that feral cat stopped coming around.

My parents said after some time had passed, to give us time to get over him, that they would take me to a place in Columbus called 'Cat Welfare' to adopt another cat. It didn't happen that way. Six days later, Tiger 2 came into our lives.

Tiger

Tiger was my very first cat and my first pet - ever. We never had pets in the house when I was little, I don't know why, we just didn't, maybe my parents didn't want to deal with an animal, I really don't know. Maybe they didn't want the mess, the inconvenience or the expense of a pet. With my parents, especially my mom, it was hard to tell. Tiger was truly a unique cat. He did the impossible. Tiger convinced my family -both parents included - to adopt him.

When I was 13, during the summer,  a big brown and black striped stray cat came around to visit us one day.  I had been wanting a cat. A friend of mine had just gotten a black cat and I went over to her house to see her and her cat and I thought that cat was really nice. She told me stories about her cat every day. The cat's name was 'Cinders' because it liked to lay in the litter box and being a black cat, he looked like he was covered with ashes. I had previously and erroneously thought that cats were delicate had to be pampered from seeing puffy Persians on cat food ads on TV. I was starting to learn, through my friend, that this was definitely not the case. Then there was this show on TV called 'Big Cats, Little Cats' and that really made me want a cat. That's when Tiger came into my life. Tiger, while just being himself, came into our lives and showed me what a strong tough predators domestic cats really are.

I remember, it was around July or August in the late 1960's when Tiger came on to our front porch. It was was a big square, covered porch with a wrought iron railing around the edge and then was surrounded by a hedge that had sweet-smelling flowers which flies loved. It was fun to shake the bushes and make the flies zoom around and buzz loudly. It was a hot day and this cat was probably looking for some cover away from the sun. I saw him on our porch, caught him and started rubbing him under his chin. At first, he started to growl, but slowly, the growling went away and it looked like he was smiling. I got him a saucer of milk. I didn't know then that cow's milk often gives cats indigestion. Back then, people put out a saucer of milk for a stray cat. He was hungry, so he lapped the milk right up.

He decided that this wasn't a bad place to hang out. I pet him and called him 'Tiger' because with those stripes, he looked like a tiger. He seemed to know that was his name. As it got darker, he went into the hedge for better security, but when I called out his name, he meowed. I called out his name several times and each time, he answered with a meow. He started to come around every day and learned to come to the back door which was just off the kitchen. I left treats outside for him, including a few table scraps.

My parents noticed him hanging around the house. He had a low, guttural meow and looked like a pretty tough guy and they liked that about him. He was intelligent and you could see it in his eyes. He was also a very pretty cat with those black stripes along with the white on his cheeks and chin and the light tan tummy with a line of spots. He wasn't a cuddly cat, he didn't like to be picked-up and he didn't like his tail or his back legs being touched in any way. I think he could have easily become feral had we not taken him in. He was still really cool and obviously ruled the neighborhood.

 Our neighbor's cat, a dainty little calico cat named Taffy noticed him too, when she went into heat and he noticed her too. One day, my grandmother was visiting and was cooking in the kitchen. I heard the strangest cat sounds coming from the back porch and wanted to see what the fuss was about. My grandmother grew up on a farm and knew EXACTLY what the fuss was all about and didn't want me looking out the back door to see what the fuss was all about. Perhaps she thought they wanted their privacy, but more likely, she just didn't want anything to do with it. A few months later, Taffy had a litter of kittens and one of them looked just like Tiger, except that he was gray. One of the other kittens looked like Taffy and I forget what the other kitten looked like, I think Taffy had a litter of 3 kittens. I remember the first time I went down to their basement and saw the kittens. It was the first time I'd ever seen newborn kittens that were only hours old. They were so tiny and their eyes were closed, but they knew where their mother was.

Tiger came around to our house every day and hung out in the bushes of the back yard. Sometimes he would sit on the shed we had that was attached to the house. My dad called it the garden house and the roof was easily accessible to our back porch. I think he could see what was going on with the birds and other animals in the neighborhood. We were feeding him every day now. My mother even bought a dry cat food that came in a pink box that looked like a milk carton and it was called 'Milkit.' Tiger was capturing the hearts of our family. He had already captured mine, but now he was capturing the hearts of my parents and even my brother. Sometimes, when my parents were unaware, I'd let him into the house briefly. 

I was in middle school, which back then, was called 'junior high school'. I was in seventh grade and getting used to going to different classes, rather than staying in one classroom all day long, which actually wasn't bad because it gave a long, boring day a little variety. Tiger still came to our house everyday and I fed him everyday. Occasionally, Tiger wouldn't show up for a couple of days and I worried that something might have happened to him. My mom thought someone else was also feeding him and that made me very angry that someone would try to take my cat away. I was already considering him my cat. Tiger was starting to put on a little weight, which was good because he was very skinny. He would get into a fight every once in a while, with a long haired tabby who I think was feral. This cat sometimes had the nerve to come into our yard which Tiger had staked out as his territory. This was not tolerated by Tiger and he would let his feelings be known to this intruder in a big, noisy way.

When the kittens got old enough, Taffy would bring them outside and occasionally, they would wander over to our yard.  The neighbor's boy named the kitten that looked like Tiger, Timmy. One day, I saw Tiger showing Timmy how to hunt, which I later found out was unusual because sometimes the father cat might harm or kill the kittens, but Tiger was being good to Timmy. as Timmy got older, his gray fur turned more brown and he looked even more like his dad.

Here's the only picture taken of Timmy, Tiger's son.

Unfortunately, our neighbors often left Taffy and her kittens outside and Timmy disappeared, we think some idiot stole him. It's really better to leave cats and kittens inside, there are so many terrible things that can happen to them outside. It was sad when he disappeared, he was turning into a really beautiful kitten and he was smart, just like his dad.

Meanwhile, Tiger was my best friend. He was not a lap cat, he hated being handled and he sported a lot of attitude, but he like to be petted on the head and rubbed on the chin and behind his ears. He would be with me and it made me feel happy when he was there. When I talked to him, he would meow his low meow. One thing I discovered about cats is the unconditional love they give, even the less cuddly, tough cats. They have a presence that makes you feel better. I wasn't very happy in school. This was in the late 60's when girls wore long, beautiful straight hair and mine was short and frizzy. I had to wear weird-looking old glasses that were just plain ugly and  also had to wear abominations called corrective shoes. I was born pigeon-toed with my hip out of joint and was forced to wear these hideous monstrosities until I was fourteen. I swear the people who designed this horrible footwear did their very best to make them as ugly and unattractive as humanly possible so kids like me could be ridiculed. Add that to the fact that I was overprotected and very sheltered by well-meaning parents, not very socially aware and looked like I was about 10 years old at the age of 13, so I was about as popular at school as someone carrying the plague. Add that to the fact that my parents were often  hassling me about my grades, so it was not the best of times for me. Tiger gave me solace and friendship. He gave me what nobody else could give me. He gave me unconditional love.

When Halloween came, we were afraid someone would play a cruel Halloween prank on him and maybe hurt him, so my parents, who had also grown fond of Tiger, let me take him into our house to stay for the first time. We bought him a litter box with cat litter and he had a water bowl and a food bowl. It was my responsibility to feed him, give him water and change his cat litter. We didn't get him a cat bed because he stayed in the basement at night and we had a comfortable sofa down there that he could sleep on and he had that whole sofa to himself which was so much better than the hard ground under the bushes. Tiger was  at that point, our cat, he was my first cat.

Oh Christmas Tree

Today is New Years Day, so the holiday season is over and some people have already taken down their Christmas trees. I just wanted to say a little bit about ours. We got it at Kroger. It's an 8 foot Douglas Fir. Stacy counted the rings on the base and it's about 8 years old. We brought it home in our old '02 Civic. We were able to fold down the back seat and fit it into the back or the car, which is so much nicer than driving home with it on the roof, worrying that it will slide off, although we've never had that happen. Steve cut an inch off the base so that it would absorb water, and cut off some of the bottom branches so that it would fit into the holder we have for that purpose. The branches from the bottom I used to make a wreath to put outside on the wall by our front door. We brought it inside and  put the water holder - for lack of a better word - on it. I had some Christmas tree preservative that I added to the water and that seems to help the tree to last longer.The tree we got this year was a little skinnier than the one we got last year, but it has a beautiful, perfect shape to it. I can remember back in the 60's when you had to put the bare spots to the back, but this tree doesn't have any bare spots, it's beautiful all around.

Our Christmas trees have always been special. One year, my husband and daughter (who was really young at the time) bought the last tree at a local Food Lion store on Christmas Eve, so it would be in a home for Christmas. We get a real tree every year now.

Our Christmas tree this year (2012) with it snowing outside, a rare white Christmas in North Texas.

After getting the tree set up in the house, came the decorations. This year, we had all LED lights on the tree, I like them because they burn cooler than the old traditional incandescent lights. We had a string of musical lights that the kids loved when they were little, but after 20 years of being stored in hot attics for most of the year, when I plugged them in this year, the lights didn't work and the songs, while they worked, sounded off, like they were slowed down. Last year, I got some motion activated lights that run on batteries and play music at an after Christmas sale at Kroger. The only thing was that the cats would often run under the tree, set off the lights and the music would start to play, This happened so much that I set the lights to just come on without the music. When I was a kid, we used sets of C-7 bulbs and they were so hot that they dried the tree out. I have a set, but haven't used them in a long time. The nice thing about them is that if one bulb burned out, the whole string wouldn't go out and they were easy to replace, but they are just too hot.

Next I put on the garlands, we have lots of bead garlands, but every year, I always find some after I get the ornaments up, but I put them on anyway.We also have icicle garlands, puff ball garlands and some tear-drop-shaped bead garlands that came from my mom's house. We even have a garland with colored fish on it. There are also the traditional tinsel garlands and thank goodness the cats leave those alone. I also have a twisted bead garland from the 1980's when those kind of beads were the style, but it's a little heavy to put on the tree.

My mom always had an order to decorating the tree, first the lights, then the garlands, then the ornaments, then the tinsel. Of course we haven't used tinsel in years. For some reason, cats like to eat tinsel. Why they'll eat that and not the canned cat food I serve them, I don't know, but they find tinsel to be tasty, then they regurgitate it and then it has to be cleaned up. The cats wouldn't touch the canned food I gave them tonight. The worst part about tinsel is that it can wrap around a cat's intestine and kill it, so it's better not to hang tinsel at all. I remember that in the 60's, trees just dripped with tinsel, we had tinsel in the late 1960's that was turquoise on one side and gold on the other of each strand. I don't even think stores sell tinsel anymore. I don't miss it, I'd much rather have healthy kitty cats.

Here's a picture of my brother in front of our Christmas tree in 1960.


Family Christmas Tree 1970, a few of these ornaments were on our tree in 2012.

The ornaments are the fun part. It's fun to take them out of the storage box and unwrap them and find ornaments I'd forgotten about. I like our tree better than those fancy department store Christmas trees because our Christmas tree is special with all of the unique ornaments adorning it. Some of the ornaments have little stories behind them. There are ornaments that my kids made when they were little. There's one made out of Popsicle sticks glued so it looks like a star with gold glitter on it. There's one Jeffrey made that is  like a permanent  ginger cookie in the shape of a star that smells like ginger and has green glitter on it. There's one that Stacy made when she was 3 which is a opaque, frosted plastic cup with a pipe cleaner through it so it looks like a bell. There are ornaments with my kids' pictures in them when they were little. There's a plaster Santa Claus with a few daubs of red paint on it, made by Jeffrey in 1991. There's a clear ornament that Stacy drew a reindeer on with metallic paint pens. There are a couple of ceramic ornaments that my kids decorated with glaze and then were baked in a kiln at MJDesigns. There's a ceramic ornament that I decorated with hummingbirds that was also glazed. The ornament Jeffrey painted, he said, was a picture of a tornado, he was fascinated by tornadoes at the time.

There's an ornament. a multi-colored glass ball, that I bought at a Ben Franklin Five and Dime store at an after Christmas sale for 5 cents in the late 1960's when I was going from school to my grandma's apartment. There was a strip shopping center that I would go through on my way to her apartment. The people who ran the five and dime were friends of ours and were real nice. There are a few ornaments from the tree my grandmother used to put up on the little tree she had in her apartment. They are little carolers in little glitter balls. My grandmother gave us her little artificial tree when we got married and that was the tree we used for several years. It is still up in our attic. I used to put it up in the upstairs living room after we moved to the house in McKinney, but Jeff uses that table now. There's also a Courier and Ives Christmas ornament that I got from Buckeye Letter Service when I worked there, but I don't put it on the tree because it's large and fragile and it has spots on it from much time spent in a hot attic. There is also a set of wooden ornaments that my mom got for us when the kids were little and we put all non-breakable ornaments on the tree.

There are a few ornaments from the Christmas tree I sent to Steve for his first Christmas in Fort Worth, before we were married, when I was still in Ohio. I couldn't imagine him having Christmas without a Christmas tree, so I sent him a little artificial tree and some ornaments, along with a little plastic manger scene to put under the tree.

There are lots of ornaments that I got from various craft stores like MJDesigns, Hobby Lobby, Michaels and   Garden Ridge as well as a craft store that used to be in what is now an office building on Collins in Arlington. I got a discount when I worked at Hobby Lobby, MJDesigns and Michaels and that came in handy at the after-Christmas sales. There's a 'tree cookie' ornament that I bought from the Heard Museum. A 'Tree Cookie' is a section of tree trunk cut away and it looks like a cookie. You can count the rings and know how old the tree was and that tree cookie is from a tree that was at the Heard, so a part of the Heard is on our Christmas tree. Also, there is a snowman made from a tree branch from the Heard when Stacy was supervising a kids' craft project at the Heard. These bits of branches were in little kits and you could make one of them into a wooden snowman ornament. I made a snowman from one of the left-over little kits. There are also metal ornaments shaped like moons, stars and other interesting shapes.and the little animal ornaments like lizards that I bought at the Heard Museum gift shop.

There is the collection of ornaments I got at Ikea, they are fuzzy snowflakes in a number of colors, there are red ones, turquoise ones, pink ones, green ones, etc. There are several collections of plastic icicles, some are white, some are clear and bluish. There are a few ornaments from the 1960's when my brother and I were little kids. There is a plastic acorn and a blue plastic bell with stripes that is from 1958 when my brother and I were toddlers and my mom didn't want ornaments broken so she got all plastic ones. There's a little elf in a sitting position from the 1960's, that I see retro copies of now-a-days, but this is an original. There are two little clear plastic ornaments (in 3-D versions of a hexagon -Dodecahedrons), one with a caroler inside, one with a Santa-like elf inside from around 1967. There is a little plastic ball of pine needles with tiny plastic poinsettias mixed in that I used to hang on the lamp in my room during the hollidays in the 1960's-1970's. There are a couple of bells made out of yarn that my Grandma Briggs crocheted and a pair of ice skates made out of yarn with paper clips for the blades, that Steve's Grandma Murphy crocheted.

 There are a number of ornaments that I made, including clear ornaments that I bought at Hobby Lobby. I pour acrylic paint and glitter in the inside of them and swished it around. Then I let them dry. On one of them, I drew a scribbly Christmas tree with a paint pen. There are a couple of Origami cranes that I made and one that a friend of mine from JCPenney made for Stacy. There is also an ornament I made of lace from a kit from Michael's like a snowflake, only I didn't want to put stiffener on it like the instructions said. There's a snowflake ornament that I made from beads and pipe cleaners like the two snowflakes that I had bought at a church bazaar in the 70's, one was blue and white and the other was red and white, mine was multi-colored because that was the colors of beads I had gotten from MJDesigns. I just wanted to see if I could make one like them and I did. Also, hanging on the tree, is a butterfly ornament that I made from a kit I got at Michael's.

There are also ornaments from an ornament exchange at the Art Club of McKinney's yearly Christmas party There's one with a paintbrush and palette, covered in white sparkly glitter. There's another one of a beautiful glass deer. There's another real pretty, fragile, ceramic ornament that I got one year and that gets put up on the mantle.

There are some ornaments I got from my family.There's a stuffed cow that one of my brothers-in-law gave my husband and I after we first got married and moved to Texas. There's an ornament that is two little birds in a nest that my mother-in-law gave to Steve and I for the first Christmas we were married.There are a couple of little mice on an old-time phone receiver - one for Jeff and one for Stacy, that my mother-in-law gave them years ago. There are also two little wooden angels, one a boy and one a girl that she gave them one year. there are a couple of ornaments on the tree that she made when she used to do crafts. There are a few clear plastic ornaments that my mother-in-law gave to us that came free in cans of coffee in the 1980's. There's a Santa and Mrs. Santa that my mother-in-law made while she was into arts and crafts, also we have a macrame wreath that she made.

One year, when we lived in Arlington, the family across the street didn't have any money for Christmas, so the mother and daughter baked up a batch of ornament cookies, painted them up real pretty and went around the neighborhood selling them. We bought a number of them, including a Santa Clause, a wreath, a candle and a little troll head.

There's a big, round Santa Claus head that hangs on our tree that a copy chief at Color Tile had given to the writers at the Color Tile headquarters where I worked at the time. One of the writers gave hers to me for Jeff (before Stacy was born). The other writer that received one ended-up depositing it on the window ledge and watching what visiting birds did with it. That copy chief was a classic 'Yuppie' and was not real popular with his writers. There's also a carousel horse ornament that I bought from someone selling them at the Color Tile HQ.

Fish ornament I got at World Market

There's a little ornament of a toy horse on a stick (I think you call it a 'hobby horse) that a friend of mine from Color Tile gave to Jeff (before Stacy was born). She also later gave me several little reindeer ornaments that are still used as tree decorations. There are numerous animal ornaments, including some beautiful fish ornaments that I think I got at World Market. There's also a balsa wood giraffe that I got there that I've had repair a couple of times and have to be very careful when I pack it. I also have a wooden shark and a wooden frog (that had to be repaired this year). There's a beautiful glass ornament with a picture of an eagle in flight on it that we got on our trip out west to Colorado in 2007. There's also a ceramic oranment with lizards painted on it that we got in Santa Fe, New Mexico on our trip there in 2007. There's a glass kitty ornament that we bought at a store in McKinney called 'Sweet Caroline's."

Balsa wood giraffe

There's an ornament that has an interesting story behind it. When my mother died, I donated a bunch of her handkerchiefs to the church that helped us out and they made them into angels for people in nursing homes to hang in their tree or as a decoration. One handkerchief said "mother' in pink and white embroidery and they sent that one to me in my mother's memory. There are also two doves from memorial services for those who passed away a certain year. There's one with Steve's grandma's name on it and one with my mom's name on it. They are very special.

This is made from one of my mother's handkerchiefs that was given to me by the ladies from the Mifflin Presbyterian Church in memory of my mother.

Our Christmas tree last year

This is an ornament we had on our tree when I was a kid. 

It is now put on our tree every year.

There are sets of crocheted snow flakes -some of them sparkly, sets of plastic candy canes, sets of blue jingle bells and a set of opaque frosted Nativity scene ornaments that look real pretty by colored lights hanging in our tree. There's the one-eared panda, the fabric gingerbread man and a star made out of gold-colored screen that I call my 'screen star.' There are also a couple stuffed stars. I think of my friend, Mary, when I see those. Marry was a typesetter at Tandy Technical Publications who had her office next to mine. I put up a small tree in my office and put a stuffed star in it. She got such a kick out of that stuffed star, she really laughed when she saw that. She died, along with her husband in 1985 from injuries sustained from a private plane crash, right around Christmas that year.

There is a little engraved ornament with Kandy's name on it. Kandy was our Golden Retriever/Corgi mix who had to be put the sleep in 2008 because of cancer. I bought the ornament around Christmas the year we adopted her, in 2004. The only ornament I could find was one of a little bitty white-haired dog, but I got it anyway and had it engraved. Kandy was our first dog.

There's the little hand-blown glass bird we got at Six Flag's Holiday in the Park one night, just after Christmas. It was a night that the weather service was predicting a big ice storm, but since we lived so close to Six Flags, we knew we could get home quickly if it started to sleet. There was hardly anybody there that night. The ice storm never came and we had a wonderful time.

One time, in the 1970's, when my brother worked at Cockrell's restaurant in Westerville, there was a cool old flea market set up in an old theater, right down the street from where he worked. I wanted to get some really old Christmas ornaments so I went looking in there for some and found 3 very old bird ornaments. I still hang them on the tree, but the beak has broken off of one of them.

I used to have a plastic partridge covered in real feathers, that came with a set of plastic pears. One year, our Christmas tree got dumped over because Princess, a cat we had at the time, tried to catch the partridge. After that, I didn't hang birds in the tree that had real feathers on them.

I also like to hang one of my little stuffed bats in the tree just because I like bats and think they're cute. It's not a Christmas ornament, but it's really cool..

A plushie Stacy made one year for one of her friends.

There's also a little dragon that's not a Christmas ornament, but I put it in the tree because it's so cool. I got it at the Harbor Book Store behind Graeter's Ice Cream in Westerville, Ohio in the summer of 2011. Graeter's Ice Cream used to be Cockrell's restaurant where my brother used to work . That's probably the last time we will be in Ohio for a long time, due to the fact we can no longer take two weeks to go up to Ohio and I think the book store as since closed due to financial reasons.

The dragon is in the upper right hand corner.

Our tree top angel I got at half-price at Hobby Lobby when I worked there. She has been at the top of our tree for a number of years. There's no real special story behind her, except that I got her for a really good price at Hobby Lobby and she looks really pretty up there.

 There are so many ornaments on our tree with stories behind therm and when I hang them on the tree each year and see them hanging on the tree, I remember those stories when I see those ornaments and that's a small part of what makes Christmas special for me. Each and every year, our Christmas tree has a unique collection of memories and more are made every year.