Talking about my cats

Last week my baby cat Horus passed away.

I regret not mourning properly last time a cat of mine passed away, so I wanted to spend some time talking about my cats and reliving memories. I feel a lot of guilt for leaving them behind with my dad when I moved countries, but I don’t want to forget our good times together and how much I loved them, and they loved me.

I call Horus my baby cat, but he was already pretty old – he was just the youngest of my cats. He got adopted by my mom when we already had 3 other cats because the vet kept teasing her over how pretty his eyes were. He was rescued from a cat hoarder that used to have 20+ cats and just throw food in the air for them to fight over it, so he became very food motivated and always ate desperately. Maybe it’s because of that, but he was a bit on the small side for a cat too. Coupled with his mischievous personality and how energetic he was he always felt like a forever kid – or forever brat.

I named him Horus because of his eyes. My mom named him Bowie. Hence his full name was Horus Bowie – our cats having two names was just a thing in our household. More about that later.

He wasn’t a lap cat so much as he was a “always on top of you, regardless of where” cat. He was needy and loved climbing stuff so it was just the perfect combo. Since the house was always messy and disorganized (everyone in my family is a hoarder) he also had no concept of personal or cat space and would climb absolutely everything.

He liked climbing tall places and would often sit on top of open doors… Except he didn’t know how to come down himself, so he’d have to cry for us to come get him (not an easy task if you know I’m 1,50m tall and my dad is shorter than me). Once I took too long to get to him and he tried to get out by himself – I had a piece of paper taped to the door for some reason and he ripped it. He fell to the ground very ungracefully together with a white ripped paper… I thought he has lost his leg when I spotted it and panicked. We’re both pretty stupid.

He also liked climbing my husband

He was also extremely dog like. He’d rush to the door to receive someone from the family minutes before they arrived. He also half knew how to play fetch for some reason? No one taught him, it was something that half happened. I say half because most of the time he’d get distracted or meow and drop the toy mid way, so we would usually have to go fetch it ourselves.

Speaking of dog like behaviour, he also had the unfortunate penchant of eating plushies. I thought it was pretty adorable that he would bring his pet plushie with him to the food bowl, until I realized one day the head was completely gone – he’d put the plushie inside the food bowl and eat it together with his food. I was horrified. He also did that with hair scrunchies and glasses cloth, so we had to be extra careful with what we left lying around.

He also realized that grabbing our stuff and running off with it would get him attention so he stole a few of my smaller plushies, and because my dad is incorrigible he started grabbing my bras too – why my dad thought it was a good idea to toss my bras for him to fetch, that I will never know. They both liked getting a rise out of me I guess. Once he discovered how to open the cleaning area drain cover, so he decided to grab one of my panties, dip it in the sewage, and parade the dirty liquid through aaaall the house. That got a rise out of my dad, too.

mlep

Sphynx is my second youngest cat. She’s around one year older than Horus but she’s still healthy and kicking. We adopted her when I got into high school and we moved from our old home – so she and Horus were kind of a second generation of cats, compared to my other two cats who were 8 years or so older than them. So we say she’s Horus sister, but they’re not really related.

She’s the cat who had the most nicknames. I called her Sphynx because the Sphinx is badass (I didn’t really know the furless cat breed was called sphynx, so that caused a bit of confusion sometimes). Her second name was Isis but it was just a formality, it never caught on (technically first name, since it was Isis Sphynx? it just rolls of the tongue better). My dad often called her pombinha (little pigeon) because of how she used to communicate more with purring noises than meows, and she got nicknamed Gisele for a while because she walked like a top model, crossing her paws (not very uncommon for cats, but pretty noticeable when they’re mega round like she is). My aunt also nicknamed her “paninho” (clothrag) because of her fur color, to contrast with how she called Horus “floquinho” (snowflake)

Her pigeon like purring

She was pretty small and sickish when we adopted her. My older cat, Nefer, wasn’t happy when she got home, and since she was so we have to quarantine her in the bathroom for a while until she was better.

That kinda solidified the bathroom as her turf in her mind, and she would often hang out there. She probably enjoyed how cool it was in there, too.

She loved laying in the bidet. Thankfully it was rarely used so it wasn’t unsanitary. Just a huge ceramic cat bed.

She got very round after getting spayed even tho she didn’t eat much. She didn’t grow up much however and is even smaller than Horus – her head is veeery tiny.

She did often lay like a sphinx, but I have more pictures of her spread out like this. Because it’s funnier

I said she didn’t really communicate by meowing, and that was true for one exception – she meowed REALLY loudly whenever anyone was in the kitchen or eating. It was weird because she wasn’t asking for food – if you offered her food she’d take a sniff (she loved sniffing our food), but she’d never eat it. It took me a while to realize she wanted to be part of it somehow – if you pulled a chair, she’d sit and watch you cook or eat quietly. I have no idea where this behavior came from – I can kinda understand wanting to be part of the dinner table since everyone is there together, but I have no idea why she did it when people were cooking too. Maybe she was a head chef in her past life.

Sphynx sitting respectfully at the table

Aside from her lunch time tantrums, she was very quiet and well behaved. She wasn’t a lap cat for the most part, but she enjoyed being around others and would sit in the same room – normally just out of arms reach just to tempt me. She loved pets and scritches, but she got over stimulated pretty quickly and would bite your hand for you to stop. She actually really liked playing rough by grabbing arms and biting and scratching, but she would stop immediately if she noticed it was hurting. She eventually learned that it was ok to bite stuff if they were covered and would sometimes bite my toes through blankets (normally when I was wiggling to play with her but very rarely out of surprise too).

She was very shy so it was hard getting her to play. She enjoyed going after strings, but if another cat joined she’d stop playing and just watch. Which made it hard since Horus was always jumping at any opportunity to be a menace.

Rare opportunity to play uninterrupted

Actually, she also would often watch in secret and then pounce at people or cats, but she would -always- stop a few centimeters short of reaching them and give up. It was very cute.

Self scritches

Babies together

Nefer was the cat I was the closest to. He wasn’t the first cat I had, nor the oldest in the group, but he bonded to me the most and we spent a lot of time together when I was a kid. His name came from Nefertiti, so sometimes mom would call him Titi too. He was always kinda reclusive – he’d like to hide under the bed and spend hours there. I would reach down there and grab his legs to pull him out and cuddle whenever I wanted hugs – it was kind of a ritual, he’d be fine with it. He’d come out and sleep with me at night, but he’d very rarely come out on his own during the day.

I mentioned before that he bullied Sphynx when we got her – that was very unexpected considering his mellow personality. Unfortunately for him, when we got Horus one year later, he became the target – Horus would loooove to go after him and annoy him. It was pretty clear Horus was doing that playfully, but he hated it and became even more reclusive. But sometimes I’d find them both chilling together under the bed.

Nefer chilling inside the closet with his waifu

When it came to sleeping on top of me he wouldn’t shy away from asserting dominance however, and always got his favorite spot in my lap. Horus didn’t want to give up however and would try to lay down on me without touching him, which often ended up with him sitting his butt in my face.

Too hot. help

Unfortunately he got very sick the year I was in Japan, and since he’s always been reclusive and lazy we didn’t notice until it was too late. All the pictures I have are from that time – I need to find my older pictures to find some prettier pics of him.

Little burrito

Rare pic of all of them in one room

Even when he played he was lazy

He was more of a normal cat than Horus and Sphynx so I don’t have as many crazy stories about him, but I do have a few. He did like climbing into tall places, but he also liked dropping stuff on people down below. Once he dropped a box full of ceramic sculptures on top of my moms head and she almost died. He also once tried to put his head out of the window net we had on our balcony, and decided to come back from another hole, so he got stuck with half his body out and half in. And since he would be so good at hiding we lost him more than once without him ever leaving the apartment – a menace even without moving an inch.

The last cat in the group was the oldest of the bunch, Queofs. He was a siamese cat, also very thin and kinda small. He bonded the most with my dad, so we considered him my dad’s cat. Unfortunately I don’t have pics of him handy because he passed away before I got that phone, so I’ll have to update with pics of him later.

I remember thinking he was very grumpy, but he wasn’t particularly unfriendly – he was just less cuddly than the others. He’d grumble if you pick him up and jump away, but he’d sometimes lay on your lap. I think I used to pick him up and put around my shoulders, and it would be fine because he was so thin… Altho now that I think about it I definitely did that with Horus and that’s why he’d like to stand on people’s shoulders. I can’t remember if I that to both.

Because he was my dads cat and my dad is proud in weird ways, he decided to not spay him. Maybe it was due to that that he’d often meow loudly at night. I used to say he was singing to the moon, but I think it’s just coping that he would wake me up so much. He would also try to mate with other cats by biting them in the neck and arching over them… but most of his life only Nefer was around, so obviously that didn’t work. (maybe that’s part of why Nefer was such a hermit…)

He was also sick for almost all his life, so he’d throw up a lot and we had to give him medicine everyday. But despite that I think he lived a pretty chill and long life – he didn’t seem like he was in pain, and he was pretty active until the last few months of his life.

Oh, and if you were wondering – his full name was Queofs Compé– no, not really. He only had his first name, but because my first cat was named Tutti from Tutankhamon, which sounds like Tutti Com-a-mão, I’d joke he was Queofs Compé. That’s a bad portuguese pun. I dont know if I should even explain, it’s very bad (“withhand”, “withfoot”)

That’s all my cats! I had two more cats other than that, Tutti and Rita, but I was very young when Tutti died and I don’t remember much, and Rita stayed with us only for a week.

If you’re down here, thank you for reading this far. I did this mostly to myself, because I feel like I don’t think enough of my cats due to all the guilt – you can tell I already don’t remember much of Nefer and Queofs. I don’t want to only have negative feelings when I think of them tho, so I wanted to have this to look back on when I miss my cuties. And share their silliness with the world while I’m at it, why not!

Extra pictures as reward to reaching this far