I have 2. They have turned me into the crazy cat lady. Never in my life have I felt more inadequate. As soon as I think, ‘yeah, this is working’ they switch the rules around.
I have whiplash from trying to cater to their cat needs.
Love them. They are beautiful, sleek Siamese. With velvet ears and noses. And gorgeous blue eyes.
(They’re watching me) Gah!
I guess it IS useful to have something to fill out that sack full of bricks before tossing it into the river…
What if one is basically an indoor feral and you only see her once very couple of months?
The Mrs. ascribes to the “one for each floor of the house, plus a floater”. Of course we have more than that, but I know better than to question.
I’m well over either the cat-per-household or the cat-per-person threshholds given in this thread.
I’m somewhat under the maximum cats-per-square-feet standard. Way under it if you include the outside. Four cats is as many as I think will get adequately patted, though.
4 inside fuzzbutts. 4 human hands available for skritches. The equation balances.
Oh pshaw. This is nothing that can’t be solved by a little math and some outside-the-box thinking.
By the 2 cats/500 sq ft rule I must have 6.4 cats. I do live alone, so that is 7.4 souls total. To maintain a 1:1 cat-human ratio, we need 3.7 humans. Let’s assume, probably correctly, that I am classified as human. Now, if we just declare 2.7 of the cats to be honorary humans, we’re good.
See? Problem solved.
(Speaking of outside-the-box, I actually have two cats, but #2 got booted outside for being a monster. I have always opposed letting cats outside, but the vet recommended it as the least horrible solution to an untenable situation with having him inside. Now he is a very happy and lazy cat who never strays more than about 10 feet from the house, even though there are gulches and trees and ravines and stone walls and bamboo clumps he could explore. He completely ignores all the amazing exploration opportunities around him, even though it amounts to a cat fantasy land, what with all the birds and bugs and lizards. Yet he was miserable as an indoor cat. Go figure. Cats is weird.)
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When I was growing up, we always had multiple indoor-outdoor-wherever-the-heck-they-please-door cats. The last of them mostly preferred the amenities of civilization, and never went far, but all of the rest, it was not at all unusual for them to go exploring for a few days at a time, then to come back as if nothing had ever changed. Though our environment wasn’t quite as explorable as CairoCarol’s, though on the other hand, it probably offered more opportunities for neighbors to spoil them.
Nowadays, Mom doesn’t have any cats living in the house any more (she decided that she’s getting too old to be cleaning litter boxes), but there are still two cats who live in the vicinity of the front porch (they have an insulated cat house for the winter). One of them is still skittish about humans, but the other has decided to thoroughly domesticate herself in every way other than living indoors (if a door closes behind her, she panics). It’s to the point where she literally won’t even let you feed her unless you pet her first.
That’s not funny, dude. Bricks are useful.
j/k - I am a dog person (2 inside and 2 outside guarding the livestock), but we have a token cat in the house as well. Got it as an abandoned kitten. Bottle fed it. It’s now about 12 years old and shows no signs of slowing down - as if cats ever speed up, except randomly when jump started by some imaginary…something.
I once had a 27-pounder. How many normal cats was he the equivalent of?
:eek:Maine Coon? That’s a big kitty.
Gimli: But that still only counts as one!
Ick, cats. I have no cats at all in my apartment and that’s still too many.
No, just an orange tabby. I later had a Maine Coon that wasn’t nearly as big.
I blame the coyotes. Yeah, the coyotes. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
We have four, down from a high of seven. Two humans in the household, 1600sf house. Seven was a bit too many (surprisingly not as bad as one might expect) but we loved them all. Four is a good number, especially since they all get along well.
You’re a bad, bad, bad man.
The reason cats are so pissy is that they’re perfect killing machines but they are small and we keep picking them up and kissing them.
I’ve got three and I’m really lucky that they all get along. Two are rescues who had always lived outside. They both adapted amazingly well to inside life. My oldest is 15 and has some medical issues. After he is gone I hope to keep it to just the two. Yeah, right.
That’s exactly why cats have my utmost respect. I love dogs too, but they suffer from battered woman’s syndrome. Their owners can mistreat them horribly, yet ole Fido remains faithful and true. You serve a cat inferior food, and they’ll find a better home that serves Fancy Feasts, and never look back. 
We have one and following the 2 per 500 sq ft formula need to acquire 6.3 more. However our 1 (a 12 lb orange tabby) is shedding so much that I cringe to imagine the amount of cat hair that 6 more cats would leave everywhere.
I had always only had black and tortoiseshell cats until I acquired an orange and white tabby a few years ago. The hair! I didn’t know cats could shed so much. I have to pick up behind her everywhere she lays. There are tufts in every corner. Dark cats just don’t shed like that. So get six black cats and you will be fine.