Well - I didn't go to sleep until after 3:30 a.m., unable to sleep, and read half a book!
Slothful, eh, rising at 8:30 and easing into the day ---
About those wandering-to-my-door kitties, when we built our house in the woods 20 miles south of Greensboro, NC, there were only two -- Nuff (a stray striped alley cat, who either had E-Nuff petting, or couldn't GET E-Nuff petting..:)) - and Snuggles, the one my daughter couldn't take with her and lived to age 17 with me.
In that lovely country setting, however, we were a target for persons wanting to dump litters or the no longer wanted, hoping for the best.
Soon we had "Boyo" - grown fella with the sweetest of dispositions. Nuff Kitty snubbed him, highly irritated, but he kept lying next to her on the hearth rug before the fireplace, putting his back against her, and she soon was loving it...
He was the one who came across the room to warm me with his stretched out body when I was wracked with chills from high fever from pyelonephritis...vanished when I was hospitalized for 5 days - looking for me??
Next was on a dark and rainy Halloween night - a tiny black kitten cried at the door, and I named her Little Kittle...the next Halloween she had 4 Other Little Kittles for whom I had to find homes.
Now, mind you, Snuggles was a solid black cat - and Little Kittle was, too. One morning as we left to go to work and turned from the driveway to the ascending hill, there in the road was our beloved Snuggles - run over by a car.
Had to hastily stretch her out beside the drive and get to work - in the evening had a burial service in the woods near the house.
Cooking dinner in the kitchen a little later, through the always-open sliding doors to the back deck (so the kitties could come and go at will), in strolled SNUGGLES!!!
I shrieked at the sight of my "Resurrected Kitty"!!
Careful examination of the eyes, however, revealed we had buried Little Kittle - not Snuggles..:)) - and we brought her with us to South Carolina.
(Nuff had had a tragic demise I will not relate again here.)
Inherited my one and only present cat, Binky Boy, from a niece who was highly allergic to him...since she worked in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in Charleston on 12-hour shifts, he had been neutered and declawed. He thus never ever goes outdoors - has a screened in carport porch of his own to "be" outside, or in, if he chooses.
He is very much a Mommy's Boy, loving to talk and sing with me..:))
When we first lived here, it was still out in the country, so people would occasionally drop kitties off at our place, and I also always had at least several cats of my own! They all had distinct personalities, and I loved some "as pets," and some as friends, and/or family members. My best friends were The Toy, Black Kitty, and The Fang-Face, but I have loved a LOT of other kitties! My Fang-Face was my last, and it will probably be awhile before I can have another. But, someday I will! : )