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About our cats

Picture of our cats, Shithead and Velcro

Shithead is the orange and white male cat, born in a barn at a country house in Haldrup (by Horsens) to a cat mother named Lina in May 1999. He was named Shithead because when we moved into our apartment in August 2000 he moved with us and was very restless, running in the window sills and pushing down our plants and whatever we had in the window sills. He was quite a buffalo.

To calm him down, we had a second cat, Velcro, a female cat who was adopted from Inges Kattehjem one year later (and she's one year younger than Shithead). She was born at the cat shelter and lived in a 2-by-2 foot cage where the entire floor was a cat litter box. She initially didn't like the open space of our apartment and was hiding, often under the bed, where she would hang upside-down oto the bottom of the bed with her claws as if she was stuck onto the bed with velcro. As she later came out she'd crawl on the sides of the bed, supposedly enjoying using her claws. Amazing how she could defy gravity.

Early on, both cats were exposed to other cats and dogs and Shithead would welcome these strangers, while Velcro was more territorial. If you think Velcro has a kind of brain dead blank stare to her, that's true. She was smart on an instinct level (as a cat). We believe she didn't have good vision, and her favorite entertainment was to chase a dot of light around. Shithead clearly thought that was a stupid thing to do. He was quite a hunter and during his early years would catch birds on our terrace - we learned to prevent that by chasing off the birds.

Shithead was an emotionally intelligent cat and was able to somehow comprehend and work with feelings of humans. In a way he was calm and mentally robust. Velcro was more of a scared cat that ran away when stress was in the air. She escaped a couple of times, sometimes falling from our terrace (4,2 meter) and hurting herself. When she fell, we opened the door to our apartment and she found her way back up the stairs. Last time she fell, she was so big and heavy that it really hurt her, so the next day we had to take her to the vet and she had to be given a pain reliever and stay there overnight. We thought she had broken her back and would die, but eventually she recovered.

Shithead enjoyed a stroll outside. We found his harness and he knew that meant going for a walk, so he would come to you and stand patiently until the harness was mounted, then run for the door. He was a curious cat that enjoyed exploring the world.

During our summer vacation 2015, while we were traveling and the cats were taken care of by others, Velcro escaped and ran away. She lived in the wild (in town) around our apartment for some 4-6 weeks but wouldn't return. At the end of August we finally caught her in the neighbor's bushes. In the meantime Shithead would howl all the time, like day and night. As Velcro returned she wasn't accepted by Shithead and for the last two years she was more of an orphan in our home, whereas Shithead never really recovered and continued to howl and be restless. We think the stress developed some sort of dementia because he stopped eating, he lost weight, and we had to hand feed him. At the end, both cats would shit wherever in the apartment, as if they didn't have full bodily control, but luckily they peed in the litter box.

They were put to sleep on Monday the 17th of July 2017. Shithead was 18 and Velcro 17 years old. Rest in peace.

Video download: MVI_0141.avi