The Magnificant Seven

I will double check, but I made it 23 candles in 5 countries lit for Scooter! THANK YOU ALL! We are going to round it up to £75 £100(!) for Colchester Cat Rescue.

Now, here are the promised biographies of the cats I've been lucky enough to share my life with:
 1983- 2000, Katie-cat, from Cats Protection sanctuary, age 18 months and tiny. They had rescued her from a bunch of schoolboys who'd been 'using her as a football'.

I can't seem to find a photo of Katie when she was very young. I think my Mum has them in an album :)

Katie could sleep in any place, in any position.

 We moved house and Dad got us a cat. No more dogs, he said, as losing them was too painful. If only he knew! Did he really imagine cats were easier to let go? He doesn't believe that now, he has had several over the years since... Katie-cat passed in April 2000, age around 18 1/2.
She was an excellent mouser and once took on a rat that was over half as big as herself! She was tolerant and welcoming, letting a neighbour's cat walk right in with her kittens in tow, when the neighbour neglected to feed them.

 Here's me, taking wee Katie to the vet for the final time. For the last few years there was no need for a cat-carrier, she was so trusting.

1991 - 1996, Sam, a stray who came to live with me in my first 'own' home. Little by little -at first he was too nervous to come into the house so I left food on the doorstep. Then he'd come in to eat, but only if I hid. Eventually he became so affectionate, so special. He would lie belly-up with his head on my pillow. He loved to snuggle up.

 Sam, my tabby prince...

Helping with the decorating in 1993

Loving the sunshine in the garden...

Cuddles with Mummy

A beautiful mackerel-tabby. My first real introduction to being a cat mama. He taught me lots. He passed in 1996, age about 8. Someone shot him with an air rifle. 
 
1993 - Mama Cat and kits-
Mama-cat, the most elegant black cat you ever could imagine. Have you seen The Aristocats? Do you remember the white cat, Duchess? Well Mama was a black version. You would believe she was a ballerina, she was so dainty, graceful and poised. HUGE golden eyes. She would sit up on the table near the kitchen door each morning and wait for me to give her a forehead-to-forehead rub, which, as all cat people will know, is really special.
 
She came calling at my back door in early 1993, in thick snow. She was obviously pregnant so I had to help her. I invited her in slowly, watching to see that Sam didn't mind. Gradually she settled, and gave birth in my linen cupboard to 4 beautiful kits.  At first I thought I should re-home them, so once they were a few months old I tried to find new owners. But I didn't trust any of the people who came to see them, and chose instead to keep them all.

Mama passed in 2003, from an inoperable cancer in her mouth. We were so sad, and her kits missed her terribly.

FIGS- March 23rd 1993- June 25th 2005 (I originally called this kitty Figaro, but then I discovered he was a she, hence 'Figs'!)
A black and white girl, SUCH soft fur. We now use the memory of that fur as a measure of softness. We touch something in a shop like a soft bath robe or cushion and we say, "Look! Feel! It's Figgy's belly!" 

Figs & Mama, grooming.

Their GOLDEN eyes didn't come out on film very often!

 When she was 3, Figs was shot with an air rifle and went blind in her right eye. It never held her back.

Figs climbing the curtain

Going worra-worra-worra with a catnip mousie

Look at that bellah!

VERY affectionate and silly and funny. She would lie belly up and let me blow raspberries on her tummy!
I had to say farewell to sweet Figgy in 2005, because of cancer.

WELLINGTON - March 23rd 1993 - ?
A black boy, Scooter's twin, EXCEPT he had much, much shorter hair, He was more 'snouty' and had an Oriental sounding meow. 

He could really talk to you, he sort of chortled. So full of character. But he kept going missing for days, weeks at a time. One time when he didn't come back I called all the vets. The PDSA had treated a cat of his description for a displaced hip, due to a road accident (5 or 6 miles from home). 
I contacted the man that had found him and had got him treated. He said that as Welly hadn't been claimed he'd been happy to take him home. 
Welly seemed happy when I went to visit but purred and purred and purred when I held him, so I tried to bring him home, but he wouldn't settle. So the man, Andy Bathgate I recall was his name, came to collect him and adopt him.
He went to live with him and his golden Labrador where Welly soon claimed the dog's bed and ruled the roost.
I missed him terribly, but I think he just wanted to be in a one-cat household. I often wonder waht happened to Scooby's brother, and hope he did ok...

Wellington(top) and Mama

FLUFFY -March 23rd 1993- December 13th 2010
When I looked in on Mama in the linen cupboard that morning, to check she was ok, I counted her babies... 1...2....3...oh, what a clever girl you are, I said. 3 babies! And there were indeed 3 kitties at her tummy. But Mama moved slightly and lifted herself up, and a little bundle of thin grey fur rolled out from under her chest and chin. This was Fluffy. Though it took a month before she was fluffy. At first, she was called Midge, as she was tiny and had only very fine hair. Mama had been keeping her tucked up warm.

 A few weeks old, at the bottom of the linen cupboard...little pairs of navy-blue eyes look up at me...
 

 I still have the rosette Fluffy won for PDSA 1993 "Cutest Kitten" photo competition

 Completely zonked on catnip

She would find the most beautiful poses.

Fluffy passed away from renal failure a couple of months before her 18th birthday. She was playful, mischievous and loving. Though she looked like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, she was the only one of my cats that could actually growl!!!! - and did so at Scooter whenever he tried to get her off a chair or move from the fire. They would 'box' up on their hind legs like March hares but only really 'hit' the air in between them!

SCOOTER- March 23rd 1993 - September 17th 2011
My Best Boy.
I know others mean well when they tell me to take in another cat. I have given it some thought. But my heart is still brimming with love for this boy. I am crying as I type! It isn't time to move on yet, as there are still so many things I have to tell him. So many things to say to him. I cannot put that away on a shelf yet. (I can't even put his bed away, or his cushion from the windowsill). It's like there is unfinished business. I need to stay close to him. Maybe in the future I might be able to give a home to an elderly cat in need. I don't think I'd like a youngster again, not after the wisdom I knew behind Scooter's eyes.

Scooter & Wellington being 'bookends' -looking out of the gap of an old sash window in my old house.

 Sometimes we'd put the chairs up on the old table when we hoovered. They then had to stay there for hours because the cats thought it was a great place to climb and chill out... Scooter took up two chairs of course!

Um... yeah, drinking out of the kitchen sink!!

Best Boy, he of the secret smile....

 I miss that soft velvet bellah

I hope my kitties felt loved and safe. I know I made mistakes, it was a learning curve. I was a better cat-carer in the later years. I had to learn, listen, watch, read... but I grew into someone who would do anything for them. They loved me all along, they just waited for me to catch up. That's how it is with animals, I now think. They love unconditionally once they decide they can trust you. And you love them as much as you think you're able, but then you grow and learn, and maybe, with their example, you love them as much back as they love you. Not all pet owners take the time to do it. Not all think about it.

There's a story doing the rounds on Facebook. It's about the reaction of a 6 year old boy when his precious dog is put to sleep. The vet has not yet left, and the adults are all chatting, asking why it is that dogs have to have lives so much shorter than ours. 
The little boy pipes up, "I know."
They stop talking and look at him. "Why is it then? What do you think?"
And the boy tells them- 
"Because we have to learn to be kind and loving but dogs know that already, they don't have to learn it, so they don't have to stay as long."


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Love, tea & cake,  
Helena

Figs, and why I can't believe I'll see her again.

Please don't read this post if you're down.

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Today is Figgy's anniversary. I had to let her go 4 years ago today, because of a vicious cancer. We had the tumour removed twice, but it came back faster and faster each time. Once I had decided that I couldn't go on putting her through more removals, we had just a small operation to reduce the tumour, then hang on, hoping that she would get one more summer, as she loved being out in the sun so much.

Figs loved to climb up the stepladder so in the end, we put it up especially for her, in the back garden. Sometimes she'd be running up it before we'd put it up properly!

This last week of hers, the summer finally arrived. She spent it mostly in the garden, in the sun, or lounging between flowerbeds. By the end of the week I spotted -to my horror- that the tumour had suddenly got worse. I rang the vet; the next morning was goodbye. Couldn't bear to let her go through any more, not once I'd seen that it had worsened.

Fluffy wants out, Figs wants in! I can't remember who linched whom!

I sometimes berate myself that I was selfish, and that I should have let her go earlier. I know some people feel guilty about the euthanasia part, but I don't, because I think it's kinder not to let her go through actually dying of cancer. What I twist myself up in knots about is whether she was in pain that last week. She was slower, not interested in playing. I wish I had been braver.

Figs and me, 2003

I still can't think about her without getting upset. I was crying in the night, once I remembered what day it now was. I've lost other pets, other cats, but never had the pain of loss last so long afterwards. Belly-up in the sun. She flipped to this position a lot.

She would let me cuddle her tummy, and even blow raspberries on it!!!!

I wonder if the grief is lasting longer simply because my mother made me bury her while she was still warm, whereas I just wanted to stroke her, watch her. I know she was thinking of Figgy's sibling cats, Fluffy and Scooter, and was concerned that they not get upset. But I thought of that too, and wanted to put Figs in her box and put her in the shed for an hour, alone, "resting".

Figs had a 'baggy belly'. She wasn't fat, but it wobbled as though she had had kittens, but she never had. Here she is displaying said belly, as well as her wallpaper art.

I reluctantly agreed to bury her straight away. I was in no fit state to argue and didn't want the other cats to detect my being upset.

And so there she lays: in mum's back garden, alongside Mama Cat who preceded her by 2 years (also because of cancer). I planted carnations, sweet pinks, on her spot. I brought some home to my garden at the time and they came into flower again last week.

Figs giving her mum, Snowy-Mama-Cat, a wash.

I struggle with the subject of mum moving house, as I have nightmarish visions of someone digging up my cats. Some sicko playing with whatever is left of them. Or just throwing them on the bonfire.

I just want her back. Just want to hold her again and hear her chortle.

By far the worst thing about living without religion or spirituality is the glaring end that it means death is. The ultimate comfort would be to believe that I could hold her again one day. Please don't be offended if you still hold that faith. But I can't. When your medication has proven to you that things, sensations, horrible feelings, disturbing sounds, whispers, all these that you thought were real, were in fact hallucinations, it is terribly hard to believe in things, even if you can hear and see them, let alone the invisible.

And impossible, I've found, to believe that any feeling or experience that could once have been described as 'spiritual' isn't just another product of an ill mind. Those old feelings of being watched, or of living with hauntings, these were 'spiritual' too, but proved to be false.

When what you've seen with your own eyes and heard with your own ears for decades is proven to not exist, how can what you might sense as 'spiritual' be trusted not to be false also? See what I mean? What I used to call "God's presence" I now think of as my frontal lobe.

-I don't mean any of that to sound arrogant, or like I'm refusing to believe, stubbornly, with folded arms. I used to have a deep faith. Speaking in tongues and the whole shabang. I even spent a year in a convent. So I didn't just lose a Sunday morning habit, I lost a lot. I just can't trust any of it to be true any more, not after what I've experienced with my mad head.

And so I'm left with endings. Friends, human or otherwise, gone.

ABC Wednesday.... D is for Dressing Gowns!

D is for Dressing Gowns ..........

Dressing Gowns (or, in the USA, I believe, 'robes',) are a little bit of affordable luxury. In fact, judging by the ones I've manhandled in department stores, the cheaper they are, the fluffier. Don't bother with expensive woolly ones. They just go bobbly anyway. They're also too heavy for suitcases. And far too posh to relax properly in, especially around morning cups of caffeine.

The one above was given to me one Christmas. After many washes, it's still as soft as.... as soft as.... OK. Let me explain something here. I have my own measure for softness. Not silk or feathers or snow. No. Something reaches the pinnacle of softness only if it reminds me of my cat's tummy....

"Figs".... named after "Figaro" in Pinnochio... beatifully innocent (so she said) of the crime of scratching this wallpaper.... Her fur was thick and soft, and she was love and friendship, and cheekiness and humour, on legs. Nearly 3 years now, and I still miss her. Snuggling down in my soft fluffy dressing gown, I think of her, her soft, warm, thick silk, and try not to consider that I'll never hold that purry warmth again.

'Ahhhh....' I sigh to my patient partner, as I stroke another fur collar/ cushion cover/ teddy bear, as we wander through Debenhams. 'Soft as Figgy's tummy' I say. He smiles, rolls his eyes to the ceiling. He knew I was going to say that.

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Each morning I get up to put out food for the birds. I make a mixture of sultanas, oats, fat and apple. -Mix it all up small in the food processor. I've tried putting it out the night before, but if it rains in the night, or if there's a heavy frost (like lately), it turns into a mushy porridge. The birds eat most of it still, but it makes a mess of the bird tables. So... early morning rises it is, come rain or snow...

-This one was taken about a year ago. Hard to believe. No snow this year.... Anyway, here I am, 6am., walking back towards the door after putting out the birds' breakfast...... This is my other Dressing Gown. I bought it from a discount store called TK Maxx. It has Elizabeth Emmanuel embroidered onto the front lapel in gold. Hmmm.... quite a posh designer, that. She was one of the ones who designed the wedding dress for Princess Diana. I have to report though, that this Dressing Gown, whatever its credentials, doesn't pass the Figgy's Tummy Test. It does have a hood, though. And has towelling inside. So, good for rushed showers and baths, cool lazy evenings eating straight out of the fridge, and feeding birds in the snow.

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For links to everyone else doing the ABC Wednesday, & instructions on how to take part, visit Mrs Nesbitt's site.

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