Royal Ranch Royalty

Good Morning! Wow! These Sunday posts are coming closer and closer together is seems like. Our Royalty today is Shasta, she is our oldest cat, and as you can see, she thinks she's a baby. She is quite small, and surprisingly light, but if you just stopped by the ranch, you'd never know she was here.

We tease Shasta that she is a basement dweller, because whenever a visitor comes by she darts to the basement, scared to death. She has a way of draping herself onto your lap, and if she does not get an immediate response, she'll head butt your hand until you pet her.

My sixteen year old was just a baby, when my sister-in-law bought a ranch in Matheson, CO. It wasn't until a few weeks later that the kittens started arriving from the barn cats the previous owner had left behind. Our first visit down there was an exciting one for the kids, but a little bothersome for me. Way too many cats, and little runt Shasta was barely alive, let alone thriving. So, we brought her and one of her brothers home, to bottle feed and raise. I believe that is the reason she is such a baby, and is so very trusting of her family.

On the other hand, she is deathly afraid of strangers and being outside. Shasta went through one of her nine lives, right before my very eyes. Tom and the kids were headed out somewhere (been so long, can't remember...) and as I was waving goodbye to them, I see Shasta fall out from underneath the bottom of the Suburban and just barely miss the back tires as she screamed and ran for the nearest bush! It took me a few minutes to even find her, but when I did, luckily she was fine, just scared out of her mind. She hasn't been outside much since then.

We put in a cat door recently, so I could quit spending my day letting cats in and out, and now that she knows she can get right back in, she is a tad bit more adventurous. She'll sit in front of the clear rubber door and watch for a long time, and then she'll sneak out and belly crawl her way to her favorite planter, where she can roll in the mulch under my Butterfly Bush. What would we do without all of this entertainment?

Have a mircle of a day!