Do you collect things—heart-shaped rocks, hat pins, Olympic emblems, anything with snails on it, or interesting vases? I think a lot of us have collections. I used to collect thimbles and I still have about 100 of them. At least they don’t take up much space. I collected tea cups for a while—gave that up when my what-not shelf became too cluttered. Like many of you, who obviously dig cats, I have acquired a lot of items with cats on them, including stuffed cats, ceramic cats, pitchers with cats, stationary with cats, cat jewelry, pillows, pictures and so forth. You know how it goes. And, because in her later years, Mama became interested in cats and had a very special one (you’ve read about Smokey in this blog), people gave her a lot of cat things—things that I inherited in recent weeks. (How could I say no?)
Mama also had an extensive inkwell collection. All 50-some close family members, plus 
several shirt-tail relatives and friends picked an inkwell from her collection to remember her by. And we encouraged people to take a keepsake ornament from her Christmas collection—of course there were some with cats and I ended up with most of those.
Do you treasure your collections or has it become a rather overwhelming burden over time? You might have stopped actively collecting, but people keep giving you tea strainers, golfing symbols, owl figures, or…yes, all things cat. What to do? I just tend to move something over and fit it in. How can you turn down an adorable new cat knick knack?
