Greetings, Fabulous Felines and Hoomans of Hivelandia and surrounding communities!

I hope this week has been kind to you, so far!

Birthday boy!

Happy 9th Birthday, Shadow!

Today is sort of a Big Deal at our place because is Shadow's — the original "Curator Cat" — 9th Birthday! So Happy Birthday, Shadow!

Shadow bacame part of our household in the late spring of 2016, and he was a tiny kitten at the local animal shelter, the only black cat in a litter of kittens that had been dropped off by someone who had found the box of tiny floofs at the side of a wooded park parking lot and rescued them.

Tiny kitten with the big ears!

Shadow was quite tiny when he joined us, and had huge ears (relatively speaking) that he still needed to grow into.

He started out by getting quite sick and needing to go to the vet almost immediately to be treated for some kind of viral infection. Even though it was touch-and-go for a couple of days, he soon made a full recovery and started exploring his new surroundings.

Tiny kitten in the sun, June 2016

He ended up with the name "Shadow" because he would trail behind the Dad-Hooman wherever he went, from the very beginning... like a tiny furry shadow.

It was not long before he bacame fully integrated into his new home, filling the void left by our previous cat Kramer, who passed away a year previously.

Hello!

In time, the tiny kitten grew into a pretty large cat... and those ears grew more in proportion to the rest of the cat!

Shadow has always been easily recognized by his short stubby tail — which he was born with like that — which makes us think there's at least some of the "American Bobtail" breed in there, somewhere!

He loves his sunny spots!

Naturally, there will be extra treats and playtime for everyone today... and we are very grateful to have him as part of our lives.

Meanwhile, he has become close friends with newcomers Shangri and Nala and they all spend a lot of time together so they are never really lonely.

Napping with Nala

Thanks for coming by and visiting our cat blog... and we home you'll come back and continue to enjoy our regular postings of cat pictures!

=^..^=

Love Cats? Get Involved in Hive's Cat Communities!

If you're a cat lover and often/sometimes post pictures or other content that includes your feline friends, why not become an active part of Hive's growing Cat Communities?

These are some of the more active Cat Communities — why not join them ALL? Many of the allow you to share your cat posts, even if you started at a different community!

HiveCats by @curatorcat is a central "gathering place" for cat content on Hive; promoting the use of the #hivecats tag for feline content!

Cat Snaps by @manorvillemike is a place to post pictures of your cats when you don't have a whole lot to say beyond just sharing your cute photos!

Caturday by @saboin is a community where we get to celebrate posts relating to Saturday — aka "Caturday" — our own special day!

Cat Photos by @andrarchy is a "mixed use" cat content community; posts can be just photos or longer, as long as the subject is CATS!

Cats by @captainklaus (and Sissi!) is another "general" cat content community.

There are a number of other feline communities listed on Hive, but I am not sharing them for now as they have not had any activity (by their Admins OR users) since the Steem/Hive fork. Updates as they become available!

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