I think it’s safe to say that most people who have a pet now, have had one or more pets in their past as well, and I am no exception.  Awhile back I started scanning old photographs of my previous pets, both feline and otherwise, so I could share them with you here, (in no particular order.) I quickly realized this would have to be a multi-part series, so we’ll start with Scamper and Skippy.

Not long after Mark and I first got married, my stepson got a cat named Precious who had a litter of orange kittens.  In the caption above, I say one was probably Scamper because I seem to remember Precious having two litters while she was with us, and all her kittens were orange.

Scamper was the only one we kept out of the litter, and I dutifully had him neutered at six months. For a neutered male he had an amazingly wild life, and was always coming home with abscesses or other catfight related injuries. It was always one of those things where you would hate to see the “other guy”. But after his trip to the vet for neutering, I could never get him back in a cat carrier for any more vet visits. So I always had to “doctor him up” myself. He learned quickly that if he saw me coming at him with a cotton ball and the hydrogen peroxide, it was time to run. Then I learned how to trick him so he wouldn’t see the cotton ball and was able to clean out his wounds with some degree of success.

I always thought that Scamper must have had Maine Coon genes because of how big he was. And we won’t even go into his amazing mouse and rat (and yes, at least one squirrel) catching skills! He is still the biggest cat I have ever had, although if Foster keeps growing at the rate he is now, he just might catch up.

Then something wonderful happened in Scamper’s life: We got a puppy!

Skippy loved playing with Scamper, and since he was smaller than the cat  at the time, I didn’t see much harm in it. Scamper knew he could bat this annoying non-feline across the yard with three paws tied behind his back, so there was no problem.

Until Skippy started to grow and Scamper stayed the same size…

Scamper didn’t really fight back, but I began to wonder if I should be letting them stay in the house together when no one was home. Would Skippy hurt his buddy by accident?

My fears were laid to rest, however, when I saw them snuggling up together in the hallway. From that day forward I knew they would always be the best of friends. In fact, we even made Skippy’s “official” name on his purebred papers “Scamper’s Pal Skippy.”

Scamper lived to be 11 years old. Skippy was 15 when he crossed over the “Rainbow Bridge”. So now maybe they are up there playing and snuggling together in “pet heaven”, (which is not a scriptural concept, but I like to pretend).

Coming up in later posts: Cody, Scout, Fenwick, Rags, Punkin and Heidi. To name a few. And not necessarily in that order.