Natasha --- came with her name and already knew it (though she never gets called Natasha unless she's in BIG trouble)
Nicknames --- Tasha, Tash, Pish-Tash, Tasha-m'-Basha, Pretty-Paws, Beautiful, Tasha-Twerp, Grumblesnoot
Age --- 12 (October 2008)

Tasha's twelve now, sheesh (as of October 2008 edit). Hard to believe I've had her since 1996. I got her at the humane society in Baltimore. She's the first cat I've had that wasn't a family cat. She's not an all-people person, but she's comfortable in crowds. I'm definitely her human. She'll always be the queen cat, I'm sure; she's a beauty and she knows it. I love calicos (but I did choose her more for personality than coloring, because I know a lot of people like calicos). She pretends to immense dignity but loses it when she's hungry, when she just has to pounce on a toy, or when she's contentedly flopped upside down in my lap. (And she's a klutz, which doesn't help.) She's the lap cat of the lot, which was a deliberate decision when I chose her -- the family cat at my mom's was an attack cat who had to be locked away from visitors and who almost never cuddled. She's the bed-jumper; she'll sleep with almost anyone if they've got warm covers, and still sneaks into Jenn's old bed to nap. She looovvved my old waterbed (until I got Jez and she stopped sleeping on it if Jez was there and moving it). The thing she hates most is to have her (irresistibly adorable) paws touched. She's a biter, not a clawer; many people think she's declawed, but she's not. Her fur is incredibly plushy-soft, and is at the longest reach of a shorthaired cat. She loves to curl up on the fuzzy blankets, especially in the sunshine. She galumphs when she runs, and I've finally determined that she runs like a groundhog. She likes to play hide-around-the-corner with me and pretends to be surprised when I jump out. She's a very quiet cat; she hardly ever straight-out meows, but does lots of mrrrrrps that only get loud when she's hungry. Her favorite toys are bottle-top rings and rustly bags. Her favorite ways to get me out of bed are making rustly noises or chewing on my bangs... because she MUST be fed. One of my favorite things about a day I get to sleep in is getting up early, feeding the cats, and then going back to bed, because that's when Tasha in particular will come snuggle.

A very long ramble on the 10-year anniversary of adopting Tasha is beneath the pictures.

That's a yawn, not a snarl. But isn't the eye cool?

I wrote the stuff below in several installments in September 2006 as I mused about having Tasha for 10 years. It's a bit rambly, but there's a lot to remember.

10 years. On October 18th, I'll have had Tasha for 10 years. It's strange to think back to then. I was a senior in college, had just moved out into the first apartment that was just mine by myself with no roommates... that wasn't the original plan, because my fiancé was supposed to move to Maryland and live with me for a year while I finished school and before we got married, but we'd had problems (to put it mildly) at the end of the summer, and he didn't come out, and I finally broke it completely off with him the week before I got Tasha. I don't think those are related by much except coincidence, really. I'd already been feeling the emptiness of not having a pet. I still feel that a pet-less house is not a home. There's an emptiness that I can't bear for too long. I lasted all of two months before getting Tasha.

I was nervous about getting a cat, though I knew that's what I wanted. I wasn't living at home anymore, hadn't been except for summers for a couple of years, had already lived in one apartment for a year (but the roommate situation was bad), but though I couldn't imagine ever moving home again I didn't consider myself really out on my own yet. I was afraid my mom would tell me it was a bad idea and not to get a cat. For the lack of being settled or something like that, and the likelihood of moving, etc. I just remember being afraid of her reaction, and not being decisive because of it. I finally mentioned it to Steven one weekend when I'd brought over my laundry. I remember we were down in the basement for some reason or other -- he was probably working on his glider planes -- and his reaction was, "Why not get a cat?" or something to that effect. Basically telling me it was my decision, my house, etc. Which convinced me enough to mention it to my mom, and she had a similar reaction. Which decided me.

I went to the Baltimore humane society on Tuesday, October 16th. I knew I wanted a friendly cat... a cat who would cuddle... a lapcat. This wasn't because I don't like other cats, but Krystal -- the cat at my mom's, one I picked out when I was 7 -- was a cat who had to be shut away when people came over and never cuddled but showed her love more by getting upset when you didn't behave according to her routine. I loved Krystal, but I didn't want another Krystal just then. She was still alive and scratching at that point, which had been another concern of mine if I were ever to take my new cat over to my parents' house. I also knew I wanted a female, preferably youngish but not a kitten... around 6-12 months. I felt a bit guilty wanting a young cat, that I should adopt an older one because I was this knowledgeable cat person who wasn't going for the oh-squeee! cute and fuzzy kitten. But they told me at the humane society that the "teen" cats actually have a hard time being adopted, which made me feel better, because they're not older and settled and they're not the fuzzy balls of fluff.

And so I proceeded to the row of cages. Tasha didn't immediately catch my eye. She was one of two calicos there that day, but I thought the other one "Dot" was prettier (she had more white, like my childhood cat Tanis). I admit I've always had a partiality to calicos, but I also knew a lot of people had that feeling and again I didn't want to necessarily go for the prettiest that other people would adopt. There was a young male tabby that was desperately trying to get my attention, and I felt guilty about ruling him out because I did want a female. Someone else came in and pulled Dot out of her cage, though, so I didn't get to hold her immediately. And I was carefully reading all the tags describing the cats. This humane society did its best to give personality traits. And going by the tags, Tasha seemed the best fit, and listed her as a lapcat, and I got her out of her cage while eyeing Dot being held by a kid. I didn't want to make a snap decision, though. I think I stayed there for two hours, holding cats and reading tags and thinking things over. And then I put in an application for "Natasha".

The people working at the humane society were very taken with me, to be quite honest. That I knew about cats and would take her into a good home. There was a waiting period of 3-5 days, but I could tell they knew I'd get her. I called the next day and was told it had been accepted and she was being moved over to surgery to be spayed and I could pick her up the next day -- two days from application to pick-up, which they told me was the fastest they'd ever seen an application move. I remember just floating around the second floor of the UMBC student center with that news.

I had a slight problem, though. In the meantime, I'd lost my wallet: driver's license, credit card, student ID, everything. No clue where it went. So my mom came over to Baltimore to 1) take me to the MVA to get a new license and 2) pick up Tasha, bringing a cat carrier with her. I found my wallet a week later hidden in my backpack, but at the time... so my mom was there when I got her. She was so good in the car. Quiet, but I kind of expected that the day after surgery with stitches in her stomach. We took her back to my apartment and turned her loose. I remember her immediately taking to the open-side stairs, which would become her favorite place to play, and when I lay down on my bed she stretched out next to me and purred. My mom took pictures of her that day. I was in heaven.

That first night, she insisted on body contact throughout the night. She started out so high on my chest she ended up choking me and I woke up and had to move her... whereupon she slept glued atop my hip... and then finally allowed herself to slide down to actually be on the bed but she still was stuck as close to my body as possible.

There'd been a sheet at the humane society that Tasha's previous owner had filled out. She'd been given up because they couldn't afford her, it said. Her favorite toys were jingle balls, and we quickly developed her favorite game of throw the bouncy jingle ball up the stairs in a way that it would bounce back down... she'd race and scramble after it in both directions, and then do it all over again. And if it went over the side of the open stairs, that was fun, too. She liked to perch on the topmost step of the open part and be just above my head when I stood under. It was an excellent place to keep an eye on me when I was in the kitchen or living room. And then I'd duck down against the stairwall and she "couldn't see me" and I'd pop up at her and she'd bat at my fingers and pretend to be all scared over and over again... when I changed apartments that was modified to her batting at me around a corner. When holding still and playing with her, though, she'd pounce on a stick or whatever and then stalk off, her dignity offended. Visitors would think she wasn't interested in playing anymore, and I had to tell them to just wait a second, she'll be back. And she would be, butt wriggling, to pounce again... and stalk off again.

She developed a passion for milk-top rings (or rather, orange juice-top rings, since I've never particularly used milk), and would carry them all over the house. I have a picture that I took while I was lying on my bed of her hopping up and walking up the length of my body with one of those. My next boyfriend, Matt, took her liking of those rings to ridiculous proportions. He started saving the soda bottle rings of all his friends in his dorm at MIT sometime in January, and when he came down to visit me in April, he brought a Pop Tart box FULL of them. I suddenly had rings all over my house. It was funny to watch Tasha, though, because though she was excited about the bounty she didn't quite know what to do with so many. I dumped out the whole box at her several times. There were so many that I'd just collect them up again for a while before dumping them all out again. I had that Pop Tart box for a long time, and I still find some of the rings in random boxes that have moved with me from that time.

I can't think of any of my friends or family who've met Tasha and haven't liked her. Even my friend Brian, an avowed cat hater and dog person, liked her, because she came when she was called. He was just stunned by that. Matt eventually liked Jezery a little better than Tasha, but then he was there when I adopted Jez and she won him over from the beginning. But Tasha's generally won over hearts. My friend Jenni still has her annual Christmas parties, but for the first couple they were also slumber parties. I took Tasha for the overnight trip and she made friends (and squeezed herself into the Trivial Pursuit box). In graduate school, I would take her into the office where I worked on a regular basis and let her run the hallway. She also came to an office party we had and twined her way around everyone.

The windowsills in that first apartment were big and wide. Skinny windows from top to bottom, but wide with big sills; the windows pretty much covered the outside wall. Tasha loved to get up in the one above my bed and watch all the shadows of car headlights outside or on the walls. The problem was she was a klutz of the first degree and she would fall off... onto my head. I woke up to a cat landing on me quite a few times. Despite that, she could occasionally pull off something graceful. When I had her in an oddball dorm room at MIT for three weeks, the bed was a pulley-system one that went up and down from the ceiling. I remember one day she eyed jumping up to the bed from below, and for whatever reason Matt and I decided to let her try, clearing out everything below in anticipation of her missing and falling and ready to catch her. But she made it. Jumped about five feet up to a 2" wide piece of wood. We were astonished.

I quickly learned in the first six months that Tasha was a pig. I'd started out leaving food out for her... she gained so much weight and became a tubby kitty despite all her playing. So I had to switch her to mealtimes, which she did not appreciate. And thus started the wake-up-and-FEED-ME! routine, usually around 6:00am, that would last for the next three years (and it hasn't stopped, really, it's just changed). At the time, I slept with a lot of stuffed animals on my bed. They all left the bed in the morning when I would one by one throw them at Tasha to get her to leave me alone for another two minutes while I tried to go back to sleep. And then when I finally got up I would pick up all the animals and put them back on the bed for the next morning's target practice. I didn't want to give in to her, because then she'd never let up. Of course, she never did anyway, but I was just as stubborn and very rarely gave in. She also developed the habit of nibbling on my bangs to wake me up, which was much more effective but still didn't get her food. It's only been in the last couple of years that she's gotten better about waking me up for food, but she hasn't stopped entirely. I just don't sleep with stuffed animals on the bed to throw at her anymore. But I can't have anything in my room that rustles, like a paper bag, because she will find it and exploit.

Tasha has always loved bags and boxes. Back when I was moving all the time, I had this huge box of packing paper that I kept because I knew I'd be using it again soon enough. She loved to burrow into that. She loved -- loves -- wrapping and packing paper that gets thrown on the floor. She'd play for hours with her sitting in a paper bag and a human on the outside scritching against the bag or even better, poking a hole that her paw could fit through and then teasing her through that. And no matter how fat she's gotten, she will find a way to wedge her bulk into any box or container possible. She'll be hanging out and spilling over the edge, but she will still get in that box. Repeatedly. Back when I used a dot matrix printer, she liked to get in the box of printer paper that fed up to the printer (though unless I needed to print something, I left it disconnected, because she'd invariably tear it the next time she got in). One, it was a nice box. Two, it kept her near me but out of the way while I was on the computer. The only time Tasha doesn't insist on being near me is during her mid-morning to afternoon nap.

I used to have a waterbed. I'd left it at home when I first moved out, but when I moved to Ohio for graduate school (the year after I got Tasha) I decided that I wanted to take it with me. She fell in love with that bed. I only had a couple of problems with her poking holes in it, but every day between 10-11:00am, she would burrow under the covers of that bed and stay there for the next four or more hours. And I kept that thing hot. The heater was set for 98 degrees. Unfortunately she didn't like it nearly as much when there was a second cat making it move. Once I got Jezery, she didn't sleep on it or with me nearly as much. That, and the pain of moving/setting up the thing, is what made me decide to go back to a regular bed when I moved back to Maryland in 1999. I have to say, I immediately got my cuddlecat back, so while every now and then I wistfully think of my waterbed, I'm happy with the decision. And of course now I have my monster-sized king bed.

I never wanted Tasha to be an only cat, though when I got her I didn't think it a good idea to get more than one. Thinking back, that probably wasn't the best decision, because after two years of having me to herself, Tasha was NOT thrilled with Jezery. I had those two cats for a long time before Quinn came on the scene, but they've never been buddies. They tolerate each other, but usually try to sleep on opposite sides of their human. It's only been since Quinn came along that they've gotten along a bit better, deigning to lie nearer each other while denying Quinn the lap-space.

She may not be overly fond of other cats, but Tasha does like dogs. She likes to tease them. She likes to twine her way around their legs and run her tail under their noses while they're frozen watching The Cat. She doesn't like them jumping after her, though. She's mostly known Brittany spaniels, and they point, so they hold still for the most part... until she jumps up somewhere. I always stay close when she does this, because I don't trust that something will go wrong, but Tasha does like it when things go well.

Tasha's the best cat I've had for traveling in the car. She's done it a lot, but she was good about it from the start. I had a cat carrier for her that I put in the front seat, but once things were settled I always opened the door and let her go where she wanted. For long trips I'd put a litterbox in the back. She had a circuit around the front area of the car: console, lap, dashboard, carrier, repeat. My Saturn had two features she took advantage of: the between the seats console area of cup holders, where she'd sandwich herself, and the dashboard, which had a windshield slope that let her stand up and an indented surface that let her curl up and have a little support. I know it sounds dangerous to drive with a cat on the dashboard, but she hardly ever blocked my view. She'd curl up in that indent or sprawl over the steering bump. Either way, she was down low. She doesn't like my new Honda much. The dashboard doesn't work the way she thinks it should. She likes to ride in the car at night more than daytime, because then all the lights are whooshing by for her to stare at. I don't move around as much as I used to, so Tasha doesn't get as many car rides, but every now and then I take her for a little joyride... and she purrs louder than any other time and doesn't want to get out.

Tasha's my baby. She lets me get away with just about anything... except petting her paws. She hates her paws touched. Hates it, and will bite to prove her point. But they're so irresistibly pretty! We have lots of fights about that. They're super-soft, and the white is so pretty against the orange and black, and she doesn't use her claws much at all... but she'll bite. I haven't been able to train her out of that, which I tried for a long time. But I can't resist her paws, so every now and then we have spats. She will, however, let me put her upside down in my lap and she'll just sit/slump there without my holding her in place. One time I was sitting in a chair and she dozed off like that and I had to catch her before she fell off because she started listing to the side.

It's easy to tell Tasha's moods. The fur on her face gives away everything. Her face is incredibly fluffy and poofy when she's hungry or perturbed. When she's relaxed and cuddly, her fur is smoothed and her face looks so skinny.

I love her fur. I've often wondered why I thought Dot was the prettier calico at the humane society that day (I guess because then I was used to more white on calicos), because Tasha's fur is just so interesting. If you look at her from the top, you can't see any white and she looks like a pure tortoiseshell. But she's got the big white belly, and the white paws, and there are little bits and pieces everywhere that I love to look for. The very tip of her tail has a white poof. One of her legs is black while the other three are orange. When I was staying at a hotel once for two nights and the cleaners came, Tasha shoved her paws under the door and they thought I had two cats in there. She's got a tiny white slash on her nose. One ear is divided in half orange/black. Her paw pads are mostly pink, but she's got a black one, and a tuft of orange fur on the underside of her black leg as it meet the highest paw pad. And her fur is so incredibly plushie soft. The only other cat I've met whose fur is comparable is Keet and Sam's cat Chessie. She's not a long-haired cat, but she's at the long end of a shorthair, more medium, really. Which of course means she sheds a lot. She also sheds in tricolor, dark and light, which means at least some of her fur will show up on every piece of clothing, no matter the color.

The most she sheds, though, is when confronted with a shower. I get so much fur stuck to my chest when I pick her up to cuddle briefly before getting in my shower. My earliest apartments didn't have air conditioning, and I started giving Tasha baths to cool her down. She's very good with baths. Doesn't struggle, just sort of stands there, looks at me wistfully, and PURRS. She purrs through every bath I give her. Back in the no air days, she'd run around like a crazy kitty all giddy and happy and cool after she got out and got at least a little dry. But the summer I stayed at MIT with Matt for three weeks, there were no bathtubs. We were in the dorms. And it got hot. So I took her into the shower with me. She didn't like that so much, with the water coming down on her versus standing in it. She just clung to me -- no claws, just clinging. She was happy to be cool, but... she's had one shower since then, and again didn't like it, but she's still good with the baths.

Jezery
Quinn
Index