What do you collect?

Being a curious person I wonder what you all collect. So if you have a special colletion I'd love to see it.

This might come as a bit of a surprise to you but I collect cats. LOL! Real cats (5 inside/outside ones and about 10 outside only) and cat fabric and cat figurines, etc. etc. etc...... These are a few of my cat "things" I keep at my office.

First. This is a life-sized hand puppet. It sits on the top of the door to my office. When I bought it I quietly arranged him up there and then waited to see who would notice first. Our mechanic came in shortly after and was standing in my door chatting. We'd been talking probably 10 minutes when he caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye, jumped about 3 feet in the air and yelled, "What the HELL is THAT!!!" LOL! It's hard to pull anything over on Russel but that day I managed. :-)

Next up is the motley assortment that lives in the window. Along with my collection of hats. All the hats are either from the company I work for or vendors I deal with often. Or ones I've bought when I travel for work. I did make sure that the one on top did not have my company name on it when I took the picture. Don't want to give out too much personal info on an open online forum.

You should be able to click on the picture and maybe get it big enough to see some of my treasures. The most precious to me are the cat frame in the lower right corner and the cat mug on the speaker above it. The frame was a secret sister gift about 5 years ago. The picture in the frame is my favorite picture of the cat I had at that time. His name was Tic and as much as I love the cats I have now he was the most special cat I ever had. I raised him from the day he was born until he got out almost 4 years ago (on Nov. 11th) and I never saw him again. He was 6-1/2 then and losing him was like losing my child. He's the reason I swore I'd never have an inside only cat again. At least with having inside/outside cats when they get out they know the area and how to take care of themselves. Tic didn't have that advantage and either something got him or he wandered so far from home he couldn't find his way back. I hurt so bad when I lost him I slipped into a deep depression that lasted for months. Agatha and Fluffy were kittens then (3 months old) and Agatha wormed her way into the house and into my heart and helped pull me out of my depression. As you can imagine she's quite special to me. :-)

The mug was part of a Secretary's Day gift from my ex boss. We still work together, he's just no longer my direct supervisor. He got promoted to Area Supervisor and I got shifted to the OKCity office. Not physically shifted just under the supervision of the admin supervisor there. Yep how lucky can a girl get? My supervisor is 300 miles away! LOL! Although I try not to take advantage of that fact I do realize I have a bit more freedom to do things MY way than I would if I worked in the main office where most of the other people work who do the same job for the company that I do. Anyway.... back to the mug. :-) I got flowers that day too and they were lovely. But the mug touched me much more that the flowers. Because Bill took the time to find something he knew I'd really like. He's not what you'd call the most sensitive guy around but upon occasion he'd surprise me. Like the time he came in from getting supplies and brought me a new mousepad with a kitten on it just because he thought it would make me happy.

On top of the stereo are a bunch of tiny cats that my friend and co-worker, Mary, found when she went to a garage sale with her sister. She said she thought of me as soon as she saw them and just had to get them for me. :-) And the beanie cat up there - that was sitting in the middle of my desk one day when I came into work. One of our truck drivers bought it for me because he knew I liked cats. He also brought Mary an elephant since that's what she collects. And they say truck drivers can't be sensitive. Or maybe it's the fact we remind the drivers on a regular basis that Mary enters their run tickets and I do their payroll so they'd better be nice to us! LOL!

The throw in this last picture was a hostess gift Susan brought me the first time she came to visit after I moved here. She said she was coming to visit because she needed to get away from home for a few days. But she later confessed she really came to make sure I was really okay and that life was treating me good after our move to TX. You see David and I had picked up and moved away from MS several times before looking for a better life just to have life turn on us and we'd end up back in MS. So she wanted to make sure we really were doing okay and not just saying we were so nobody would worry about us. (Like we'd done in the past.) And when she came for that first visit things weren't as rosy as we tried to let on but shortly after that I got the job I still have and our luck took an upward swing that has remained strong to this day. But I never forget those "dirt poor" days and will always treasure the fact that she took the time from her busy life to make sure her baby sister was okay. Even if the baby sister was 40 at the time! And I'm reminded of her love every day when I see the chair sitting across from my desk with her gift draped over it.

I have other cat things. Many of them also with stories attached but it's late and I have to work tomorrow. I'll be looking forward to seeing your collections as I visit this next week.