A TRIBUTE TO AN OLD FRIEND
We were friends for over six years but only at arms length. However, we relied on each other over six years in different ways.
From the first day of our meeting she annually brought her offspring for our approval. They were always a credit to her except one, who turned out to be a little daft. Skippy. So named because she jumped up and down on the spot for no apparent reason until she fell over!! We were never introduced to the fathers! We chucked bricks at them if they came yowling around the house late at night, or as my husband called the wood he hurled at them, Catalogs!!
She came to visit us when I was camping in a small cottage during building works on the main house. This temporary camp site lasted for nearly two years and daily she and any youngsters in her care at the time were duly at the cottage door for whatever we had to give them.
Skippy became a bore because as the builders left every evening, she tried to embalm herself within the house and once was missing for at least five days during one of Italy’s many festas. She was spotted one evening jumping up and down behind a window and was finally released only to jump around for five minutes, then fall over. She had left her mark inside the house, needless to say.
Our friend can only have been two or three years old when we first met but the incessant courting by the local Nasties, the Toms of the neighbourhood, would have taken years off anyone’s life. She looked downtrodden and weary of life!
One day I saw her running scared across the field in front of our kitchen windows and was horrified to see no less than fifteen males of varying colours and size following her. She always ended up a rag at the end of the mating season and finally we caught her and put paid to the lotharios fun.
She seemed to appreciate our kindness but would never enter the house or allow us more than one stroke every morning as her bowl was filled with breakfast. We never saw her after breakfast and once fed she disappeared into the countryside.
We have other cats but she was my friend and we shared memories of difficult times. If it is possible to love a cat, I loved this one.
I have been in London over Christmas and only been feeding her in the mornings for about a week on my return to the farm, and everything seemed okay in her little world.
Except. Last evening I heard a loud crying outside the back door which continued until I opened it. I invited her in. Again she refused but allowed me to collect her in my arms and stroke her. Something, that for the past six years she always declined. Her fur looked ill kempt and she cried from time to time.
I took her to the pig sty where there is warm hay, gave her food and water, locked the door against any other animal intent on aggression and waited to check on her later in the evening.
Before I went to bed I heard her crying at the back door once again and I will never know how she had escaped from that locked pigsty.
She let me pick her up again, cried once or twice, and then started to purr loudly as if happy!!! I wrapped her in one of my old jackets and did not lock her up this time but put her under cover in sight of the back door and went to bed.
This morning she was dead but had thanked me in the only way she could by coming to say goodbye!!!
How did she know she was going to die that night and why did she want to say thank you for the small kindness we had shown to her?
China Cat was special and she will be a bright light forever in my mind.
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