Do you remember me blogging about being a cat lady without a cat? La femme sans chat. Well guess wot? We've got one! A cat that is...or has she got us?
A friend was going away on a cruise and asked us to mind her cat. I was as usual miss scaredy cat myself and had all sorts of fears and trepidations. But on the due day Miss Puss arrived - in her box - to the accompaniment of loud protestations! After some ginger-footed explorations she settled right down on the couch and that was it - she took up royal residence!
Her name is Chicory and she is a five year old tortoise-shell.
Altho' her first night was a little disturbed and spent in roaming and chirruping, over the next two weeks she settled right in to become our pampered lap cat. We fell deeply in love with her. She was so affectionate and funny! She would hop up on the pea-green boat of our bed and walk all over us - in more ways than one! When we wheeled out the column heater with the arrival of cool weather her days - or rather nights were made.
Mind you I did have to mount a couple of rescue operations...from tall fence posts and trees usually after a bailing up by badder and meaner neighbourhood cats.
Her own household included a number of children and relatives who were allergic to cats..and I am told, especially to Chicory. So she had spent much of her life consigned to outdoors or permitted relatively brief, chaperoned visits to the land of "inside". I can only imagine what was going through pusso's furry little head at finding herself given free range to bed, lounge, heater and laps!
But wait there's more!
On her last day I answered the phonecall that I thought would herald her return home only to hear my girlfriend asking me if we would like to keep her.
We did and we have!
And we do keep her...in the manner to which she is now accustomed!
Sometimes I suspect my girlfriend of having planned the whole thing but then I look into Her Highness' inscrutable jade green eyes as she lies stretched out on the rug in front of the heater and I think I know who the master mind was!
One of the things I did when pusso came was to do some research on the web. Now here's a fascinating article about tortoiseshells and XXY's and chimeras and gee there's some unusual hybrids out there walking the streets!!!
Mosaicism, tortie tomcats and genetically impossible kittens
When I was little my mum always had lots of funny names for things. I guess I like to continue the tradition. Here's my list of names for my - furry - darling:
