About Ruby:
Ruby is 4-5 years old, and she is a super soft and squishy tabby cat with a big head and little dainty paws.  She was rescued by Washington Heights Cat Colony, which is a really amazing group that manages and cares for a feral cat colony in uptown Manhattan.  Feral cats can’t be domesticated, so they can’t be adopted, and if the colony is allowed to grow unchecked it can be really disastrous for the kitties and for the neighborhood.  WaHi Cats is a TNR program, which stands for Trap-Neuter-Return, and  it aims to do just that so that the feral cats can have safe and happy lives.  They humanely trap the cats and take them to the vet, where the cats get a check-up and medical care and are either neutered or spayed, so they can’t have more kittens that will have to grow up on the streets.  The cats then get to go home to the colony.  WaHi Cats provides food and winter shelters for the feral cats, and they also keep an eye out for cats that are clearly domestic (adoptable) cats that were abandoned, or for kittens that can be domesticated.  They rescue and foster these kitties, and the cats receive a complete check-up and medical care (both Ruby and Gus were in fantastic health when they came to live with me).  Ruby was most likely abandoned by her previous owners.  She’s incredibly, incredibly sweet, although very shy and a little skittish.  They think she had at least two litters of kittens while she was on the streets, and she and her second litter were rescued by WaHi Cats.  She’s missing quite a few teeth, most likely from getting in fights defending herself and her kittens, so she sticks her tongue out, like, all the time.  Yes, it’s completely fucking adorable.  She’s just got the one fang, so when she and Gus fight she’s at a total disadvantage, bless her heart.  Julia Lambert said to me one day when we were video-chatting, “Um, Sweets, Ruby always looks like she’s judging me.”  Me: “Aw, no, she can’t help it, it’s just her face.”  Ruby gives life the side-eye.  She’s a sweet little girl who sleeps all the time, purrs when you pet her, and is starting to play a bit, which warms my cold dead heart.

About Gus:

Asparagus is a lynx-point Siamese, so he has the classic blue eyes, long limbs, and pointed coloring of a “real” Siamese, but his points are all striped.  My friend says he looks like a mini snow leopard.  He was rescued as a tiny kitten the same week I mentioned to my neighbor (the lovely Ezmeralda) “When I move, I want to get a cat, and I really want a Siamese.”  She knows everyone, she called WaHi Cats, and they said “Um, we literally just picked up a Siamese-mix kitten.”  So I went to his foster mom’s to meet him, and we played in the bathroom together, and he was tiny and stripey and hilarious and he was mine at first sight.  He’s now long and lanky and completely goofy, and he’s kind of terrible to Ruby, but she’s patient with him, and when he gets cold she allows him to sit on her and get warm.  As soon as my alarm goes off or I roll over in the morning he gets on the bed and tries to bite my nose until I get up and feed him, and when I get home late at night I have to stop right by the door so he can nuzzle my hands and kiss my nose.  I KNOW.  It’s absurd.  The bathtub is one of his favorite hang-outs, and when I wash my lingerie in the tub he goes out of his mind.  He’s fallen in several times trying to fish a bra out of the suds.