Five years! Who knew we’d still be here five years after Dad offhandedly suggested Mom post photos of our cats somewhere as a way to honor those who had passed and because the Internet didn’t have enough cat photos?

Mom published the first Colehaus Cats post on January 19th 2012* using a free WordPress theme over the use of several other frustrating blogging software options. Seeing angel Maxx’s photo finally posted out to the world convinced her Dad’s comment was the best idea ever.

The first blog post was titled “Meet the Colehaus Cats – Maxx, the Innocent.” That was an inside joke because Maxx was known more for being Maxx, the Troublesome Nipper Who Regularly Draws Blood and Who Doesn’t Understand the Physics of Possessing a Weighty Big Butt While Always Failing at Jumping Across Big Expanses of Empty Space and Therefore, Makes a Mess.

Thankfully, Mom shortened that post title.

Then, Mom tried to create a header. She cringes when she sees her original Colehaus Cats blog headers. Here’s a few of them from that first year in 2012.

Then, Mom got the bright idea that maybe one of the actual Colehaus Cats ought to be on the header, not some cute, but random cat photo stolen from the Internet. Yes, our Mom stole a photo once from the Internet without figuring out who created it. Ex-feral, angel Cameron was her first choice, followed by one featuring angel Zooot, and then angel Seth.

That last one was from when Mom was in her Peach phase. She was under the impression blog colors needed to change with the season, so the peach header was followed by a pale blue one, then soft pink, and finally, light green. You might remember those days. Eventually, she got over that.

All told, Mom posted three separate Meet the Colehaus Cats entries that first day introducing Maxx, Seth, Cameron, and Zooot. Later in the month, before Mom figured out a regular blog post schedule, she told an audience of one a little about each cat’s personality.

She almost quit our blog a time or two, most notably after Zooot passed quickly followed by Cameron in April and June 2012. A first commenter, Baby Patches from Nip and Bones helped Mom feel she wasn’t posting to a big, black void. Jan from Jan’s Funny Farm was the second commenter following Mom’s discovery of the wonderful world of The Cat Blogosphere who brought so many commenters to welcome baby Pia.

The rest, well, most of you know how the rest of the years have gone. We’ve had a blast, we’ve laughed and cried, and we’ve vowed to find ways to help pets in need, inspired by the work of many of you.

Most of all, we’ll always cherish the memories how other pet-loving people found us and encouraged us to keep going via their own blogs by posting great, timely information and tips, a spectacular photo or set of photos, and hundreds of warm, from-the-heart posts. We continued to feel encouraged during a long questionable time after Mom was publicly shamed by a longtime friend at a science fiction convention in May 2014 for running a cat blog. Thank you for your supportive and positive emails.

The Stats

We still post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Some kitties have left us and more kitties have joined us. We care for and feed our development’s feral, stray, and abandoned kitties (and squirrels and raccoons, too). Since blogging, we’ve gone from four cats to six, then seven followed by eight and once for a few months, a high cat count of thirteen (with Zuzu and all Niblets). Some years we take in fosters, and we don’t mind admitting we’re suckers for adding fosters to our family. Who wouldn’t when presented with these faces?

For a while, we had a cat web cam and Mom sometimes misses it even though it wouldn’t stream live.

Dad took over posting for four summer months in 2015 when Mom was going out of town to writing conventions a lot. We love our cats and are very much in tune with each other and the needs and desires of each Colehaus Cat so we hoped no one noticed the difference in posting styles from Mom to Dad.

We’ve published 903 posts over the past five years and received 19,376 comments total in that time frame. The most viewed post (1,169 views) was just after the birth of The Niblets. Our About page is the most viewed page (1,252 views).

Mom’s personal stats show the shortest amount of time she spent creating a blog post was four minutes. She might have been showing off. The longest time spent creating a post was seventy-three hours, give or take an hour. Obviously, this was not continuously working time otherwise, Mom would have gone bonkers. Wouldn’t have been the first time.

Since 2012, we’ve met five Cat Blogosphere bloggers in person and have heard from close to one hundred others. We’ve held four raffles and have won four raffles. That’s evened out nicely.

Here’s some of our favorite posts and photos over the years:

Dad’s Newton

Bug Battles – The Two Sides

Don’t Just Get Mad; Get Tessa Mad!

Maxx TV

BREAKING NEWS! It’s baby Niblet time!

We hope we’ve been good bloggers over the years. We always welcome comments and suggestions, and we love hearing directly from you.

Thank you for finding us, for reading us, and for sometimes commenting. We’re big blog lurkers ourselves from time-to-time and we don’t mind lurkers here.

Thank you for visiting us. It might seem that we say that a lot but we mean it from our hearts every single time.

Thank you for helping us celebrate today and for celebrating all the Colehaus Cats!

*we know we’re one day short of the official Blogoversary day. We’re cutting ourselves a bit of slack here.