Inspiration for Marvin - Our Cat Spartacus

When deciding on the character for Marvin in the Marvin the Math Cat book series, we looked to our grey rescue cat, Spartacus, for inspiration. A couple years ago, we found him hanging around behind one of our relative's houses in the woods. He would come by to beg for food and spent most of his time sleeping in an old tire, eating spider webs (he loves those!), and hunting mice. One weekend when we were visiting, we couldn't bear to leave him anymore and our relative was not able to care for him herself. We gave him a cardboard box for the night as we contemplated taking him to get checked at a vet and to see if he was chipped. As he huddled in the box on a cold December night, the coyotes howled and the wind was fierce. The next day we bribed him with food to coax him into a kennel and drove to the nearest veterinary clinic. He was not chipped. We then posted a few pictures of him online to see if anyone was missing him. After a month, we decided it was time to officially adopt him. We are so happy we saved him!

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Spartacus is a very regal cat and thinks he is the king of his domain. He looks very sophisticated wearing a bow tie (when we can get him to wear one!) and he is very intelligent. He can pretty much read your mind sometimes, especially if it has to do with taking him outside for supervised playtime. Spartacus also has a sister named Keisha who is a tabby cat originally from the Bahamas. We trained both our cats using speech buttons so they can communicate more easily with us. All we do is input our voice saying words like "foodie", "out" and "play" and then they push the appropriate button when they want one of these things. Yes, they are quite spoiled!

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Below is Spartacus's Instagram page, which also includes pictures and videos of his sister, Keisha. We are sure she will inspire us for another character in our book series soon!

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Click on an image to read more and see video Reels.

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Hope you enjoy it!

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Heather & Nick