Crazy Cat Lady in the Making?

Too Many Kitties? Never!

I have four cats. Four is a good number, right? The answer is – mostly – yes. There are four tires on a luxury sedan, four legs on a giraffe... and four horsemen of the Apocalypse. These cats are destructive forces, laying claws to woven materials and tracking swaths of cat litter on the bed. Our house is inundated with fur, which piles up in drifts that are satisfying to suck up with our vacuum's – the "Sucking Alien's" – silver wand. We call the vacuum the Sucking Alien because it bears a strong resemblance to the head of a non-human creature with ovoid eyes and a long, tubular snout.

It doesn't help that the dog sheds like crazy, either. She's a 125-pound fat retired farm dog with a one-track mind. Food. Is there food? When's dinner? Fill my bowl, please. How about a treat?

We also have a 23-pound cat. Yep, we grow 'em big around here! Even some of our aquarium fish are outsized. We're convinced our two big boys have some Maine Coon in them, but Boo Boo, the largest, is simply a whale. He's my cuddle buddy, though, and likes to snuggle up when I go to bed with a book or some puzzles. That starts the bedtime ritual, which proceeds to my husband joining us and two more cats jumping on the bed. Boo Boo is then displaced, and the "wee one," our small black and white female, starts kneading the hell out of our big, fluffy black and white male and purring like she's reached a state of ultimate bliss.

Our fourth cat, the horribly misnamed Sunshine, hates all the other animals in the house and prefers to keep to herself.

Thank goodness my husband puts his foot down and insists on a four-unit cap on our cat population. I'm such a sucker for a furry, whiskered face, I'd probably bring home one a month until someone from A&E knocked at my door wanting to feature me on a show about cat hoarders.

I don't mind being a crazy cat lady in the making, though. My house is always full of love – and fur!