Zeke the Wonder Cat

Soon after we moved into our own house, Brent and I decided to get a cat. We weren't very proactive about the situation, and decided that if anybody ever offered us a cat, we'd take it. So about a year later, a girl at work was looking for a home for a kitten she had found. It had been in the gutter meowing with the back portion of her right side burned. She didn't like people and she hissed a lot. But we took her home and now she is one of the sweetest little cats I know. She does have a paranoid streak and still does not like people. Of those who have been to our house, only a very small percentage have actually seen her. But she cuddles with Brent every night and loves feeding time. Her name is JoAnn, after JoAnn Seghini, the venerable mayor of Midvale, and we adore her. The summer after JoAnn came to live with us, a huge dirty white cat followed her home one day and stalked our back porch for a week. He would just stare in the glass doors and it really freaked me out. I thought he was going to kill Jo. We left on vacation for a few days and figured he'd leave when there was nothing to look at. But when we came back, the cat was still there. We decided he was ours and took him to the humane society to get his work done. I kept telling him that he's the one who chose to live with us, and that this is what you have to do to become domesticated. We initially had named him Gertrude, but with the help of Brian and Claudia we realized that he was in fact male. After we started calling him Ezekiel, his behavior improved dramatically. When I would tell people his name was "Ezekiel," a lot of people would hear "Easy Kill." Which may be considered a cool name, but not quite what we were going for. So we shortened it to Zeke and Zeke he is. Zeke is one of the most personable cats I have ever met. When the doorbell rings, JoAnn runs under the bed while Zeke walks in a stately fashion to the front door to see who it is. He is big and kind of clumsy, so when he plays his halves don't always match up. It's great. He loves boxes and will try to fit inside of any size of box. It can get pretty humorous. He also loves plastic bags and will lick any that are left out. He loves it when we come home from Macey's with grocery bags. It's like heaven to him. He also loves to open the cupboard under the sink and sleep in the dirty towel basket. It was quite amazing to watch him figure out how to get them open and I'm impressed. I'd also much rather him sit in the dirty towels basket rather than on the chair. He's pretty hairy. But he is the best kid cat I have ever seen. He's much more like a dog than a cat, and just sits and takes everything that Miriam dishes out. Of course we teach her to be soft and gentle, but frequently she will lay on him, roll over him, and generally pester him. Sometimes I wonder why he doesn't just leave when she starts to poke him, but he just sits and takes it. And Miriam LOVES him for it. She even can say his name. It started out as "See," but then she figured out how to add the vocal sound to the consonant. She now says "ZZZZZeeeeeeee!" every time she sees him and she gets really really excited. The neighbors share funny stories about things they've seen him do. He has the funniest personality and I can't imagine what his life was like before coming here. Because he is so personable, I can't imagine him not having a home before this. But if he had a home, I can't imagine how he could have become a scrawny stray. The one downfall is his hair. He has a LOT of it and it gets all over everything. Which is why we are taking him in for his second annual summer shave. He gets a lion cut and he loves it. He walks around like he's the king of everything. Last summer while he was decked out like a lion, he even chased a dog off the front lawn and stalked back and forth daring him to come back. It was pretty funny but you could tell Zeke was proud of himself. I could go on and on about this cat. He's a wonder of nature and I think he's fabulous. But I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

This is shortly after Zeke came to live with us. He's kind of funny looking, but gosh he's great.

I had the playpen out while Myelle was visiting and Zeke hopped in to see what the fun was all about. They were both pretty excited, so it was hard to get a good picture of either of them, but you get the point.

Fat cat in a little box.

This is Miriam's closet and her clothes totes. Zeke always finds the craziest places to sleep.

Sometimes Zeke will have his tongue hanging out. I think it's hillarious, but it's kind of sad how many pictures we have of him looking like this.

See?

Proof that Zeke and JoAnn really do like each other.

We love this crazy cat and we are so excited to be celebrating the second anniversary of his joining our family. HOORAY FOR ZEKE!