My current obsession with cats and turtles (see numerous Facebook posts on my page)

I have always loved animals but it took some persuasion to get my first pet. I was very young, probably 3 or 4 years old and from somewhere, my parents found a kitten. I don't even remember his/her?? name as we didn't have the tiny creature very long. I know I did approach him, let's just call it a 'him' for simplification purposes, with apprehension as I didn't want to get scratched and yet every single time I did try to touch or hold him, I would get scratched. He was a friendly little guy but there was a point in time when he got sick. I remember him out in the backyard meowing very loudly and jumping all over the place. No idea what the poor thing had but I guess by the time my father got home from work that day and I was safely in bed for the night, the kitten had died.

So a few years go by and I'm in school by this point. We had a dime store in town that at the time sold the little water turtles for what had to have been a reasonable price, as besides the animal, one would also have to purchase  a little bowl with an 'island and palm tree' in the middle of it.

I had a lot of those little turtles at the time but none of them 'took' so to speak until I was quite a bit older, probably in junior high, when my friend Judy had gotten one that I believe was purchased on the Santa Cruz Pier but Judy will have to chime in. Anyway at some point Judy had given me that turtle and I had him for a very long time. In fact, when I went away to college, Felix, that was his name, traveled with me.

But back again to those early school years. The summer when I was around eight, we had driven east to Missouri for one of our visits with the relatives back there. That year was so much fun as I then found out that box turtles lived on my grandparents farm and heck, all over the place down there. I brought home a cardboard box filled with them that summer.  That was a fateful summer as our neighbors across the street also went to France for the entire summer and I got to feed their cat, Mama Kitty. It was like having my own cat! Somewhere in the old photos, there's one of me holding Mama Kitty and one of the box turtles. Cats and turtles get along quite well.

So once the Arbelbide's came back home from France and Mama Kitty went back home with them, I was heartbroken. I wanted a cat BADLY!  Again, my parents came through! Someone in town had one kitten left from a litter. We drove over there and there she was, Bojo, my first REAL cat as the one from the previous time wasn't around long enough for me to love. Bojo was a beauty! She had long fur, and was what I would call a shaded silver tabby. Just gorgeous! She put up with a lot from me at the time as I was just learning how to behave around animals. Learning experience for the both of us. I must have gotten hooked by her at some point in time, but I sure don't remember. She was a good girl and lived a long time as she died around the time I was in college.

As anyone who knows me now, they know all about my current cats, plus neighbor cats that I tend to fall in love with also. The turtle thing may be a surprise, as we currently don't have any. The house I grew up in had the BEST backyard for the box turtles. They were safe out there. Couldn't get out. Many of them lived for a very long time and one even laid eggs and had 4 babies! Sadly they didn't live as they were born in November which is when they should have been hibernating.

Okay, time for me to go and give my cats some loving.