All for the Love of Cats

Harold Sims

Description

A collection of stories and poems shares insight into a retired couple’s mission to rescue cats and educate the world about these beautiful creatures.
All for the Love of Cats is a collection of stories, poems and interesting facts about America’s most popular pet the house cat. It was written in the 87th year of my life. I am a retired person who never really retired. My life began in April of the year 1935. A time when America suffered from a great depression. I was born in Mount Vernon, New York into a family that was poor. My mother and father married very soon after graduating from high school with no skills to qualify them for good jobs. So, my farther made a merger salary and my mother stayed home with me. His jobs came and went. Before I was five, we moved from Mount Vernon to Cos Cob Connecticut to Riverside, to Roatan, to Old Greenwich. I spent the war years there and at my age ten we moved to a small town in upstate New York named Sempronius where we ran a chicken farm. It was there that I met my first cat and I have loved cats ever since. I left there in 1953, tried a semester of college, flunked out and joined the Navy in Key West, Florida and I didn’t have contact with another cat until I married my wife Kay in 1962 and we bought a copper-eyed Persian cat named Buzzy. Buzzy lived with us for nineteen years and after he died, we didn’t have another cat until the nineteen eighties when a white short-hair cat named Marco Polo came to our summer home in Cashiers, North Carolina. Marco soon had a small Maine Coon female for a friend and soon the stray started coming to our door and by the time we retired in 1993 we had anywhere from six to ten cats sharing our home. But it wasn’t until 1995 when we moved from Clearwater, Florida to Cashiers, North Carolina and found that that town and all the other towns around us had a serious problem with stray and abandoned cats and we began helping to save as many of them as we could and any other plans we had for our retirement were gone with the wind and we spent all of our years of retirement operating a no-kill shelter and adoption center and we worked harder than I did a college professor and Kay as a school social worker harder than we had ever worked before. When you operate a cat shelter you don’t work nine to five, you work seven-twenty-four- three sixty-five because cats work those same hours and they may need assistance at any time of the day or night. This book tells the story of our life since we though we retired in 1993. All the stories are true, I wrote the poems and put together the facts about cats and how they became pets and companions that enriched our lives. The idea for a cat museum had been in our minds since we learned that there were none in America and we began buying items for a museum. But it wasn’t until 2017 that we were able to open a small cat museum in one room of a local antique mall and we learned that cat people did, indeed, want to visit a cat museum and people from all over the world have come to visit. I hope I live forever, but my wife died at age 87 so it is unlikely I will live forever and when I do I hope all the people who love cats will come together and help the museum live on after me with donations to the cause. Information of how you can help can be found on the last few pages on this book. Please buy a copy, learn more about your cats and help the museum to live on into the future to educate and entertain cat lovers in the near and far future.

Sujets

• Love
• Love (disambiguation)
• Cats
• Pets

Informations

• Publié par: Archway Publishing
• Date de parution: 14 février 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665736343
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

All For the Love of Cats
HAROLD SIMS


Copyright © 2023 Harold Sims.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.
 
 
Archway Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.archwaypublishing.com
844-669-3957
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
 
ISBN: 978-1-6657-3633-6 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-3632-9 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-3634-3 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022924094
 
 
 
Archway Publishing rev. date: 02/14/2023
CONTENTS
Foreword
 
I Had A Dream About Building A Cage-Free Cat Shelter
The Story of Mama Boots A Cat That Launched The Dream That Built A Cat Shelter and A Cat Museum
Introduction
Dempsy the Dumpster Cat A Story of Love and Compassion
Tabby’s Story
“Hoot”
Who Was Catman One?
Muffin’ Story
Racoons in Our Cabin
A Story of The Cat, Early Man And the Lack of a Cat Carrier
“Mite”
I Didn’t Know Nothing About Birthing Kittens
Ginger from Feral Cat to Thrift Shop Mascot
A Cat for Christmas
Mary Jane, A Cat On A High
Uno The One Eye Cat
Beverly A Late in the Day Rescue
The Cats of Sapphire Valley
Kittens in the Basement
Could The Rock And Roll Cats Prevent War In the East?
Puss and Boots
A Cat Without Claws
Augie
Tripod the Cat With Only Three Legs
A Funny Story About Salvador Dali’s Pet Ocelot Babou
A Sad Story of Four Dead Kittens
An Interesting Story But Not One of Mine
How Could The People in Egypt Hold a Fair Trial for a Cat?
CAT POEMS
Please Don’t Use Cat Gut Strings On Your Banjo or your Fiddle
What is at The American Museum of The House Cat?
Cats
Kevin’s Song from, Kevin Tames the Bullies
The History of Cat Food
The Hissing Opossum and the Heifer Cat
The Night Before Christmas
Cat Limericks Some Owned And Some Borrowed
A Lament for Little Lewis And a Warning To All Who Have a Cat
Little Lewis Jokes
A Poem About My Tabby Cat
“Pathetic Lines Upon the Death and Burial of Miss T’s favorite Cat.”
A Poem for A Petrified Cat
A Song to Our Little Mummy
Some Facts you Could Learn From the Cats
Take Your Cat for Spay and Neuter
Metaphysical Ramblings with My Cat
The Neutered Tom Cats’ Song
What Will I See if I Visit The American Museum of the House Cat?
A New Thought About the Origin of the House Cat
FACTS ABOUT CATS
What I’ve Learned From My Cats
Cats Are a “One of A Kind” Animal
How Are Cats Different than Dogs?
What You Should Know About Cat Food
The History of Cat Litter
The Life of the Cat in Egypt
Cats In Norse Mythology
The Cat in Medieval Europe
The Cats Treatment During The Time Of The Black Plague
The Life of Cats In The 19 th And 20 th Century
The Cat Comes to America
Cat Mummification
Petrified Cats
Why Cats Were Used In Advertising?
The Cat at the Amusement Park
The History of The Carousel in America
Cats In Comic Books
Cat Games for Children of All Ages
Some of My Favorite Cat Books
Some Cat Movies the Whole Family Can Enjoy
If you are thinking About Adopting a Cat? Read this first
Why Should We Always Spay or Neuter My Cat?
Things to consider when you want to Donate to Charity. Be A Smart Donor
Kevin’s Lost Manuscript
The Cat in Art
The Cats Role in Music
Some Cat Sheet Music for the Piano
A Cat Quiz
Strange Things People Do And Say About Cats
Can A Cat Suck A Baby’s Breath Away
Do Not Declaw A Cat!
A Cat Quiz
 
American Museum of the House Cat
FOREWORD
This book was Witten by an old man who is a dreamer. But unlike many other people, young or old; but when he wakes up and he finds a way to make his dreams come true.
A dream reflects something you have been thinking about, night and day and have wanted to do for a long-time. But it must be something that is within your reach. For example, if you wanted to become a star basketball player and you were very tall that dream would not come true. Not all dreams are possible. But when you have a dream that is possible you must start with a plan, set goals and work very hard to make your dream come true.
I am that old man and I have always been a dreamer. As a boy I dreamed of many things. Some of them came true and some did not. Not all dreams will come true and that is good. Here is an example. One night I had a dream about being eaten by bear when I was hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Had that dream come true I would not have written this book. But I spend many days and nights in those mountains. I saw bears there but I was always able to make a deal with them. I said, “Bear… I know I am trespassing in what used to be your private home. But I have come into your home in peace. I will respect your rights. When I see you, I will not harm you. I will stand still until you see me. I know bears have poor eyesight. If I ran you may think I was something to eat and I am well aware that you could out run me. So, I’ll will stand still and speak to you in a quiet tone.” I never tried this with a bear but the park ranger told me it might work. I did see bears when I was hiking but they all ran away before I could even take their picture. Now, I cannot grantee this will work. So, talk to the park ranger before you go hiking and ask for his advice. He is the expert. Maybe I was lucky. Forget your nightmares. But when you have a good dream, day or night, and it was about something you would like to do. Then follow that dream and make it come true.
I HAD A DREAM ABOUT BUILDING A CAGE-FREE CAT SHELTER
Once I had a dream about building a cat shelter so I could rescue lost and stray cats and fund them safe homes with people who would love them. I knew it wouldn’t be easy. I would have to find just the right place to build it. So, my wife and I traveled many miles in all directions looking for a suitable location we could afford to purchase and build a cat shelter. We had been saving money to build a cat shelter for a long time so when we went to build a cat shelter. We could afford to but the lumber but I was going to have to build the shelter myself but I had no knowledge of building something that large. I’d built the small shelter alone but now I had to build something that was hundreds of times larger. I needed help. So, I went to a builder who had helped me add an addition to our home. He was retired but he agreed to help me if I would work with him. For me it was “on the job training.’’ The builder’s name was Jack and he was a jolly old fellow. For the next two years Jack and I worked on the shelter. Jack was my teacher and I was his student and I worked hard to learn and complete every task he assigned. There is not a piece of wood, nor any other material that I did not, carry from the lumber yard to new building. But then I had a building that I was proud of and a place where I can keep and find nice people who want to adopt the cats I’d rescued.
Do I still dream? Yes, one must never stop dreaming.
After I built the cat shelter, I built The American Museum of the House Cat. Everything begins with a dream. A dreamer is a leader with the conviction that his or her dream can be achieved and he makes it happen. When you have to have a dream, you can make that dream come true if you follow what I’ve told you.
Everyone should have a dream. Dreams are the beginning of accomplishing something you want to do with your life, something that you think will make the world a better place than you found it. Your dream could be something as simple as going to school, staying in school and getting the education that will allow you to be able to dream of something you can do later in life, something that you would not be able to do without a good education. I was a poor student. I hated school but I stayed with it and I finally became a college professor and was able to pass my knowledge on to others. But it wasn’t until I retired that I found my love for cats and after that I dedicated my live to them. This book has the stories of my relationship with cats and the knowledge I have gained about them and I will now pass it on to you, the reader. Get to know a cat. Learn how they live in peace with one another no matter of color, breed or country of origin. It is something we humans must learn from them and begin to love other people rather than harbor hate towards some. The cat has lived on this earth for more than nine million years. Learn from them the ways of the cat and live in peace and harmony with your fellow man to make the world a better and safer place for cats and for all the other creatures that we must share the only home we will ever have, Mother Earth.
THE STORY OF MAMA BOOTS A CAT THAT LAUNCHED THE DREAM THAT BUILT A CAT SHELTER AND A CAT MUSEUM
By Kay M Sims
Despite this fac