About the Photo

This is Spencer, my new Putty Tat. He is a Fraidy Tat and is hiding somewhere in my office. I  have complained enough about him in the blog, so not a word of criticism here. I hope he will come out of hiding well before I change the picture!

I believe he is purebred because he and his mother look exactly alike. If she were 50% Turkish Van and 50% regular old American cat, then Spencer would be only 25% Turkish Van. The odds of him looking EXACTLY like a purebred are pretty low.I

This is the heaviest cat I have ever owned – he’s a good fourteen pounds, and my others have all been around ten. I can easily carry him in his carrier, but I worry a bit about having to pick him up from the floor or from on top of a bookcase. (Bad back.) ‘ll worry for real about that when the time comes.

I believed what I read from Googling that Vans are very rare, and only 100 kittens a year are born in the US. Since my first Van came to America from Qatar, I felt very lucky.

But then I started seeing them everywhere – even in a digital jigsaw puzzle. I felt I was being stalked by Vans! There is a popular Turkish Van Facebook group, which I joined. I found two pages of Vans, mostly half-breeds, on AdoptaPet. Two of them were within 30 miles of me.

I filled out an application but never heard back. Guess they didn’t like me. I was disappointed and my feelings were hurt. So I sulked a while and then half-heartedly started looking again.

This time I found Spicy, a two-year-old male Van only 50 miles away from me! I thought Spicy sounded like a girl’s name and started calling him Spencer in my mind. Expecting to be disappointed again, I filled out the adoption application.

And the rest is history.