When we first brought him home we put him in what was then a spare bedroom with food, water, and a litter box for a few hours and we took turns hanging out with him to try and acclimate him to us. After a few hours of that we introduced Emily (read about her HERE) - suffice it to say she did NOT take kindly to him and we had a bit of a spat. Over time they developed a bit of love/hate relationship. Boots took to M of all people, but looking at his personality and hers there is a lot in common. For the most part he's a fairly nice cat, but he has his moments - sort of like M. He can go from incredibly nice to very mean at the drop of a hat - again sort of like M as well.
I think of all the pictures I have of Boots, this one is my favorite. He was just enthralled with the camera - he tends to do that. He's got the curiosity of a Siamese, but not quite the brains of one. :) To illustrate, one day I was vacuuming near my computer desk and had put the plastic mat out of the way - Boots crawled under it and was just boggled by things - as the picture below shows.
After a few months of him pestering Emily, we finally decided that perhaps we should get another cat - a younger cat - to be more of a playmate for him. M and M2, ended up bringing home an all black cat named Francis (Cat #3) just before Halloween of that year and while it helped some - Boots still insisted on screwing with Emily off and on, and usually it did not end well for him. It's funny, as I think I mentioned in Emily's post, she more or less ignores the other cats and they ignore her; but with Boots it's not that way. He interacts with all of them and for the most part gets along with all of them. However, there are a couple of notable exceptions. Those would be cats 6 and 7 - Maxie and Princess respectively. In the case of Princess, both Boots and Francis seem to have an intense hatred of her for whatever reason and we constantly have to keep an eye on them and her. The issue with Boots and Maxie is a little different, Maxie sort of reminds me of Tackleberry from Police Academy. There's a scene in that movie where Tackleberry is a bit distraught and somebody asks what's wrong and the response is "there was gun play sir and he missed it". Well Maxie is that way when there is a fight. As soon as a spat breaks out, she injects herself into the fracas. We're not quite sure if she just enjoys the fight or if she's trying to break it up, but since Boots is at the center of most spats, he and Maxie rumble from time to time.
He is de-clawed - that was not a decision we made, my sister had it done before we got him, but he has jaws of steel and can bite through anything. One of the funniest moments we had with him was the first couple of weeks after we got him. M had brought home doughnuts and left them in the box on the table. At some point with us in the next room, Boots got up on the table and ate through the package and had half of a vanilla long john. Another cute moment of his was one night we went out to dinner and somebody had left a container of cat nip on the dining room table. When we got home we found that he had knocked it off onto the carpet and got it open and had rolled around in it - I will have to find the picture of that and add it to this post later on as I'm not sure where it's at - but it was incredibly funny - despite M's complaints about having to vacuum all of it up. :)
I had a laptop out charging one evening - I think I was going out of town the next day or something - and Boots found it and spent a good hour messing with it. Every time the screen saver came on he'd bat a key until it went away. Just thinking about that night still brings a smile to my face.
He's probably also responsible for a sales spike in Fancy Feast cat food. Boots has a thing for chicken - he'd rather have that than anything and he'll eat plenty of it. Well one night J and I were in Wal-Mart and we went down the cat idea and they had Fancy Feast with chicken and cheese and we bought a can to be funny. Well when we came home we put it out and Boots and Sampson (cat #4) scarfed it. They seemed to like it so well that I saved the mostly empty can on the edge of the kitchen sink for M so she could get some more when she shopped next. Boots actually got up on the counter there - the only time I've ever seen him get on that counter - and found the can and started licking the inside. Once we saw what he was doing we took the can away as I didn't want him to hurt himself on it, but once we did that J and I went back and bought more and now that's pretty much the majority of their diets. There is always dry food out and Francis prefers that, and on occasion we will give them Friskies wet food, but generally it's always Fancy Feast - and feeding seven cats with that adds up quickly. :)
One last photo of Boots - if the first picture in this post is my favorite, well then this is my second favorite. We were cleaning and threw some blankets and stuff out in the hallway. He burrowed himself in them and waited for Emily to walk by so he could pounce. He did pounce and as usual it did not end up well for him, but he continues to try.
I'm assuming it's the part Siamese in him, but he loves the sun and heat - we have a cat stroller that J's parents got for her and we will take him for the occasional walk in it which he seems to love. Even when he's not outside, he manages to find the warmest place in the house to stretch out - and stretch out he does. Some days I question if he has a spine as he can contort himself into some interesting positions and fall asleep like that. As he's gotten older he has mellowed out some, but every now and then he reverts to what I can best describe as d*ck mode and will out and out do something mean or simply find something to pee on and he'll do it right in front of whoever is there at the moment. He's not as bad about it as he used to be, but it is still really annoying - especially to M since he's basically become "her cat"; but as with all the others he does bring a lot of joy to us.
- M
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