Thoughtful Tuesday...

We'z all been thinking lots about Miss Peach although I've seen a few pictures of Barbie-Q and Socrates they too were well before my time and apparently in a different Country too! But I will do my best to tell you a little about them all as they have all helped My Mummy become the right type of Mummy for me, Isis and even Tigmut'hep!

When Mummy was a little school girl, her Music teacher's cat had kittens and thinking that the odds were totally against them her parents said she could put her name down for one of the kittens... So with odds of about 300 to 1, Mummy became a cat Mummy for the very first time at age 9! Cuddles was a tiny black and tabby cat, who was feisty and full of naughty tricks, I hear she dominated Mummy's old dog Goldie and even stole her dinner at times - considering that Goldie was a Labrador and a real lover of food, this must have been quite something to watch! Cuddles was probably the most uncuddly cat ever in fact, though she didn't seem to mind being dressed up in bonnets and capes and being pushed around in a big pram just like a baby... Since Mummy's parents had a huge garden and she lived in a little village in the countryside, Cuddles was an indoor/outdoor cat who loved to hunt mice and birds, but then Mummy went on Guide Camp and Cuddles strayed further from home than normal in her evening hunt... Even though Mummy's parents were home to feed her she didn't have Mummy to play with, so she stayed out later and later... One night at camp Mummy woke up screaming having had a dreadful nightmare, that same night Cuddles didn't come home... :( Mummy's parents were frantic with worry and searched like mad people for Cuddles, three days later Mummy came back from camp and was told the news that Cuddles had strayed and hadn't been home in days. Mummy told her Dad where she thought she was, he went to look just to make Mummy happy and he found her little body straight away, she'd been squashed by one of those evil metal monsters on the near by motorway (nearly 1/2 mile from their old house). She was buried under her favourite Honeysuckle plant at the end of the garden and Mummy was heart broken...

Many years passed and Mummy stayed catless as she hated the thought of having another cat die on her. Then she heard of a colony of wild cats who were about to be trapped and killed as they were becoming a menace... Mummy was very angry about this and managed to gain the trust of one of the younger cats and eventually trapped him herself. She saved up her pocket money and with some help from her parents had him neutered and housed him in the family conservatory to see if she could tame him while he recovered and got used to the new area. Iggy-Tiggy did tame a little but at heart he was a wild cat, only Mummy could handle him and in the end Mummy found a safe place in which to release him when it was obvious that he was never going to be able to be kept as a pet. A local Estate with acres of wild woodland was only too happy to have him run wild and free there, knowing that he couldn't breed now. So Iggy-Tiggy went to live there and soon Mummy got to hear about sightings of him at the local school, where he'd turn up at milk break and see what he could get the little kids to give him before making a dash back into the woods of the bordering Estate. These sightings carried on for years that and Mummy kept up to date on Iggy-Tiggy's life until she left the UK for a new life in Canada in her late teens...

Again a few years passed and then one day Mummy opened her apartment balcony door to find a half starved and obviously mistreated Meezer trying to steal a big of chicken off her BBQ! This is how Barbie-Q got her name and made her was into Mummy's life... After a day or two of feeding this starving Meezer, Mummy got her to come into her apartment and gave her a good looking over. Her ears had been glued to her head and her chin to her chest, she was caked in a rubber based glue all round her head and neck area and looked a right sight... Mummy bundled her up and took her straight to the nearest vet, convinced that someone would be looking for her and frantic with worry. The vet checked her over and gave Mummy some advice on how to get the glue off of Barbie-Q and said he was convinced from the state she was in that she'd not been fed properly in over 2 months, she really was all skin and bone... He was also pretty sure she'd been abused by her original owner and since no one had reported a missing Meezer in the past few months and certainly not a female kitten (he reckoned she was only 9-10 months when she found Mummy), he was happy to agree that Mummy now belonged to Barbie-Q! The thing no one realized at the time was that she was pregnant (she could only have been a few days gone at the time) so about 2 months later she gave birth on top of Mummy's clean laundry! She had 3 lovely healthy kittens, one little runt with a huge umbilical hernia and 2 still born... Mummy and Barbie-Q had a lovely time raising the kittens and finding good homes for the 3 really healthy ones, Mummy worried about little Batman though and talked her parents into adopting him and getting him the vet care he so badly needed... Batman pulled through the surgery and gave them 13 yrs of love and purrs, spending their holidays with Mummy, Barbie-Q and later Socrates too! Socrates was another of Mummy's rescues, this time from the SPCA in Calgary during an outbreak of Cat Flu. Being a kitten at the time he was at serious rick of being put down if he got sick at the shelter, so Mummy bought him home just in time. Her vet helped her nurse him through it, 'cause he was so sick and so little - but he made it! :) He was goofy and neurotic, I mean how's heard of a cat with vertigo?! That was Socrates for you though... He couldn't jump up on things he just collided with them, he's panic if you didn't hide his eyes when you picked him up and he had a list of food allergies a mile long. But he was such a character never the less!

Mummy had many wonderful years with Barbie-Q and just about the time she turned 13 yrs old her kidney's failed and within a week she was too weak to go on, she died as she'd lived in Mummy's arms with all her love surrounding her to the very last. That was nearly 10 yrs ago now, but I still see Mummy cry when she thinks of her lovely brave Meezer girl... Socrates missed her badly too and over the next 12-18 months his allergies and other problems seemed to slowly get worse and after medication and surgery had both been tried and failed he too passed and left Mummy with a gaping furry shaped hole in her heart...

At this point Mummy moved back to the UK and bought the boy with her. After about a year of renting a house and getting used to the area she and Dad found this house and shortly after Tigmut'hep was bought home for the boy. He took to the boy straight away and over the past 6 yrs together they have played with much Lego and many, many toy cars as well as snuggled with more Teddy Bears than I can count! But Tigmut'hep developed idiopathic cystitis and needed to go on Rx food and stay in (cause he used to break and enter other cat owners houses and steal food), so Mummy and Dad talked about getting him a companion cat to keep him company. Mummy'd told Dad lots of stories about Barbie-Q and Socrates and Dad was well impressed with Socrates ability to play fetch! So they started to look for breeds of cats who were good at playing this sort of game and walking on a leash and harness, soon they found that Abyssinians were good at this sort of stuff and since Mummy'd met a couple of lovely Aby girls many years back in Toronto she and Dad started looking for either an Aby rescue cat or a kitten. This is how they got to talk to my former owners, who were heart broken at state I was in and my total lack of trust in humans thanks to one case of really bad handling and generally not being suited to the life style of a Stud and Show cat. They loved me so much, but were scared I'd hurt someone as I lashed out with fear so had planned to let me live my life as a companion cat to another of their Stud cats Dan. Once they heard the story of how Mummy'd rescued Barbie-Q and gained her trust they offered to let her meet me. During the next 24 hrs My Mummy crouched me my own little blanket and got the house ready for a second cat... As soon as I met My Mummy I let her touch me and fuss me, even though I was very nervous. Once I arrived home here I hid for days at a time, but Mummy'd just offer me a little treat and sit quietly with me. She moved so slowly that I accepted her touching me without wanting to put the bitey on her fingers and within a few months I was Mummy's little snuggle buddy! :) The breeders who owned me got lovely letters from Mummy telling them about my progress and photos too, they still can't believe the miracle she worked on me and have helped her make the decision to become an Abyssinian Cat Breeder. Isis will be her first Aby queen and sometime in early 2008 she'll go visit my old friend Dan and hopefully come home with a belly full of kittens for us all to enjoy and raise! :)

The love of a few good cats have made me one special Mummy and with my little half-sister Isis I'll be an Uncle next year! I'm planning on telling all the kittens how very lucky they are to have My Mummy help them in their first few months of life and how to find a wonderful Mummy of their own when they are big enough to leave home, though Mummy promises we can keep one or two with us if they're just as special as Isis and me! :) Even grumpy old Tigmut'hep is looking forward to having kittens here, it seems he thinks they look like Beanie Cats and he's very fond of those! ;)