Oh man, Southpaw--that orange cat on the Raleigh almost made soda come out my nose.

Almost the same story with us, we are down to 11 cats from 13 as we lost 2 this year, Sqeek & Abby ( short for Abby-Normal ), started with the trap, spay & release program our township has for the feral cats in our neighborhood. Six of our cats are all from the same litter & are all solid black & were abandoned by the mother cat who was living under one of our sheds, animal control said they would all be put down because you can't do anything with a feral cat as they are to wild, BS!. My wife cared for them and was able to handle a few of them within a few months, we built a addition onto the shed they were living under that had Anderson windows, heat, shelving they could climb & sleep on, a kitty condo also too climb,sleep & scratch on & a little kitty door too come & go when they wanted.

The addition attracted one more cat ( Snuffy a black & white) who would wait outside until the black cats were done eating then go in for left overs, after a few months he started coming around with a black & white kitten glued to his side,( Rage pronounced like Garage, as he got locked in one for 3 weeks & presumed dead & gone all that time,but returned). Snuffy was bought in after Rage went missing as he couldn't find him, he was very upset about it, Rage came in seconds after returning from his ordeal, I scooped him up & came right in the house with him ( 2 of the best cats I have ever owned), if he wasn't fed as well as we fed him he would have never survived. Mean while as we were trying to trap Rage to get him fixed ( before he went missing) we trapped a 6 week old little spitfire, solid black male kitten with a huge cut to his belly ( Bear Cat, who is mine now & will come to me when called for ), he hated me & would hiss & growl just seeing me, also a great cat. I then have a gray tabby named Stripe, I found him ( or should I say he found me) while I was under a bridge Striper fishing one night, he was eating my bait and everything else I gave him, cheese & peanut butter crackers , chocolate chip cookies, he was about 8 weeks old & had no problems being handled from the get go, he is now 26lbs and my best buddy & rules the roost. Our oldest cat is Mama, orange & white, followed my wife home from the office she used to work at a few blocks away with her kittens, we were able to find homes for the kittens but not Mama.

In case you weren't counting, we have 7 total black cats, 5 short hair & 2 long hair, 6 from the same litter & Bear ( Who is helping me type this).
Names of the black cats were given when they lived outside & how we told them apart & stuck, they are,

Bushy Tail, or now MR.Tail, The only one that is a 100% domesticated out of the litter. Mama's boy

Whisk, he had one white whisker as a kitten but has since lost it. Also a Mama's boy

Green Eyes or Green Eyed Girl, she is a little bipolar towards other cats, but loves people. A Mama's Girl

Squirrel, or Squirrel Girl, Tail looked like Squirrels always twitching, also a Mama's Girl.

Golden Eyes, has the biggest wide open gold eyes I have ever seen on a cat, doesn't blink much, a big scaredy cat, a Daddys Boy

Lil Kris, She has crossed eyes and is the runt of the litter ( don't tell her that), we didn't know there was a 6th cat to the litter for quite some time as she was always hiding when my wife was taken care of the other 5. She was the first one in because we thought she'd have vision problems, but she doesn't, She is a Daddys Girl all the way, I do come second to Stripe though she just loves him.
This is Lil Kris, she just had the fang removed this week.


Mr Tail,

Bear Cat,

Golden Eyes,

Snuffy,

Rage,

Squirrel,

Stripe & Mr Tail,

Bear, Lil Kris & Whisk,

Green Eyes,

no basket on the front of any bike? use a pillow and a treat and you're set.

i once put the calico in my backpack (leaving space to poke her head out) and rode around the block just to see how she would react. she didn't make a sound. they love little spaces. we used to take her in the car on short trips without her travel cage just to entertain ourselves. it was like she was going on a great adventure, seeing foreign places for the first time. other drivers' reactions to seeing a surprised cat in the driver's side window is worth the trouble.

granted, not all cats are built the same. zoe gave me the impression of a sweet human spirit trapped in a cat suit.

Zoe cat, my little shy Torty shell cat



ORange fisherman kitty is Sunny, while the chubby cat sitting in the sink is named quite appropriately Tubby



Tubby occupies space quite effectively



These 2 are no longer with me, but the kitty is Thomas and the little dog , who is no bigger than a cat , is Cupcake -- they were best friends on earth and i assume still are in spirit somewhere

they were always together

The "cattery" with enclosed 'catwalk' bridge that attaches to my wife's art studio (Formerly our garage) My friend John is a master carpenter. He helped me build it. It took us two days to set-up and we had one evening in his workshop building the catwalk and access door. The magnetic cat-door mounted in the side wall was a $2.00 yard sale find, new in box. The catwalk has a downward tilt for water run-off and tucks up under the eve of the building. The wood is all treated type. (The new non-toxic kind) We dug down into the yard and trenched the sides and added the lower side boards so they couldn't dig under.
I have about $500.00 in it. We expect it to last about six or eight years.
Squirrels have the run of the exterior and drive the cats nuts..
The wire was small enough to prevent injury, and is attached with heavy hammer-in staples.
A lot of people have done this., There are companies selling kits etc.. And some videos on YouTube. Some people get pretty elaborate with these things. They can also be built out of PVC pipe. We just downloaded a bunch of images from a Google image search and built it from a hand drawn set of plans based on the space we had available. It is nine feet square and eight feet tall. The cat-walk was necessary to have access to an area behind our garage where we keep the mower and yard tools. Many people build these attached directly to the side of the building.

click on images to enlarge

Finally a thread on bf the SO and me both appreciate Can't have cats in my new home, the landlord doesn't like them. She's pressing me to take on some illegal feline aliens.

This isn't my cat, but it's too good a photo not to share here.



The photo was taken from the sidewalk, and I'm pretty sure the cat wandered in from the street for a free lunch.

Our lease technically says no pets, but our landlord agreed that we could have one cat. Basically, it was a dealbreaker--there was no way we were moving in without him--and the landlord wants our rent money! But really, he was very reasonable about it. He just didn't want a dog that would be loud or a colony of peeing cats in the building. Have you tried asking the landlord if you could have just one cat?

He's a nice guy, but at the moment I'm not going to press the issue...
i'd like to get a bit more settled first, and than take on the responsibility. No rush, cats don't like that

We have had two cats that were/are on the large side, First was our Monster, named for his attitude at first but when he reached 27LBS then it fit his size, no fat & very tall & long with like a 16" tail. He played like a dog and did so often, little kids would be scared of him when they came into our home as he always wanted to check them out, he was and is the best cat I have ever owned. Here is a picture of him at the age of 8 to 10 weeks playing with his new best friend Skitten, Look at that tail, we lost him in 2008 at 13 years old.

Our cat Stripe is now 26LBS, all fat, short & stout. He may have a thyroid condition because he eats less then our other cats and is way more active then our other cats as he likes to race you from room to room walking through the house.

Ok, now you did it, my wife said we ( Her and my kids/cats) now wants one

Glenn

Wow, what a great heart you have, and lots of patience. Our six wild black beauties are going to be 8 this summer and they're still a work in progress. All but one won't ever be a "normal" cat but they are worth it.

Another cat named Max! lol he is a rescue cat we've had for about 6 or 7 years. 22 pounds of beastly man cat:

Oh. My. God. C&V has been taken over by Foo.

The new owners of my house moved in about 10 months ago. They were barely weaned and nameless, so I started a discussion on Foo to give them names:
https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...ame-my-kitties!
Which culminated with
https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...hey-have-names!

Many thanks to MangoPumpkin for giving up her name for my kitties.

They are now almost a year old, and Mango has gotten humongous: 15 pounds at the last vet visit. Pumpkin is lighter, but they still snuggle together.

Here they are in younger days:



And they're still terrors around the house:



They're getting older and we're trying to teach them to be useful, but they still haven't mastered doing the dishes:

Mr. Monty:

Hey, while you're up, how about fetching me a tuna sandwich…
…without the bread!!!

bbb

My wife and I love black cats and have had several over the years. Thanks for posting the pictures -- I shall see whether melanistic Melanie, our big black-and-beautiful fluff ball, properly appreciates them.

I couldn't help but notice (again) that Mr Tail and Dusty look almost exactly alike. Took some digging to find a pic where he was actually looking at the camera directly, and I left your other pic just because of the poses

All cats are beautiful to my eye. But black cats are particularly so. I was hoping to find one when we adopted Minky, but there were no black ones.
Out of the fifteen or so cats they had at the time, this grey tiger was the only one who stayed way back in her cage. Somewhat freaked. The gal told me she had been adopted, but the woman had brought her back, saying she was a bit "sketchy". I said, "WTF with that?" , and she proceeded to tell me what she meant. I know what sketchy means, I told her. I just can't believe someone would actually return a cat. "We'll take her" I said.

Beautiful picture!

Milo



Doo-Dah

She looks lovely

Agreed.

Good looking cat I would say!