Kittens

It’s twenty years since this kitten first came into my life, here in a picture taken in 2007:

These days she’s looking a bit more disheveled, but on the whole she’s still in good nick. She survived two other cats, Monty and Hector; the first the cat we got her to be a companion to, the second her ‘brother’ who took out of the asylum at the same time. When we first got her she was Sandra’s cat, but as Sandra got ill and was stuck in hospital, she gravitated towards me instead. Ever since, especially since I started working from home during the Covid pandemic, she’s been the most needy, constantly needing to be near or on top of me cat I’ve ever known.

Two years we moved from a tiny apartment in Amsterdam to a proper house with actual stairs in my hometown and I was worried she wouldn’t be able to cope, but nothing’s further from the truth. She climbs them as if she’s done so all her life, even if she doesn’t want to move too much these days anymore. As long as she can claim a spot near me, she’s happy to sleep the day away and just wake up long enough to get her food, drink or do her business.

Happy birthday Sophie!

Today was the first time in almost fourteen years that I wasn’t woken up by a desparate meowing from just outside my bedroom at some ungodly hour because somebody had decided it was time to get fed.

That was Hector in a nutshell, always afraid that he wouldn’t be fed, always convinced there was something just that little bit more yummy than whatever was in his bowl already. When Sandra and I moved here with our first cat Monty back in 2005, we decided that he needed a little friend to keep him company as he couldn’t go roam the streets anymore. So off we popped to the local animal shelter and one little friend became two, as when we found this little cutie, we found her playing with a small three legged tomcat and we couldn’t bring ourselves to separate them. She became Sophie, he became Hector.

As we were told it, he was found in a sewer drain, his back leg almost bitten through, probably a rat and it had been amputated when he came to the shelter. He never really missed it as far as we could tell. His own remaining back paw grew to twice the size of a normal cat’s, while his shoulder muscles belonged on a cat three times his size. He couldn’t jump, but boy could he sling his claws in you and hoist himself up if he wanted to sit in your lap. He did get a bit frustrated though when he wanted to scratch the side of his head his missing paw was on. The stump would move but he just couldn’t figure out why the itchiness didn’t disappear…

In the summer you wouldn’t see him until it was time for dinner. He’d spent his days somewhere in the garden complex inside the block our house was on, sunning himself in one of the neighbours’ gardens. He had a special bond with our next door neighbour and with the neighbour’s pet bunny, whom he seemed fascinated with. Perhaps because it had a similar gait as himself. But if the way he walked resembled a rabbit, his personality was more puppy than kitten. Enthusiastic, goofy, energetic, always wanting to be around you or near you, but not much for laying still. He was everybody’s friend, even though he was a bit of a scaredy cat with strangers.

He could be incredibly annoying and underfoot and I’ll miss him terribly.