Mr. Shibbs

I have had my cat since I was 14.

His mom was a well-known stray in our little Glendora neighborhood. She was harmless, and we saw her all the time.

Not once, but twice, she walked in our front door and walked out my parents' bedroom door. Both times, everyone was in such shock, they just watched her walk by, heads following her slowly and silently asking, "WTF is this cat in my house for?"

Turns out she was checking out the environment. She had every intention of setting her baby up with an adoptive family.

One night, there was meowing outside our front door--a begging, loud meowing. We opened it, and there was the stray mom cat and her new baby next to her. She sat there and looked at us, meowing, asking us if we would please take him in.

Now let me just reaffirm that my family has never, ever been a cat family. Only dogs, people. Only dogs.

But who could resist this intelligent and sincere and responsible mother begging us with this sweet kitten beside her?

Of course, we took him in.

Having recently watched, Dude, Where's My Car? and having recently fallen in love with the word "shibby," I decided to go with that. And so Mr. Shibbs became a Balibrea. He is also frequently and affectionately referred to as Shibbs, Shibby, Shibbah, or Shibbat-shibbat (that's my Hebrew name for him--mazel tov!).

This is when he was still pretty little. But he has had this big, beautiful tail his whole life. It's always been bigger in proportion to him. :)

See my baby? Look at his huge, long tail! And my brother, asleep.

I need to mention that my cat eventually got really huge. He's the biggest cat I know.

I take a lot of pictures of my cat. He may or may not get irritated.

He sleeps for six or seven hours straight, you know. Then he goes out and paints the town every night. And by paints the town I mean he guards the turf. 'Dis his zone, y'knowwhati'msayin?

He's a blinker. He also purrs when you just look at him. You can pet him, too, but he'll purr before and after you pet him.

We had him de-clawed because we thought he'd be a house cat. That was not the case. So now when he gets in fights on the skreet, he boxes. It's sad but kind of awesome. He even has scars on his head. But you know what?

My cat could kick your cat's trash.

I know I'm small, but he's huge! Come on. We're talking serious Egyptian descent here, people. Plus, Egyptians were smart, right? So my cat also does cute tricks. He begs like a dog when he's hungry.

I'm kind of obsessed with my cat, and I miss him when I'm here in Provo.

I could even write a love song for him. For now I'll just post some videos.