Cat Collection 2014-2020

By June 2014, we had found a candidate home for Arun, and with Jyoti and Missy Momma being our indoor kitties, and Pink manning the great outdoors, we started to keep an eye out for possible kittens that we could adopt. We were hoping for another red fuzzy like Tucker, and maybe a brown tabby like Kimburu.

Soon enough, because it was kitten season, a red fuzzy kitten showed up at Tina’s practice. She fell immediately in love. However, the little guy had a fracture in one of his back legs, although not serious, and some trauma to his nostril. He needed to stay at the pet hospital for awhile before he could come home.

Tina made sure that everyone know that the little fuzzy was spoken for, and we started to get ready to bring him home. We already had a name for him, Tsegi. This name comes from a small place in Arizona near Kayenta, where there were red canyon walls, a fitting name for a red fuzzy.

Soon enough, we got to bring Tsegi home and we began the work of introducing him to the rest of the cats. His facial trauma was mostly healed, but he still had a slightly disfigured nostril, which we call his lucky nostril, in the same way that Nemo, from Finding Nemo, would call his fin his lucky fin.

Not long after bringing home Tsegi, a colleague of Tina’s said that she had a couple of kittens, a male and female, that we could check out. They had typical tabby markings, much like Kimburu, but the male was particularly beautiful. We decided to take him, hoping that Tsegi would enjoy his new “brother.”

After a day or two of adjusting to each other, they became fast friends, enthusiastically playing and snuggling up close to each other during their naps. We just needed a name for him. Since Tsegi was a Navajo word, we tried to come up with something similar. I discovered that Mosi meant cat in Navajo. It seemed appropriate because Kimburu was named for the word meaning African wild cat, so it was on brand to name our cat … Cat, but from another language. So now we had the kittens Tsegi and Mosi, and soon we were enjoying the resulting kitten chaos.

In July 2014, Arun returned, as the candidate home didn’t work out for him. We started the process of finding another candidate forever home for him. In the meantime, Mosi became fascinated with Arun, and surprisingly, Arun was also very interested in Mosi, which was surprising since Arun didn’t seem to want to be friends with any of our other cats. Within a few days, they were playing together and taking close naps as well. As this went on, we realized that this was Arun’s forever home now, and our compliment of kitties was now full.

The kittens grew up, with Tsegi fluffing up even more than Tucker, and Mosi getting some brown in his coat, but never as much as a typical brown tabby like Kimburu. They continued to be best brothers, and Mosi and Arun were also great together. Tsegi and Arun tolerated each other, but never fought, usually just half-hearted whacking each other, but most of time, they minded their own business. If they ever slept close to each other, it was usually because Mosi was the glue holding them close together.

In May 2016, Jyoti passed away, and then Missy Momma followed him in October 2017. We were down to three stooges inside the house, Tsegi, Mosi, and Arun, with Pink an honorary outdoor stooge. This was to change in 2020.

With the pandemic coming in the spring of 2020, one project we decided to take on was making Pink an indoor kitty. Up until then, he mostly stayed in our yard and didn’t wander far, but there were a couple of times that he disappeared for a day or two. After doing that for the second time, we made the decision to bring him inside.

Since Pink and the other cats had seen each other, they were mostly good together, but Pink, being on the smaller side, became the target of occasional bullying from Arun and Mosi. We worked on getting them to be better with each other but it there was still tension and some conflict. It mostly worked, but things were going to change in a big way soon enough.