Doodle Bug has a minion!

Pipsqueak the Cognoscenti

To all my past cats...

_{I have a terrible memory that gets worse as time goes on, so I'm writing things I can remember about my cats. The longer ago the cat passed away, the younger/less involved I was, and subsequently the less I remember. I'll be adding more when/if I remember. Warning that some of it is gross and/or sad.}

Memaw
80s - early 2000s

• She was fluffy, black with white socks, chest and mustache
• In my childhood playing, she was represented by Zip the Cat (Beanie Baby)
• She was the neighbor's abused cat who chose my parents to be her new people
• She had her whiskers pulled out by the neighbor's children
• She didn't like me because of her past experiences with children
• She liked spaghetti and the creme of Banana Twins
• She laid on the back of the loveseat
• I don't remember her much because she avoided me and I was young
• I don't remember her getting elderly or how/when she passed away

Doodle Bug
1991 - February 16th 2010

• She had a white underbelly, black/brown/gray saddleback with stripes, and pink nose and toes
• Her fur was layered with different colors and you could stick your finger and part her fur in a circle and see the colors change
• In my childhood playing, she was represented by a particular Prance the Cat (Beanie Baby) whose stripes I memorized and when I lost it under my bed my parents tried to replace it without me knowing but I could tell it wasn't the same one
• She was Memaw's only surviving baby, Memaw had the babies at the abusive neighbor's shed and she only brought one with her
• She was discovered in the flowerbed before a storm and was rescued
• She was handraised alongside hamsters and never hurt them
• She liked eating roses and flowers
• She was cold and a lap cat and was always on my mom even during sleep, and if my mom rolled over at night she would walk the barrel and settle down on her back
• She would bathe Smokey's head then smack him and steal his warm spot
• She was the best "biscuit maker" in the way she kneaded blankets, putting motion in her whole arm
• She was entitled to chicken and dinner scraps and would sit in my mom's chair with her at dinner and stick her head under my mom's arm trying to get to her plate
• She would stalk around ahead of dinner and false charge the other cats to see if they'd react (they usually didn't, because she was small and nonthreatening)
• She was my mom's cat baby and my mom says there will never be another cat like her
• Her favorite toy was a small balled up paper referred to as "paper rats"
• She would call loudly when she captured the paper rat
• She couldn't wait for me to get up in the morning and would stick her arm under the door and rattle it while crying
• Her meow was like "mrraaa!"
• She would "yodel" in preparation to throw up, and provided my mom enough time to get up, go get a paper towel, fold it up, place it in front of her, squat down behind her and hold her front legs steady, because she was so small that the force of puking would cause her to skate through it
• She passed away at 19 laying on a towel on the couch surrounded by me and my parents, I was a freshman in high school at the time

Smokey Joe
early 90s - June 30th 2010

• He was solid blue-gray
• In my childhood playing, he was represented by Canyon the Cougar (Beanie Baby)
• He was rescued from my mom's sister and rode on my mom's shoulder the carride home
• When I was a baby I grabbed two handfuls of him and he simply laid down and didn't lash out
• His meow was like "maw!"
• The red chair was his favorite
• He was hot-natured and laid on the AC vent in the summer
• He loved Janis Joplin and would come running and meow and prance around when my mom put it on the stereo
• He loved food a lot and would try to steal the other cats portions of dinner
• He liked eating tufts of fur for some reason
• He would cry out in announcement when he found something good to eat
• He loved stinky smells and would stick his face in people's shoes and was nicknamed Stinkin' Joe
• His favorite display of affection was headbutting hard, he would headbutt my mom in the chest so hard it nearly knocked the wind out of her
• He developed an extensive tumor throughout his mouth and throat that he would bite often
• We never wanted to have to put down a cat, but the painful tumor's bloodshed was horrible
• On the way to the vet we listened to Janis Joplin in the car to comfort him, and he was put down as me and my parents held him, I was in high school at the time.

Whiskers "Bushy Tail"
December 21st 1997 - July 10th 2018

• She was a brown tabby/calico mix looking cat
• In my childhood playing, she was represented by Pounce the Cat (Beanie Baby)
• She was a stray who stood on the porch rail and met my parents at the door
• My mom was afraid the animal catcher would take her away so she brought her in and bathed her up and we had a new cat just like that
• As a child I initially called her Bushy Tail because she had a bushy tail
• She liked to walk on the black coffee table, and she would lose her white whiskers for some reason so there would be contrasting white whiskers on the table and her name became Whiskers
• She escaped the house once before we could get her fixed, and we spent days looking for her under stuff, before we finally discovered her up a tree covered in her own filth and pregnant
• She had a big batch of babies that were adopted out, but my favorite was a white one I named Snowball
• She would climb the washing machine to the shelf above and get into the scrunchie jar and take them out to play with and my mom blamed me for a long time and wouldn't believe me that I wasn't doing it until she busted Whiskers in the act
• She obsessively groomed her belly for years and had it bald for a long time
• She was a strange pooper who went in bizarre places such as somehow across a rolled up towel at the base of the door, and on top of the litterbox
• Also when she pooped she would come tearing out of the litterbox room and scramble and skate across the floor, and my mom would narrate and sing "I feel good! dananana"
• She was also known as "Buck and Spew" for her extremely messy and trailing pukes
• In the first half of her life, she was 'evil' and would reach out and claw people who walked by her as she laid on the loveseat armrest, and her nickname was Wicked
• After Doodle passed she changed and was no longer evil and tried to fill the role of being lap cat, and moved to be near my mom all the time
• She became so sweet and loving her new nickname was Sweetie
• She was extremely talkative and had many voices and no single cry, she would talk loudly, respond to conversation or talk over you when she was mad, and talked for no reason sometimes. One of her signature meows was like "Owowow"
• She never jumped on the furniture, instead she climbed and had really muscular arms and we called her a rock climber or mountain climber
• Her favorite toy was a soft fuzzy multicolored ball
• She seemed more aware of herself in the mirror than the other cats, and could use the mirror to look at us and seemed to understand what a mirror was
• She tried to use her paws to drink with by dipping them in the water bowl and drinking the drips off her paw
• She loved treats so much and seemed to swallow her whole and quickly try to steal the other cats' treats
• Her favorite food was ham and especially turkey, and she seemed to know when it was in the house at Thanksgiving and Christmas
• She seemed to have "rolling back syndrome" and touching her lower back would make her quiver and bathe the air. When she got old she would have these "itch attacks" that looked like seizures where she would uncontrollably bite herself and end up peeing all over herself
• She was afraid of the vacuum at first, but in her old age became obsessed with it and wanted to be gently vacuumed
• When she became old and senile she required constant care, she was fed with a spoon, she slept in her bed a lot and when she woke up she needed to be carried to the litterbox so she didn't pee on the floor (which she sometimes did anyway when unattended), she had a medicine schedule, feeding schedule, and peeing/pooping schedule
• I took care of Whiskers a lot as she got more ancient, and then she got really sick at the end of May 2018, and that's when I started staying up all night to take care of her until my dad got up in the morning. I got her to drink and eat through syringes and nursed her back to 'health' and she was able to walk again. For the next two months I stayed up all night with her because she needed 24/7 care, and I developed insomnia from it (and still have trouble sleeping to this day)
• I really feel like she had "degenerative myelopathy" because she would walk on her knuckles and lost the ability to walk at all
• She had the personality of a sassy and feisty old woman and fought through everything that she went through
• She passed away at 21, the oldest cat we've taken care of, wrapped in a towel on the couch as me and my parents petted her. I was 23 at the time.

Blue "Bitty"
August 25th 2006 - February 8th 2020

• Bitty was solid gray with long fur, and shimmered kind of brown in the light
• He was born to a stray cat outside, and we placed all the other babies and he was the runt who was left behind, so we adopted him ourselves
• He was raised in my bathroom and constantly tried to sleep in his litterbox despite the discouragement. My mom would sit on the floor with him at night and hold him because he would cry
• He was carried around on a tour of the house, but kept in the bathroom until he squeezed under the door and escaped, and was promptly bit on the neck by Whiskers
• He didn't have a proper name that stuck yet when my dad took him to get fixed, and he chose to name him Blue on the spot, due to his blue eyes (which later became green)
• His actual name became Bitty because he was just an itty bitty baby runt
• He was very gassy when he was getting used to living indoors
• He always seemed more wolf/doglike to me, with his pointy face he looked like a wolf, and his first favorite toy was a monkey plushie that I would throw down the hall and he would fetch and bring back
• He was represented by Howl the Wolf (Beanie Baby)
• He liked to hunt and eat bugs, and he liked playing with string
• I had the blanket draped over my legs while sitting on the couch and he saw my feet moving under the blanket and attacked them
• He loved to be held by my mom, and would stand on his hind legs and put his front paws on her, and she would reach under his arms and pull him up like a toddler
• We joked that he had pica because he would not stop licking plastic (and later on eating cobwebs)
• He never seemed interested in begging for table scraps, but he ate other weird stuff like pieces of popcorn and chex mix
• One of his main favorite toys was a little black rat that was a piece of wood wrapped in black faux fur, but he lost it a lot because it was so small
• Bitty was a crybaby and meowed a lot, his meow was like "ow!"
• He grew to be massive, both fat and big boned, we thought he was part mainecoon because at one point he weighed 22.2 pounds
• He outgrew being able to be held by my mom, when she picked him up she'd have to sit with him immediately, and eventually wasn't able to lift him at all, and he would try to partially lay on her chest and cuddle in her neck
• He seemed to have longer back legs than front, and my mom said he was "jacked up in the back like a hot rod"
• He also had very large back feet that were like rabbit feet, and when he would lay he'd hold one of his feet and we'd joke that he was scared someone was going to steal his lucky foot
• He liked sticking his hands in my dad's slippers, or laying on top of any shoes that were left out. Actually, he just liked laying on anything that was left out
• He loved playing with wrapping paper at Christmas
• He was a troublemaker, loud crier, heavyfooter, noisemaker, and would play too rough with Bella
• He had very large fangs that hung out of his mouth, but they became rotten and he had very bad breath, and had to have his fangs pulled
• He was a huge fraidy cat and would run low to the ground when someone he didn't recognize approached the door, even if it was just my dad
• He loved when a bag of cat food came home, and would sit there pawing at it
• He used to lounge-eat by laying next to his dry food and using his paw to scoop it up and put it in his mouth
• He liked laying with his head propped on the pointy corner of the cabinet for some reason
• He inherited a cat bed that was too small but he liked it anyway
• He had a favorite brush that didn't really do anything to actually brush him, but he liked it
• He loved attention and whenever I'd sit on the couch with my mom he'd come running to lay between us for double petting
• Bitty became addicted to laying on my bed, and couldn't wait for me to get up in the morning so he would cry
• He tore his ACL in 2018
• For Christmas 2019 he got a new blue rat toy, that I picked out, my mom paid for, and my dad presented to him
• His bladder issues were terribly misdiagnosed for years until it was too late, to the point where despite the fact that he was peeing blood, they decided to give him prozac for depression and anxiety...
• He was tortured with medicines and special food that he grew tired of for ages
• It turned out he had a tumor in his bladder
• His decline in health was extremely sharp, he was active and playing in December and less than 2 months later he was gone
• He was confined to the kitchen with his bed, because he uncontrollably peed blood and puked, and I stayed up all night with him to help hold him and clean him up, until my dad got up and took over watching him
• By the time I got up Bitty had already lost the ability to walk, and I cried by his side almost all day, and we kept him in his bed nearby
• He passed away at 13, as me and my parents pet him and tried to comfort him. I remember on the TV it was the Shawshank Redemption and at the same time it was the scene that played beautiful opera music. I was 25 at the time.
• Most of all I feel sorry to him that we couldn't help him more, but I'm still glad that I chose to stay up all night with him the night before he passed - he really needed someone that night.

Bella
October 22nd 2008 - Present

• Bella is a solid black cat
• She is represented by Velvet the Black Panther (Beanie Baby)
• She was born to a feral cat we called The Mom Cat, and all her siblings were adopted out, leaving the black cat behind
• She was ferocious as a baby, a huntress in training, she would growl and take off across the yard with the fishing pole toy
• The Mom Cat disappeared and Bella started having her own babies and was the new Mom Cat, but after a couple years the old Mom Cat came back and she had to be called the Grandma Cat even though we later adopted Bella and renamed her
• She somehow became the most scared cat I've ever had
• She was too afraid to eat with the other cats and had to be served separately in my parents bedroom
• She was extremely reclusive for years and hid a lot
• Sometimes she would come out and liked when my mom bent over and let her long hair down and allowed Bella to push through it and 'wear' the hair herself
• Over time she allowed me to see her and pet her, and I tried coaxing her to my room even though she was scared
• She doesn't like anyone else participating in her play, and will only play with a certain jingle ball alone
• After Bitty passed and she was the only cat, she started becoming bolder and got on the couch to everyone's surprise
• She became addicted to getting attention on the couch and would try to lead me or rush there if she saw me going to sit
• She is very fat, so when she tries to rub against me it's more of a flop, or as we like to joke "bodyslam"
• She has an unreasonable amount of excess fur, no matter how much she is brushed we can't understand why fur keeps coming all the time and gets on everything
• She became brave enough to come to my room, and when I invited her on my bed things were never the same again - now she's addicted and entitled to attention on the bed
• Morning routine is for me to get up, make my bed, lay out a towel to catch her excess fur, and the bed that she inherited from Bitty, because as soon as I leave the room she'll be rushing to get to the bed
• She can hardly squeak out a meow most of the time, but sometimes she's startlingly loud with it, when she's trying to beg, is playing, or is complaining that I'm not awake yet. Her meow is comparable to a squeaky door.
• She's also entitled to my dad's computer chair, or should I just say it's her chair that she's allowing him to use. There's been times where he's gotten up to go do something and she's come racing from another room and launched into the chair to claim it. We joke about her camping in the chair because she "can't risk him sitting down".
• In Feb 2022 she became a lap cat for the first time. She will lay on my lap if there's a blanket on it.
• She randomly became addicted to cheese, begs for it whenever it's out, frantically eats what she's given and searches for more.

---

Everything by Luck with coding foundations help by Zay

Photo Gallery

Doodle and Memaw

Baby Doodle playing with a hamster ball.

Doodle as a baby.

Pipsqueak the hamster.

Doodle investigating a hamster.

Adult Doodle and Memaw laying on a bed.

Baby Smokey.

Memaw, Doodle, and Smokey laying on a bed.

Smokey in his favorite chair.

Doodle eating roses.

Investigating Doodle.

Whiskers on the coffee table.

Doodle in her prime.

Smokey with Doodle.

Doodle shortly before passing away.

Bitty showing off his girth.

Whiskers posing sassily.

A very elderly Whiskers.

Bitty as a baby, and as an adult.

Bitty playing with his new blue rat toy that he got for his final Christmas.

Bella being chunky.

Pet Treasure

Pet Friends