A few weeks ago I went to pick up my four-year-old from preschool. During the pickup, I was making conversation with one of the other parents.
I’m not sure exactly what we were talking about but somehow we got on the topic of animals. My four-year-old was off in the distance lagging behind. I didn’t realize he was even listening.
“We don’t have a dog but we do have two cats,” I said in reply to a related question.
Like a bat out of hell, my four-year-old storms into the conversation and proudly corrects me to say, “DAD, WE HAVE 5 CATS. F-I-V-E. 5 CATS!” He then proceeded to hold his hand out gesturing the number five and named them all to prove his point.
This wasn’t the first time he’s done this. Technically, he’s right, but I still can’t bring myself to admit that we kind of do have five cats even if only two live inside with us.
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Seriously, How Do You End Up With 5 Cats?
Almost six years ago, I was working from home and looked out our backyard window to see four small kittens under our bush. Knowing that my wife is a cat lover, I really contemplated whether I should tell her about them or not. Of course, I eventually ended up saying something. We went outside to explore and they ended up running away.
Two days later there they were again.
For days they kept showing up. I’m not sure how they got in our yard. They couldn’t have been old enough to jump the fence. So we started putting out some food to see if they’d come to us. They were really afraid at first, but one brave kitten eventually took the bait.
We named the brave one Heisenberg since we just finished watching Breaking Bad.
Heisenberg was grey. There was also one black and two white kittens. As soon as the others were named I knew we were in trouble. We explored many different options to find the kittens a home including Facebook, Craigslist, and friends. We probably had ten people say they would take one of the kittens at some point.
None ended up working out.
The kittens kept coming around (probably because we kept feeding them). I really wasn’t having it and was ready to box them up and take them to a shelter. My wife is the true cat lover in the family and she, let’s say, disagreed with this approach.
At the same time, our 80-year-old neighbor who lived by herself after her husband passed away, was all about these cats as well. She would put milk out every day for them. Whenever I saw her, she would talk about how much she loved these damn cats.
Several months went by and all the people who said they wanted one of the kittens never panned out. In the meantime, these were no longer kittens. They quickly transformed into full blown cats. Taking the cats to the Humane Society would likely mean death at this point. The no-kill shelters in our area were full at the time.
The Legend of Mr. Princess
Okay, well if these cats were going to be hanging around, we at least needed to get them fixed. I found a place that would fix them for really cheap. Four cats was bad enough, but if they started multiplying it would be really bad.
One of the white cats seemed to be especially plump. At one time I swear I could feel kittens moving around in its stomach. I remember googling, “When can a cat get pregnant,” and the answer appeared to be within their age range.
We named this one Princess since it was especially dainty.
We took the cats in shifts to get fixed. Princess was up first due to the pregnancy risk. When I dropped off Princess, I mentioned my concern. The person at the clinic just kind of looked at me like I was crazy. I said, “Hey, I googled this and it says cats can get pregnant at four months.”
A day or two went by and I anxiously went up to pick up Princess. Upon pick up I asked if the cat was pregnant. “No, sir, Princess is not pregnant. And oh by the way, you may want to change the name to Prince since it’s a male cat.” 🤦♂️
We now call him, Mr. P.
Short, of course, for Mr. Princess.

5 Cats is A Lot
After a year went by, Heisenberg started going missing for a few days at a time. He would always come back. Until he didn’t anymore. He was the adventurous one, so hopefully he ended up with a nice family. I don’t want to consider the alternative. Even years later we still think every grey cat within a few miles of our house must be him.
We always said, if any of our neighbors complained we would try to find the cats homes again. Only one has. It was an older couple from across the street. I said give us a month and we would do our best to get them a home.
The next day animal control showed up at our door. We lied and said they were just some random cats that kept coming around and we didn’t feed them or allow them in our house.
Screw them for not at least giving us some time to find owners.
All of the other neighbors don’t seem to mind. The lady next door has since moved out. In fact, several new families have moved in since then. Every time someone does I give them a heads up about the cats and let them know if they have any concerns to come talk to us.
So, here we are almost six years later and three of the four cats still come around. Add that to our two indoor cats and we have a total of five cats.
See Related: We Paid Off the Mortgage: Our Debt Free Journey
They show up for breakfast and dinner and otherwise are usually out exploring or doing whatever stray cats do. We let them sleep in our garage during the winter and occasionally in the basement when it’s really cold. We even have this mini heated cat house thing in our backyard.
They come in the house and hang out on occasion. All three are very friendly now and our 4-year-old loves them. The baby is kind of mean to them when she can catch them. She can’t really seem to tell the difference between real cats and her stuffed animals. She used to pull on their fur all the time but is getting better about being more gentle.
Whenever someone asks how many cats we have, I still say two (the number of our inside cats). My four-year-old continues to correct me to say that we have five cats. But really, anyone who has five cats must be crazy so I’ll stick with saying two.
I probably wouldn’t be happy if my neighbor all of the sudden had four kittens roaming the neighborhood, but what can I say? It is what it is.
Please hold your judgements as I know how ridiculous this is as well. I guess you just kind of had to be there.

So How Did These 5 Cats Help Us Become Mortgage Free?
At the beginning of 2016, we had the itch to move to a new home. The driver in our search was to get closer to the school where my wife was teaching. We met with a real estate agent who showed us a few homes in the neighborhood where we had interest. After going to see a dozen or so homes, we found one that we really liked.
It was a two story, three bedroom, two bathroom house. About 2,000 square feet not including the basement. The location and neighborhood were perfect.
We told the real estate agent that we needed a day to think about it.
My wife and I were seriously considering putting in an offer. We had a 20 percent down payment and good credit, so I’m confident our offer would have been accepted if we moved quickly. The house we were looking at was priced about $75,000 more than our current house is worth.
Then the question came up. What would we do with the cats?
It’s one thing to feed a few kittens that show up in your neighborhood and have to explain the situation to new people who move in. It’s another thing to show up in a new neighborhood with three outdoor cats and expect everyone to be cool with it.
Keeping them inside could have been an option, but they all have claws and would go crazy being inside all day. They are fine inside on occasion but they go stir crazy if they’re inside too long and start clawing at things.
If we really wanted to or needed to move we’d figure out a solution. However, what these cats made us realize is that it wasn’t worth uprooting our lives or theirs to move to a new home.
We decided not to make an offer and let the real estate agent know we were putting the home search on pause. It was shortly thereafter we made a decision to go all in to pay off the mortgage on our current home. We decided that we would stay in our current home for at least the next five years and became laser focused on becoming completely debt free.
The Important Things in Life
To me, this exercise wasn’t even about the cats. I don’t even like them all that much (except for Mr. P who is my fav). However, it did help the both of us realize the important things in life. Family, friends, health, faith, flexibility, and many other things were much higher on the priority list compared to having a new house. In fact, this made us realize how much we liked the house we were currently living in. Sometimes it takes a near impulse purchase to make you appreciate what you have.
I know this post doesn’t really help most of you, but it was an excuse to confess the fact that we have an army of cats inside and outside of our house. Writing this was somewhat therapeutic to come clean, so thanks for bearing with me if you’re still reading.
The too long, didn’t read, summary is our five cats kept us from buying a more expensive house, we learned to appreciate what we have, and shortly thereafter we made a decision to go all in to pay off our mortgage. I do need to point out that those lazy cats didn’t contribute one single dollar to help pay off our mortgage (jerks).

Mark is the founder of Financial Pilgrimage, a blog dedicated to helping young families pay down debt and live financially free. Mark has a Bachelor’s degree in financial management and a Master’s degree in economics and finance. He is a husband of one and father of two and calls St. Louis, MO, home. He also loves playing in old man baseball leagues, working out, and being anywhere near the water. Mark has been featured in Yahoo! Finance, NerdWallet, and the Plutus Awards Showcase.
I enjoyed this story and I get it. We always say we bought our farm for our dogs (and it’s mostly true).
Thanks! I’m glad someone understands because most days I don’t. 🙂
I enjoyed it, too. Very cute and still helpful, as it teaches two important lessons: appreciate what you have and think before you make an impulse purchase. Thanks for sharing!
If only we would have thought before adopting an army of cats! Haha. Thanks for commenting and in the end you nailed the two points we tried to get across here.
Hey FP,
What a wonderful post. You kept me engaged throughout, and I don’t even like cats. Well, that’s a pretty harsh thing to say. I am kind of afraid of them.
Now that I have learned that they can help us humans make better financial decisions, I might have to get one of my own 🙂
Enjoy the rest of your week.
-Jerry
Thanks, Jerry. If you take the plunge I’d advise starting with one, not five! Some cats are kind of scary though.
What a great post! I love our cats and love being mortgage free. Very thoughtful messages 🙂
They are both pretty cool! Thanks for commenting.
I feel like my one cat is a lot of cat. Though I know a second cat might keep her company, I’m afraid the second one would be just as insane as her, and then I’d have two crazy cats randomly darting around the house like they’re being chased. One of those is plenty. So I definitely can’t imagine 5 cats, even if some of them really only show up at not-so-random points in the day. That’s still a lot of cat. So kudos to you!
I’ve always said that five cats are probably easier than one dog. The two indoor cats are older and lazy and the outside ones aren’t around all that often once the weather gets nice. I say you take the plunge and get another one though it can take some time for your current cat to adjust if you do.
Very cute story. We have two cats (litter mates) that we adopted over 10 years ago. In the future we talk about slow travel or perhaps turning our house into a part-time Airbnb. But we always think about the cats and how that would disrupt their lives.
And yes, our cats were completely worthless in helping us pay off the mortgage as well!
Dragon Guy
Haha, if only these cats could help pay the bills!
We probably have similar discussions in our house. In some ways our pets make us less mobile, but in other ways they remind us of the important thing and how much we actually enjoy where we live even though our place may not be as nice as others. It’s all worth it.
“Knowing that my wife is a cat lover, I really contemplated whether I should tell her about them or not.”
Hahah, Lady Money Wizard is a cat lover, and I about died at this part. I can relate a little too much here…
Great story, thanks for sharing.
Sometimes I wonder how different life would be if I chose not to tell her about it. Glad you can relate and thanks for the comment!