Third-year professional writing and Japanese major Evan Kohlbus has a full house of four adorable cats: Zelda, Holly, Cocoa and Adzuki.

Kohlbus and his family adopted Zelda, the oldest of the four at 14 years old, in 2010. She has mostly white fur with black spots and is completely blind since she’s missing both eyes.

“While passing through a more rural section of Pennsylvania, my parents and I decided to stop off at a local farmer’s market,” Kohlbus said. At the market, there was one stand with injured animals that had been rescued, and they were being offered up for adoption. “While my parents originally had no plans to adopt any, Zelda jumped into my mother’s arms, and she fell in love.”

“We learned that her previous owners had severely mistreated her, leaving her with one eye which was deeply infected,” Kohlbus said. “After we adopted her, we took her to the vet, and she had her infected eye removed, leaving her totally blind.”

Lately, she spends much of her days sleeping. 

“Zelda is old, tired and cranky,” Kohlbus said. “But she always enjoys snuggles.” 

Even so, she has a surprising amount of agility, especially when annoyed.

Holly was adopted from a shelter two years later in 2012. She’s currently 12 years old and has a similar black and white coloring to Zelda. Since joining the family, she’s taken a liking to human food, including meat and donuts.

“Holly is incredibly scared of people,” Kohlbus said, “but she can be really sweet if she thinks nobody is watching.”

Cocoa and Adzuki are the most recent additions to the family, having been adopted in 2018. They’re only about five years old and were taken in after they were found freezing outside on the campus of the community college Kohlbus lives near.

Cocoa is a primarily brown tortoiseshell cat, while Adzuki has more of an orange coat with patches of dark brown. The family voted on the matching names, giving Kohlbus the ability to nickname them “The Beans” though he still thinks Tigerlily was a more fitting name for Adzuki due to her fur coloring.

The two are siblings, and it shows in their rather social personalities. “Adzuki has a need to be the center of attention at all times,” Kohlbus said. “Cocoa is very sweet and loves being around people at all times, even when you don’t really want her to be.”

Unfortunately, they also share a pension for mischief.

“One day, when the twins were still quite young, I had left the door to my room open for them to explore,” Kohlbus recalled. “Then, I headed out for about an hour. By the time I had returned, my room was in absolute chaos. The curtains had been torn down, the trashcan had been knocked over and rooted through, and my phone charger and headphone cable had been completely chewed through.” After that incident, Kohlbus decided it would be best not to let them into his room unmonitored.

Despite occasionally getting into trouble, the pair are still very sweet, although Adzuki does have a tendency to lightly bully her much more timid sister.