Kitties Galore

Today

I guess it had to happen. Becky and Richard caved in (without much resistance, I'm sure) to Carmen's longing for a pet. To achieve this they went to a local rescue centre in L'Eliana. "Battersea, it was not", Becky told me. "There was a room full of adults and another full of kittens." From this melee they chose Rosie and Mac an unrelated pair of four-month olds who seem to be rather cute. 

In my day

After my cats Agamemnon and Amelia died in 1993, we were told of some kittens needing new homes. They were at a ramshacke farm cottage near Priddy. The Kittens were in an undecorated and unfurnished room with a board fixed across the door to keep them from straying. The mother cats - there were three, a mother and daughters - hopped across it at will, as did the farm dogs who jumped in to eat the cat food.

In this room there were fifteen kittens, aged between four and eight weeks old, all rolling about and playing. There was every colour from black to white, ginger, tabby and tortoiseshell. They were all more or less related. Our attention was drawn to a noisy little black and white - rather like the Felix cat food cat. We picked him up. "Do you know", the owner said, volubly "at one time we thought he was dead. we found him not moving, spreadeagled on the floor. But he's fine now." After that, there was no putting this little one back in the mix. We named him Amadeus for his musical and persistent Miaow, and decided to bring him home. (We later discovered that he had suffered a broken pelvis, and wondered if one of the dogs had given him a shake).

We wanted two cats and gazed at the heaving piles of babies, wondering who might be a companion to Amadeus. Suddenly there was a loud squeaking coming from behind a radiator. We rescued a little fluffy white and tortoiseshell kitten who had got stuck. Perfect! The owners said she been sort of reserved for a woman who wanted to give her to her one-year-old grandson. Terrible, we said. He's too little, she's too little. In this way we persuaded her that we could give her the best care and she was ours.

Lizzie named her Arietty and she did have a lovely life with us. Neither cat was as healthy as they might have been, being inbred and having had indifferent care. Both had to have calcium supplements for the first few months and Amadeus died suddenly at age 4.

But, life without a cat or two to share it? Impossible! And it seems that my daughters both agree.