My little Pepper. He’s kinda cute, he’s kinda ugly. He has huge ears, no tail, not much in the way of brains and next to nothing in the way of looks. Every day is a bad hair day for him. He has a minimum of two bald spots and three cowlicks at any given moment. This cat will not be winning any beauty contests.
Why do I love him? He is entertaining to play with. His physique resembles over cooked pasta. One day I was dragging Pepper around like a stuffed animal. Flapping his arms, sticking pebbles up his nose. My friend Tom was watching with a horrified expression on his face. “Your cat is so passive! My god, he looks like a dead chicken!”
So there he is. My dead chicken rat cat with a bad paint job. He wormed his runty little way into my heart and I love him more than anything.

This little orange guy is very cute and very sweet. He weighs four pounds, is mistaken for a girl on a regular basis, stone deaf, covered in dreadlocks, and was accused of assaulting the mailman. We can’t quite figure that one out. It was very complicated. It involved blood, scotch tape, a trip to the emergency hospital and a life story. Chico was threatened with quarantine by the postal service. Papers were served, dinner was served and eventually the problem dissipated.
Months later, I was at a neighbors house when the mailman knocked on her door. He was back from his leave. “Stress due to cat attack”. The only reported cat attack in our postal history. I hid in the back while he ranted for a good fifteen minutes. “I see that cat is still here. You have a six year old child don’t you? He could go for his jugular vein and rip his throat out. Your kid could bleed out in five minutes and you wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it. Dangerous I tell you! Bleed out! Bleed out! You turn your back for a minute and your kid will be dead on the front porch!"
He got a new route shortly after that. He did show up again to tell us good-bye. Evidently, the government was in desperate need of his services. He had received “the call” that morning and had to drive immediately to Sacramento in his Porsche. We were all pretty relieved.
The new mailman avoids stepping on the many cat tails draped across our welcome mats. We love him for that. We think we’ll keep him.