2026, animals, Family, pets, Uncategorized

CDS

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The CDS (Cat Distribution System) is working its way in our family this month.

A couple of weeks ago our daughter in Washington State told us about this cat that suddenly appeared on the second floor deck of her apartment. She is on the top floor of her building. The cat had descended from the roof. It hung around on her deck for a while and then climbed back on the roof. Daughter put out a cushion for it to sleep on. She didn’t see it again, though.

The cat made another appearance outside the front door of her apartment a couple of days ago. The apartments are all accessable from the outside stairs. He was crying and wanting inside the apartment next door, but no one answered when Daughter knocked. She let the facility management know, and then put out water for him, which he drank. He let her a little nearer to him him and seemed to want love and pets. Her next goal is to get him into a carrier and have him checked by a vet for a microchip. He is a longer haired tortoiseshell.

Daughter already has two cats, but the way she talks about her visitor makes me think she will keep him if she can. Husband, Son, Daughter in law, and I were all on the texts about this cat, all of us hoping she could catch and keep him or else find his people. Almost all of our cats have been rescues from town or from Daughter’s best friend’s ranch in the ND Badlands. Son found our cat, Luna, under a deck in Brookings as an abandoned kitten nine years ago. Our first cat in ND just showed up at our front door one Halloween, and we took her in. Son considered getting a purebred Maine Coon as his next cat until he realized they cost a couple of thousand dollars. Cat rescue is best. Even better is when a cat chooses you!

What animals have you rescued? Favorite cat songs and art? How do you feel about cats as pets?

37 thoughts on “CDS”

  1. Not exactly a rescue, but when my grandson was born he had so many allergies, many of them yet to be determined, that my daughter had to find a new home for their middle-aged cat, Maia. We agreed to take Maia.
    Transitioning to a new home might have been difficult for Maia but since, whenever we visited them, I always made a point of locating and greeting Maia, giving her a minute of attention, she made herself at home with us quickly.
    I was her person, the one she would wake up—at 5:00AM!—to be fed and whose lap she would most often seek out, and I think it was because of that attention I had given her at her old house. The cat we had had previously, Bella, was distinctly Robin’s.
    We are currently catless and dogless but that could change.

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  3. This was when I first knew now-Husband – he, his sister Rose, and I had an upstairs apt. on Dupont Ave. So. that had a porch on the back with no screen door. Momcat showed up and had two kittens on our back porch, in maybe March – we took her in and named the kittens Boots and Puff, which became Pluff later on. Momcat of course adopted Rose’s closet to keep her kittens in, since Rose was the one who least liked cats…

    We’ve had several cats over the years, more detail later maybe… I wouldn’t mind having another, but Husband says no at this point.

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    1. Sorry, that got bumped.

      This might from the 20th century where the s&h is trying to find out what I can recover after being hacked. There is a good chance the phone was infected and I have a new phone and phone number at this point. Hoping we can recover emails, we’ll see.

      Just chiming in to remind everyone the cat distribution system definitely runs through the Trail, as that is how Kitten (the big orange boy) became a city cat after starting life on a farm near Ben.

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        1. It really does seem to be a thorough hack, so I am going to be an anonymous doily for the next week or so. Thank you all for your patience!

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        1. He lives in Maryland with his girlfriend.

          He is also in grad school while working full time in tech (as does she), for which I have cause to be grateful these days!

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  6. No animal rescues for us per se. But our previous two cats, Calvin & Patty, were feral cats the humane society apparently found because mom had been killed (I think that’s the story. It was 35 years ago). We adopted them, and they were friendly enough, but always shy and distrusting of strangers. Not much better with us. Far from the best lap cats. But we still loved the heck out of them, of course.

    Second closet to a “rescue” that we had was a family of feral cats who lived under our backyard shed in Illinois for one season. We didn’t try to get rid of them, but didn’t try to help them or adopt them or report them to animal control. Live and let live. That shed had five different tenants of different species over the five full years we lived in that house. Woodchucks twice, possums twice, and the cats,

    Do Cat Stevens songs count as cat songs? If so, then most of his work is pretty good.

    Cats are the only animals I would ever adopt. I’ve been a cat person since my first cat as a 6 yr old. Give me any of the feline predators any day as my all-time favorite animals. Tigers, leopards, cheetahs, cougars, and house cats. The most beautiful animals of all.

    Chris in Owatonna (who wishes he was a cat whisperer)

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  7. I’m a dog person. I’ve had cats, and I much prefer dogs. Dogs love me; cats seem to tolerate me, even when I am their servant.

    I rescued Mariah (named for her wailing when she was a tiny kitten). She was rescued from a farm where someone was going to kill a litter of kittens. A friend intervened and I promised to take one. Mariah was delivered to me, screaming, in an enormous box. She was tiny and her eyes were barely open. She nursed on my t-shirt. She was a tortoise shell calico. I think all calico cats are female, but I’m not sure.

    I kept her for her entire life, even though there were times we disliked each other strongly. She liked to attack me. She would wait around the corner of an entrance to a room, and attack my ankles as I entered. I have scars. She didn’t get very large. I think she stayed around 7 or 8 pounds.

    As she started getting older, she became more reclusive. Sometimes I couldn’t find her in the house (she never went outside). I began to realize that I really, really preferred dogs. She lived to be about 16 years old. I buried her under one of the black walnut trees in my backyard in Waterville.

    Wes took my cat song! Cats make great pets for other people.

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  8. Rise and Pet the Kitty, Baboons,

    I love the Cat Distribution System! I am not part of it, although I have had cats in the past, but I prefer dogs. My son always said husband must have been a cat in a past life, because cats love him.

    I have rescued dogs through the formal rescue system–our Bootsy and Lucky were rescues. A friend of mine is part of the Dog Distribution System. Dogs find her–they walk right up to her then go home with her. Recently she came over to meet McGee. Without warning or having ever done anything like this before, he ran across the room and jumped up on her into her face. I was worried because on Christmas Eve she was in a serious car accident that injured her neck and shoulders and gave her a concussion. She says she is fine, though. About 2 years ago the last little dog that adopted her died of old age. When she was here Saturday she reported that she is getting ready for another dog, so I am sure some critter will find her.

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  9. Most of my animals have been rescued. My first two dogs (Scarlet and Sorcha Dog)were not but everyone else after that was. And I include getting a purebred dog (Baton) from a breeder who didn’t want to show him anymore as rescue. Rhiannon came from a rescue in Tennessee, Zorro was rescued from PetSmart, Nimue was dumped on my vet who then turned to me. Tristan was the runt of his litter and not wanted- I flew to California to get him. Thorin came via Play it Again Sams in Wisconsin and Guinevere from the Golden Valley Humane Society.

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  11. I have always had a soft spot for animals, and I have rescued a fair number of them, including two squirrels.

    I grew up with dogs as pets. Mom and dad both considered cats dirty, for some reason, and would never allow one in the house. That didn’t stop me from trying to steel a kitten from a feral cat that lived in the small apple orchard adjacent to our house in Stubbekøbing. Let’s just say that mama cat taught me a lesson at the age of six that would last a lifetime.

    My first cat in the US was a kitten I found in the middle of nowhere near Cheyenne. I was picking wildflowers along a country road when I heard the desperate squeals of a small animal in distress. Following the sound, wasband and I located a tiny, emaciated, white and orange tabby kitten with bleeding cuts around the eyes from the tall grasses.

    We took her home with us; leaving her in the ditch was not an option.

    We named her Squeaky, and she became the reason we needed to find another apartment ASAP. Ann would not tolerate a cat in her house.

    When we had her neutered a few months later, we discovered Squeaky was a he. His testicles were so small that the vet didn’t discover them until he had already made the incision to remove the uterus. He was so embarrassed that he didn’t charge us for the procedure.

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  19. My first cat, Franny, chose me. She was supposed to be a companion to my housemate’s cat, but she had other ideas.

    Second cat, Georgia, showed up on my porch on a cold rainy fall night. She let me pet her and then went over to the front door, stood up on her hind legs and pawed at the door a little. Apparently saying “I’d like to go in now, it’s cold out.”

    Isabel was about four or five weeks old when my neighborhood mail carrier found her. A neighbor called me about her, shortly after Georgia died. She was feisty and bit me on my lip when we were first introduced. But she liked it when I sang to her.

    Jomo and Jory I adopted through a rescue organization. They had been found with their siblings in the trunk of an abandoned car. Not sure what happened to the mom cat.

    Sammy was a neighborhood cat who began to follow me when I was out walking in the neighborhood. He decided to live on my porch, so I didn’t have a lot of choice but to bring him inside when the weather turned bitterly cold in December of 2006. Or maybe it was 2005. Somewhere around there. I had three at the time, and four seemed like a lot, so I tried to give him away, but couldn’t do it. He would go out with me when I went for a walk, and trot alongside me, sometimes looking up at me with a “We belong together” expression. He was completely irresistable.

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  21. My mom is a cat person, and since she lives with us, we’re cat people by extension. I’m ambi-pet-rous, although I might be slightly more dog leaning. DH is not a fan of cats, which turned out to be a bit of an issue with our most recent CDS acquisition.

    Mom and I were driving along a somewhat busy street last June when I saw this tiny gray streak crossing the road. A large truck was coming with no way to stop and I was horrified to realize that we were about to watch the kitten become a gray squish. Somehow, miraculously, the truck rolled along and she wasn’t under its wheels! I parked, ran out, and snatched her up before she disappeared into the gutter. The vet said she was about 4 weeks old — still needed the kitten milk supplements — and we named her Milagro since we determined that her birthdate would have been around Cinco de Mayo.

    We call her Millie, or Floof (she has a very fluffy tail), or sometimes Feral Demon Baby Floof.

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