Monday Memories

Ah - late night/early morning blogging!

This week's memory revolves around my cats. So you get four memories for the price of one.

Pandora: 16 years and going (reasonably) strong. We nearly lost her as a kitten when she came down with a mysterious virus that made her paralysed temporarily. I still remember placing her in her litter tray at appropriate moments! Her life was made complete by the arrival of Ambrose when she was about 18mths old - and destroyed when he died suddenly ten years later. Since his death she has been ill a lot with her nerves and has aged really quickly. But Uncle Tim (her wonderful vet) thinks she'll see out 20!

Ambrose: We had him before the computer and before the digitalisation of photos, so no photo at the moment but the one above is the gorgeous scrapbook made by a friend at work. He came to us at three months, this huge ginger kitten. He was incredibly careless and his vet records ran to several pages as he had a habit of cutting his paws on - oh glass, barbed wire, fence splinters....... He and Pandy were best of friends for ten years, until he was killed on a road on New Years Eve 2000. We still miss him terribly. Pandy was inconsolable and, although she didn't see us bury him, she slept on his grave for three months. He was My Boy.

Echo: We were settled with Pandy but thought she was lonely. Meanwhile my neighbour's cat was pregnant. She decided to give birth the weekend they were away, so I took her in my house and acted as midwife. Good thing too, as number two kitten was huge and got stuck and I had to forcibly deliver it. And when the runt (number three) finally arrived she would not breathe. I actually gave a kitten CPR, not easy on something the size of a matchbox! MB was out that night and when he returned he poked his head into the room, saw all the blood and went to bed! We were given the pick of the litter and chose the runt - Echo. Echo had a short happy life, she was stolen from us on the same road at only 22 months.

Charlie: We were stunned by the deaths of Ambrose and Echo in less than four years. Echo in particular as it only was 10 minutes after we saw her in the garden that the vet phoned to say she'd been brought in DOA. But we toyed with ideas and names, and decided we would take a homeless kitten (if one turned up with no home) or a special needs one (deaf, blind etc) as any future feline would be an indoor cat! The name we settled on was Charlie - but this was all hypothetical (AP - After Pandy!). But then I got an email about 'Charlie'. Coincidence or Fate? Found on a roadside in hawk country with his brothers, little Charlie couldn't get a home. We thought about it for - oh - about 30 seconds and took him. The rest, as they say, is history!

cq