Because what the Internet needs is more stories about cats.

If I believed in reincarnation I would choose to come back as a cat, because life seems pretty good for them.
They can be as persnickety as they like and people shrug, saying "ah but that's cats".
They sleep all day, eat, then stretch and sleep again and people hug them tight, not tell them to get their lazy butt off the couch.
They can turn their back if they don't feel like interacting, ignore owners completely, look down their teeny noses in arrogance, walk away when their human is mid sentence, and what happens?
"Oh that's such a cat thing"

So I'm in.

Before we became dumdog owners, we owned a succession of cats. They have all gone to better places... But not all died.

Chloe was the first cat we both owned, bought from a friend in a moment of weakness (on my part).
I thought having a cat would be nice.
I'm sure for you it is.

But I didn't realise how frustrating having a cat meandering around my feet could be, especially when I was pregnant and couldn't see my feet. Add my already ungood (new word) vision and we had chaos with me tripping over the cat all the time.

Chloe tolerated our daughter while she was immobile, but once said daughter started to walk, things were different. Chloe scratched my baby from the outer corner of her eye across her cheek. (So blessed, so very very blessed it didn't connect with her eye)
We moved house a month later and chloe stayed behind with the neighbours.

Whaaaat....?
With their knowledge, of course!

Then when child one and child two were old enough they nagged for a cat. After about five years I gave in. Someone's cat had kittens and would we like one?
And the someone asked in front of child one and child two.
Who promptly burst into excited happy dancing with their father.....
So that year there were two kittens under the Christmas tree.

A black and white tuxedo señor named Daisy.
She wanted a cat called Daisy, what could I do? Stop looking at me like that, all judgmental like.

And his sister, a tabby called Buddy.
Yeah, yeah, go all side eye on me now. So my kids aren't gender biased in their cat naming. That's a good thing, right?

Daisy and Buddy were quite obedient, surprisingly, and their lives were fairly normal.
If by normal we're talking being dressed up, being locked in a food bin for six hours
taught to say "merl" instead of meow, straddling my husbands shoulders as he gardened,
being used in puppet plays, scaling the pantry shelves ninja style in search of treats...
then yeah, they were normal.
Until the day Buddy ran away. She didn't come for her meals for a few days and we were about to give her up as deceased when a neighbour came over holding her wriggling self.
He was devastated as he asked if it was our children's pet.
Apparently his own cat had died not long before and he was so upset by this he refused to ever have another cat... until a "stray" made itself at home in his shed, eating from the dead cat's bowl, sleeping in the dead cat's bed.... Until someone told him our kids had lost a tabby.

I told him that yes it was ours. Child two was over the moon excited to see his cat, and grateful for her safe return.

Not so Buddy.
Upon hearing our family sounds, smelling our family smells and seeing our family home, Buddy reared up, hissed and sprang violently from the neighbour's arms, turned mid air and ran back to the neighbour's house. She did this several times.

We decided that as she was now effectively a teenager, Buddy had in fact used her angst to run away from home and find refuge in a safe place.
And with that our double feline status was halved.

Daisy was a battle scarred beast at times. I'm sure the neighbourhood cats picked on him for his name and he had to fight for his honour. If that isn't the case then he was just a relentless bully who was compensating for his girly name. Either way, his ripped ears, battered belly and torn out claws gave us many a time of head shaking.

Daisy got old and crotchety but was loved nonetheless by all the other humans in the house. His arthritis, mood swings, deafness and senility began to overtake his youth, much to his own disgust.

Then a phone conversation between child three and her friend, the daughter of the local vet, a conversation which incidentally had started so well, ended with us saying we'd take a kitten off their hands.
The runt of the litter, this teeny tiny little ball of ginger fluff fitted in my cupped hand. Ginger fluff was renamed Jewel, partly in homage to the singer whose music I was flirting with at the time.
Jewel wasn't old enough to lap milk so much time was spent drop feeding and cosseting this 'toy' and thus a bond was being formed, dammit.

Daisy, heretofore, as mentioned, old and crotchety, became Jewel's own Mr Miagi. Hunting, stalking, toileting, ignoring the humans, there was noting too meagre or too grandiose for Daisy to not teach Jewel. The day we found Jewel on top of a garden pole ready to ninja pounce onto the unsuspecting deaf Daisy, we knew the apprenticeship was almost over and 'grasshopper' was ready to leave her mentor.

In another part of life, one of my brothers was going through a rough patch. He loved animals and took a special shine to Jewel, which was reciprocated. I offered him Jewel as his very own so he could have company.
The children were so overjoyed by my offering their pet in this way there was a deafening silence. Broken by I think a sob or a hiccup.

I did know how much the family loved Jewel, and this was not done in malice, which the children understood, but the big empty hole left, filled only by the sullen and grumpy disdain of Daisy, was palpable.

I think I've been forgiven.
Daisy eventually had to visit the vet for his final time. My husband rang me at work to tell me he couldn't stand seeing him in pain any more and the vet would fit him in right now.

Daisy now lives under a tree in our front yard, the same tree he used to sit under to snarl "hey you kids get off my lawn" any time passing children looked like they might be having fun.

And just like any grumpy curmudgeon unable to rest in peace, the stories of his youth are told and retold with more flavour and exaggeration over time. Just as he would wish.