Our "Garfield"...picked up along with his brother at a local no kill shelter. No purebred, but he has a lot of Maine Coon looks and personality...very loving guy despite weighing 20 pounds. His brother looks nothing like him, and is the hell raiser of the two. Yeah, we spoil our cats...but they deserve it. His brother is "Snowball"...just the names they had at the shelter.
I'd say your $4K was well spent...the purrs you get are great payback.
This thread will soon be "cat stories" :grin: We "had" 3 cats, one from a co-worker when he moved, another from a neighbor and one that one of my older daughters rescued from behind her work when they saw some kittens living around the dumpster.
My youngest daughter decided to feed a cat this fall, she looked like she used to have a home, was pretty clean and would come up to you. She ended up sitting in our laps on the porch when my wife and I sat out and chatted / had wine/beer. We took her to the vets and turns out she was pregnant. So then the wife started to look into building her a shelter, box, plastic bin, etc... I finally said, why not just let her in the house and see if she stays OK with us? We did, and that new cat would fight with ours all the time, must be from living on the streets and having to fight other animals. She was great with people though, just not the other cats.
We kept her locked in our bedroom for months, she finally gave birth to two kittens. We found her a home and also one of the kittens went to a home. The second kitten was born with a paw issue, we kept that one to take care of her.
This winter in MA broke the snow record, I am pretty certain if that cat stayed outside with her kittens they would not have survived, so my little girl saved their lives by feeding the mother and us taking her in.
The family that took in one of the kittens named the kitten after my daughter, Abigail.