Puff Tiggy, the rapping kitty...

Tigger the Cat not only gets to claim the title of oldest pet at the Ranch, but also the author of the yearly Suburban Christmas letter.  Tigger was a shelter cat.  We actually went to adopt a kitten and ended up with a half grown cat.

As a kitten he was excited to fetch--chasing and retrieving a bouncy ball for hours.
MJ, our resident mommy cat, tried for years to teach Tigger to clean himself and to purr.  The cleaning he has never really mastered, however, in a shocking turn of events, seems to have learned to purr since MJ passed away.
A couple of years ago he gave us a scare...we noticed that one of his eyes always seemed dilated.  After a bunch of tests at the vet, we came to the conclusion that he did not have diabetes, as the vet feared, but rather had apparently fallen off something and detached his retina.   He never has been a terribly coordinated cat...but seriously.
These days he is content to sleep on the chair of death in the kitchen or in the death closet upstairs as he ponders what is worthy of publication in the yearly letter.