Hello, my name's Ariel--you can call me either Ariel or Gryph, it doesn't matter which. ^^; I'm to the site, obviously...and hopefully, I will soon be a new cat owner as well!
Now, you may be wondering, "what is this girl doing on a cat forum if she doesn't own a cat?" (just a warning, this has the potential of getting a wee bit lengthy. 8D; )
Well, for starters, I've always LOVED cats since I was little, yet there was a bit of a problem with that--Dad's allergic to cats, and for the longest time, I had this notion that I was too! Recent allergy tests have shown that I am NOT allergic to cats and probably never have been, and I don't know WHERE I got the idea as a child--but I did. I went the first fifteen-and-a-half years of my life thinking I was allergic to cats! Yet I still wanted a cat.
Oddly enough, that didn't become a possibility with my dad until I got rabbits. To make a long story short--we bought one rabbit and ended up with five! Come to find out, Rosie had been pregnant. We had to give two of the babies away, and kept Rosie and two of the other babies. Well, it was around this time that I had the oh-so-novel idea of getting a cat! (note the sarcasm, if you will.) My mindset was, "gee, dad let me get a rabbit, maybe he'll let me get a cat now!"
Lo and behold, he agreed to it--on the condition that we gave away all of the rabbits. That wasn't going to happen--I quickly decided it would be cruel to give them away, especially considering the fact that they were already becoming accustomed to living with us..and I was unwilling to give them up.
Years pass. The rabbits (Neo and Morpheus being the two babies we kept--and of course, Rosie, the mother) never seemed to be in great health from the start. When we took a trip to North Carolina, we left the rabbits in the care of a man who owned...well, I guess you could call it a "rabbit kennel". They came back fine, of course, except for Neo, who died a few weeks after we got them back. a couple more years pass...Morpheus left us at the end of this summer, followed by Rosie, who died a few weeks ago rather tragically (involving problems with her digesting her food properly due to a mistake on the vet's part and our ignorance (long story short, the vet perscribed her amoxicillin for her runny poop, and we found out from another vet only too late that rabbits are NOT supposed to take amoxicillin.)). A friend of my mother made the suggestion that I get a siamese cat, and needless to say, it grew on me. Nothing has been said to my Dad yet--we have to take things slowly with him or else risk ruining our chances, but we're sure that if we do this right and go slowly enough, he won't have a problem with it.
So for the past few weeks I've been doing a lot of research on cats--as much as I can--to prepare for getting my first cat in a few months' time, if all goes well.
Now, you may be wondering, "what is this girl doing on a cat forum if she doesn't own a cat?" (just a warning, this has the potential of getting a wee bit lengthy. 8D; )
Well, for starters, I've always LOVED cats since I was little, yet there was a bit of a problem with that--Dad's allergic to cats, and for the longest time, I had this notion that I was too! Recent allergy tests have shown that I am NOT allergic to cats and probably never have been, and I don't know WHERE I got the idea as a child--but I did. I went the first fifteen-and-a-half years of my life thinking I was allergic to cats! Yet I still wanted a cat.
Oddly enough, that didn't become a possibility with my dad until I got rabbits. To make a long story short--we bought one rabbit and ended up with five! Come to find out, Rosie had been pregnant. We had to give two of the babies away, and kept Rosie and two of the other babies. Well, it was around this time that I had the oh-so-novel idea of getting a cat! (note the sarcasm, if you will.) My mindset was, "gee, dad let me get a rabbit, maybe he'll let me get a cat now!"
Lo and behold, he agreed to it--on the condition that we gave away all of the rabbits. That wasn't going to happen--I quickly decided it would be cruel to give them away, especially considering the fact that they were already becoming accustomed to living with us..and I was unwilling to give them up.
Years pass. The rabbits (Neo and Morpheus being the two babies we kept--and of course, Rosie, the mother) never seemed to be in great health from the start. When we took a trip to North Carolina, we left the rabbits in the care of a man who owned...well, I guess you could call it a "rabbit kennel". They came back fine, of course, except for Neo, who died a few weeks after we got them back. a couple more years pass...Morpheus left us at the end of this summer, followed by Rosie, who died a few weeks ago rather tragically (involving problems with her digesting her food properly due to a mistake on the vet's part and our ignorance (long story short, the vet perscribed her amoxicillin for her runny poop, and we found out from another vet only too late that rabbits are NOT supposed to take amoxicillin.)). A friend of my mother made the suggestion that I get a siamese cat, and needless to say, it grew on me. Nothing has been said to my Dad yet--we have to take things slowly with him or else risk ruining our chances, but we're sure that if we do this right and go slowly enough, he won't have a problem with it.
So for the past few weeks I've been doing a lot of research on cats--as much as I can--to prepare for getting my first cat in a few months' time, if all goes well.