Salem

I am quite ashamed to say that I have been keeping this blog for months and have yet to write about my handsome kitty, Salem.

I have always liked all black cats and back in 1997 I started talking about getting another cat. We got this fluffy Persian cat and OMG was that a mistake. It was a miserable animal, mean and nasty tempered. Plus unless you shaved the hair around it's butt, it would get poopy butt syndrome and leave brown streaks everywhere it sat. Have you ever tried to shave a cat's butt? It's not fun!

Thank goodness we were able to sell the monster for what we paid and considered that a good lesson learned. Never pay for a cat when there are so many animals out there who need a good home.

Dave was working nights then, coming home after I had gone to bed. One night I woke up to something soft nuzzling my face and there was Salem. Dave had been looking for months trying to find an all black cat for me before he finally found Salem.



It was love at first sight. That was November 1997 and he's been with us ever since.

Salem has a lot of weird habits, like his desire to sit inside of boxes, his belief that he is human and should be treated as such, and always needing to sit right smack dab on top of you, but the weirdest of all his habits is his drinking issues.

He won't drink out of a water bowl. His preferred drinking method is out of the bathtub faucet or the shower. It must be turned on so that it just barely drips. If you turn it on too hard and the water splashes up on his paws, you will get a dirty look.


But if worse comes to worse, he will drink out of a bowl...just not a water bowl.


And there's the odd thing that he'll let you bathe him without any protest if he really needs it. He once spent a cold night outside when we didn't realize he had gone exploring and came in the next morning covered in sand. I turned the water on in the shower and he just let the water run over himself and let me rinse him off. I don't think he realizes that cats are supposed to hate water?

He's a strange cat, but then Dave and I are a little on the odd side too, so he fits in with this family just fine.