@Massmomm : Best show of love ever “our little marauder” in post #34 above.
I just think that you have a very happy, adventurous cat.
S2 rescued a 2 mo kitten from the streets in his Eastern European city. He’s now about 15 months old. I think a pal for Yuri would be great, but I don’t see that happening til S2 returns to this country, and even then, he and the cat will be living here with us and our beagle for a few months as he gets launched. I shudder at how much stuff is on our counters and fridge, and at how we are utterly unprepared for an active cat.
@atomom LOL Fi-NO-na!
We have two kitties. Phoebe our 16lb “cat-dog” who act’s more like a dog than a cat. She will come the majority of time when you call her name. Calm, cool your normal disdainful cat.
Now our other kitty CJ aka as Calamity Jane is a 7 lb LOUD mouth. Who has suckered dh into feeding her whenever he eats. Lor# help us all if we are eating chicken because she will sit there and piteously meow until she feels she has had her share. When he is making his salad in the morning she jumps on on "her" barstool to get her share of chicken and the MINUTE we are done eating dinner she lines up and starts HOWLING for her after dinner cat treats! She also will meow until he takes her upstairs to her bowl to eat.
She would eat constantly if we let her, but she purrs all the time and is a total Lap kitty so the bad comes with the good. No advice except hold on for the ride.
@CountingDown - smart for your son to get just one cat. Airlines would generally let only one cat per person to fly under the seat. I highly recommend flying direct even if this is more $$. If a direct flight is not an option, your son will need to check pet transit requirements for plane changes in Europe if he is not going to fly directly to the US. Last time we checked, Europe required not only microchip and proof of rabies vaccine, but also a titer done at an accredited lab for pets traveling from certain countries (your son’s locale is also considered high rabies county, just like was kiddo’s coutry). Double check that! Our solution was to fly through a country that had no such strict entry requirements. Surprisingly, bringing a cat into the US is no BFD per USDA! 
Dogs are not as lucky.
@Massmomm you described our 6 month old kitten to a tee! He has the same terrible habits with food, but is the sweetest, most loving, loudest purring cat I have ever had. He is also obsessed with food- our dogs, our other cat and our food. The other day he jumped on the counter and ran off with 2 pieces of bow tie pasta! If we stand with the fridge door open deciding on what we want, in he jumps! He has jumped on the stove while we are cooking. We have no idea how to curb his food habit either but its driving us all crazy. My dogs are so docile they let him eat of their bowls while they are eating. I feel your pain!!
Well…you see my imp on my avatar. He really is cute.
@thumper1 , he looks like my son’s cat!
He is a cute cat, indeed!
Ok…my DD was the owner of our kitty when she had him as a Peace Corps volunteer. She said to write this:
My cat would steal food off my plate too. I would get up to get pepper and come back and he would be eating my dinner. The way i dealt with this was to give him a very very small amount of my people food on a plate…not in the same bowl as his kibbles…before I sat down to eat. This seemed to satisfy him, and he stopped eating my food from my plate because he didn’t have to.
@BunsenBurner the whole cat quarantine thing was one of reasons we didn’t move to England when DH was offered a job there. We had two cats at the time, and they would have had to be in quarantine for 6 months. It seemed too stressful for them.
I would be happy to share how our kitty got from Africa to here…on a plane. PM me if you want the details.
UPDATE: We took the advice of several of you and adopted another kitten today. He is a bit younger than I wanted, but he was available. Saxon the Marauder, meet your new brother Norman the Conqueror.
Wish us luck!
@Massmomm Congrats! Please keep us posted!