I know it's crazy but I think I'd be tempted to adopt all of them!

Probably too many cats all at once for you...

But you never know. The only other one I've been able to rule out they specifically state rubs your ankles. That's a problem when I'm working in the barn. I can't see them if I'm lugging water buckets or bales of hay, and don't want to be tripping all the time. That was Polly's single flaw, and one of the great things about Belladonna. Bella spent most of her time in the rafters looking down on her staff from high above; never, ever underfoot while we slaved away...

The first cat we got after we got married happened like this: I'd gone to the animal shelter and here was this room stacked high with individual cages. Each cage had a cat in it.

They were just sitting there, except for one. It was a black and white cat, and it got up and came to the cage door, and meowed at me and rubbed on the door.

That was all it took.

I took him home and he was such a love! We named him Felix for the cartoon cat.

But that was the cool thing: he chose me. I couldn't resist!

Their facebook page was way out of date, so most of the kitties I saw are long gone, but replaced by a zillion more.

The kitteh didn't pick me so much as the shelter attendant picked the cat who needs me. First kitty I saw, sitting out on top of a desk. He's very, very cute, soft and purry, and they can't find anything wrong with him, but he refuses to use a litter box. His prior owner vetted him, the shelter vetted him and tried to re-train him. Vets can't find anything wrong. So he's "fee waived" because he's officially a barn cat only.

I'll be picking him up on Thursday. He'll be perfect -- if anybody steals him, they'll dump him as soon as he dumps all over their digs, lol! Pix to come...

The big question is, do I bring home a 2nd kitty. I still wanted to walk around jic another kitty "called" to me. Many kitties were calling to me, reaching out from their cages and meowing, "Free me! Free me!" All adorable...

But there was one kitty who wasn't doing that, but is so exquisite that I'm tempted. Those round, china blue eyes are calling me... calling me... And they were worried about a single cat in the barn without much company, so I'd really not be getting her for me, but for him...

As you see there are far more kittehs than there are homes for them.

If you can give a couple kittehs a reasonably safe home then you are doing a great service.

Also if someone "adopts" one of your cats without your agreement, as appears to have happened with Belladonna, it is sad for you (and I know what it is like to lose a pet!) but if indeed they take decent care of her, then she will be ok, and maybe you can think of yourself as having been her "foster mom" even if that wasn't really your plan. (Foster homes for kittehs and puppehs are also a great service, and means more animals can be saved.)

If she is a stray living outside, she has a territory. She can be "gone" for a few days and show back up. There are some strays I feed in my apartment complex. Some I see most every day, some less often.

The first time she disappeared, a neighbor stole her. I put up signs everywhere and walked the street calling for her for a couple weeks. I kept 'seeing' her in my mind's eye, sitting in a window wanting to get out. I zeroed in on the trailer kitty corner to my house and the house next door...but I felt pretty sure it was the trailer.

The people that lived there moved out and new people moved in. A week later, I saw her sitting on their front steps. I was walking the dogs, so finished their walk asap, and headed back down the street alone. She was gone, but the new neighbor was now sitting outside, so I asked about her.

They said when they were moving in she walked right in the front door like she owned the place, and kept hanging around. So apparently I was right; those people had taken her all summer and then dumped her when they moved out. The new people kept their shed door open so she had shelter, since they already had 2 cats and couldn't take her in. They said now that they knew where she belonged, they'd catch her and bring her back to me. They never did. That was in August.

The following spring, one night when I got home from work and was headed out with the dogs to do night barn, I saw her lurking in the driveway across the street, watching our house. I ran the dogs right back in and ran out to get her. I walked around the side of the house and called to her. She came out of the shadows. Poor girl was nervous and a bag of bones. I kept her in the dog crate for 2 weeks while she got her shots and de-wormed, and re-acclimated to the barn. I saw the people from the trailer while walking the dogs, and let them know she'd come home and was being cared for again. The woman told me she'd spent the winter under their trailer and they fed her there. She said, in a little girl's whiny voice, "We felt sorry for her." But they never even told me she was there! Poor girl slept alone, outside on cold, damp dirt under their trailer.

She stayed inside the barn most of the summer, but then started going out on short jaunts. In July, at the trailer where she had lived the summer before, one of the cats started sitting in the window crying all day long. And then in early August she disappeared again, and one day I realized that their cat had stopped sitting in the window crying around the same time. They moved away in September. I think one of their cats probably died and they stole her again.

My prior cat, Pollyanna, came with an undiagnosed liver disease. She was little and had a plain face. Her illness made her sensitive to sunlight, so she squinted. When I first got her, she couldn't even purr...she would just make this growly, snarly sound. It was 4 days before her purrer worked. But nobody every stole her. Belladonna was a gorgeous, big, healthy, friendly dilute tortie with big, golden eyes. People couldn't steal her fast enough. That's why I'm thinking maybe Chuckyanna -- she's little, solid black and doesn't have any ears so nobody wants her. Maybe that's my kind of cat...the one's that nobody wants.

Can you swing it if health issues arise with either of them in the future?

(Or just put out a call here and I'm sure DU will pitch in. )

then if it goes outside what I have in my bank account, I'll have to hit my IRA. We'll manage; we always do

I'm giving myself a little time off to get my house in order and on the market, and then hopefully I'll get bored enough to be ready to go back to work. Except that I never get bored, lol. The dollar store down the street is hiring...I just need a couple days/week low stress something to boost the social security and we'll be ok.