Toes was a great cat. We had to buy him when we saw him in the window of a pet store because of his unusual paws, which made it look as if he were wearing baseball mitts. He had seven toes on each front foot and five on each back foot (a normal cat has five and four). When we brought him home, he yowled very loudly (for a kitten), and we were afraid he would be too high-strung -- boy, were we wrong! He yowled only when taken outside; indoors, he was extremely laid back, and supremely confident. He quickly took control of the clowder away from Tasha (to Tasha's great dismay), and remained at the top of the pecking order for the rest of his life.
Toes developed kidney failure in his mid-teens, and was given a year to live by the vet. Cherise gave him intravenous fluids and kept him going for two and a half years, before he was humanely euthanized. Despite his emaciated condition, none of the four younger cats in the house ever dared to challenge his alpha status.
Tasha was a very sweet cat, good-natured and attached to her people. We got her as a playmate for Tish, and she quickly took over as the alpha cat. She was quite talkative, often sitting on windowsills chirping at the birds. She would also talk back to us when we commanded her to get off the table (Us:"Down!" Tasha: "Mauw!")
When we moved out of our apartment and into a house, Tasha somehow managed to hide in an almost completely empty apartment to avoid going into her crate. The only think left in the apartment was a single box, and I walked all around it to see if she was hiding behind it. No luck. Finally, I realized she WAS behind the box, and was quietly slinking around to the opposite side as I walked around it. Sheer genius!
Tasha became somewhat bitter when we brought more cats into the house and she was forced into a subordinate role. She developed severe asthma in 2000. When she did not respond to treatment, we had her humanely euthanized.
Megan was a rare Sheltie in that she almost never barked. She was the Salutatorian of her obedience class, and memorized the tunes of the video games I played so she would know when I was through playing, and thus about to get up to let her outside. In 1994 she became paralyzed due to a couple of burst discs in her back. After very expensive surgery and several weeks of care, she eventually regained her ability to walk, although she was stiff for the rest of her life.
Poor Megan came down with a rare gall-bladder infection in 2000. She died peacefully after emergency surgery to remove the gall bladder.
Tish was our very first pet. Cherise was working at Petland at the time, so we got her from there. The entire litter was sick with giardia, and with Cherise's careful nurturing, Tish was the only one to survive kittenhood.
Probably because of her early sickness, Tish never became very "peopley". She was, however, very inventive at finding ways to get us up in the morning so we could feed her. Once she stepped on the alarm clock and set it ahead three hours. It wasn't until we groggily got up, dressed, and fed the cats that we looked at another clock and saw it was 3:30 AM.
Tish collapsed and died very suddenly one morning. She died as she lived -- clamoring to be fed.