Tortoiseshell Cat Appreciation Day

Over the past 13 years I've been the lucky mom to a trio of torties. To say I think these feisty, unique cats are one of God's most beautiful creations would be an understatement. I love everything about their sweet souls and tender hearts, tortitude and all.

Nowadays there's a national day set aside to celebrate just about anything you can think of, and for the longest time I've been wondering when someone would get around to creating a Tortoiseshell Cat Appreciation Day. As recently as a few months ago I started thinking about trying to get something started myself, possibly this summer on Mudpie's Gotcha Day.

Thankfully my tortie-loving friend Ingrid at The Conscious Cat got the ball rolling in designating today as Tortoiseshell Cat Appreciation Day in honor of her dear Ruby's Gotcha Day.

For anyone interested in reading about my history with torties, it can be found in my article A Decade of Tortitude: The Magic & Mystique Of My Heart Cats, which won a Certificate of Excellence from the Cat Writers Association a few years ago.

Since this is a day to turn the internet brown, tan, gold, black, cinnamon, and every tortie color in between, we thought it would be the purrfect time to share once again the very special legend explaining how they got their unique colors, loosely translated from the Spanish version.

We hope you'll join us today in sharing your torties all over social media. The internet will be a much more beautiful place over the next 24 hours now that we've given them a day to take over the world! (Officially, anyways. Anyone owned by a tortie knows they already own their little corner of the world!)