A Tale of Three Cats: Pumpkin grows up!

Pumpkin the cat has been with us for nearly a year now. I wrote about how she blew in after Hurricane Joachim in my post National Cat Day - Meet Pumpkin!

The little tiger cat showed up on our gallery doorstep all wet and bedraggled. When I opened the door she pranced right in as if she knew she'd found a family. Well, she was right!

People have asked how Pumpkin is doing, so here's the update. We kept Pumpkin for a while (so named because she turned up in October) but we already had two dogs and six cats so we had our hands full.

Everything turned out perfectly when Greg's parents John and Kathy fell for Pumpkin and took her home to their house to live with their cats, Corky and Harper.

Here is Pumpkin all grown up. She promptly took over John and Kathy's house and is living high on the hog.

She is very happy and she knows how to kick back and relax in her cozy new digs.

Her tummy is shaved in the photo because she had just been spayed.  There's a story to tell about her two new siblings, too.

This is Harper, Pumpkin's new sister. About 8 years ago, Greg and I were out for a walk on Harper Street in Newberry and we heard a pitiful wailing. Following the noise, I found the cutest little black and white kitten who had a broken toe and was in a great deal of pain.

We carried her back to our Gallery on Main Street and Kathy took her to the vet. Kathy and John had never had a cat before, and since I already had two cats and two dogs at that point (and thought I couldn't possibly take in another one - ha!) John and Kathy took her home.

She did come to work for a while at the Gallery, so I have some sweet old photos of Ozzy and Harper together.

Although Harper liked to come to the gallery to hang out with Ozzy when she was a kitten, after a while, she didn't care so much for the commute, so John and Kathy left her home by herself during the day. By the time she was three, she was quite anti-social and shy. I suggested that perhaps a friend was just what was needed to make her a bit more social.

Enter Corkie, who was adopted from the local humane society about five years ago.

Baby Corkie was very sweet, and always happy to be cuddled. Here he is with Greg.

Corkie is very out-going and friendly and really wanted to be very best friends with Harper. However, it turned out that Harper did NOT want a very best friend. She hissed at Corkie for quite a while. Since Harper didn't give him the warmest of welcomes, Corkie did his best to show his affection for her by sneaking up on her from behind in surprise attack or dive-bombing on top of her from a perch on the bed!

Harper finally begrudgingly accepted that Corkie could live with John and Kathy. And now Pumpkin has joined them too and she has definitely become Top Cat!

Because we have so many pets that were strays and rescues we always support our local animal shelter. A portion of every sale from EuroLuxHome.com is donated to help homeless pets at Pets Inc., a no-kill animal shelter in Columbia, SC.

National Cat Day on October 29 also encourages people to help the 4 million cats who wind up in shelters each year, either by adopting a cat or making a donation to a shelter. Cat adoption is truly worth it... as you can see from our photos of our own family's fuzzy brood!