Monday, August 11, 2008

One cat, two homes

About a year ago, one of our cats, Poppy, disappeared. Any number of things could've happened to her. She might've wandered off and been adopted by another family or got lost. She could've been hit by a car and ended her pretty little life.
One day, after she'd been gone eight or nine months, I was talking to a neighbour about nothing in particular, when Poppy appeared on the fence beside us!
She was huge - not having kittens, we'd had her 'seen to' years ago - she was a fat cat. She was always the lean, mean, mouse catching machine and here she was, almost spherical!
Not a healthy situation.
"I thought you were dead" I told her.

The neighbour told me that after one of their own cats had died, Poppy has been living in their conservatory. She'd never thought of coming twenty yards to tell me our cat, wearing our collar with our address on it wasn't in our house!
Seems like Poppy saw an opening of a cushy lifestyle and took it.
I asked Mrs Nextdoorbutone not to encourage her to stay and shoo her away which she agreed to.
These days Poppy lives with us. She's a healthier shape, but will often disappear for hours to languish on a wicker sofa in the neighbour's conservatory - they have a cat flap and she gets in while they are out.
That's what happened yesterday. They were out - she went in - on the day I'd booked to have her immunisation booster jab.
I couldn't get to her. The neighbours were out all day and I had to cancel the flippin' appointment!
I made another appointment for today - Poppy is under house arrest, at least until she's had her injections.

2 comments:

paul said...

I am always a big softy when it comes to happy pussy stories.
Dawn may or may not remember we took in a stray, well not quite true she adopted us is more like it two years ago, she arrived with a collar but with no name or address and is now firmly entrenched as part of the family. Reading your blog entry reminds me I must book Lucky in for her booster at the end of the month, thanks Pete.

Ian said...

I think my cat has found a second home too. Nowadays, he only comes home for two or three hours every other day.