That’s the subject line of an email we received from Cat Chat this week!  For those of you who didn’t find your fur baby there …. it’s the main online resource for rescues advertising cats available for adoption.

On one level its true!  We currently have no cats or kittens available for adoption.  The lovely Ys are settling happily into their new home

The naughty little Ps are setting about trashing their new place too

We’re not without cats though of course.  The Richmond 2 are settling in and are now named Tabbytha and Mowse.  I’ll leave you to guess which is which 😉

In an unusual change from normal rescue policy we’ve chosen names starting with different initials for cats we suspect are related … and are certainly friends.   They’re both pregnant though …. and the challenge of potentially finding 12 kittens names with the same initial was just too much.

They’re both still quite nervous around me, but will both take treats from my hands, and I’ve been able to stroke Mowse a little.   They’re clearly very close to each other  and snuggle up, groom each other and purr.  We can only guess whether they’re sisters, twins, cousins or even mother or even grandmother and daughter.   The original plan was to offer them both single rooms as they’re pregnant … but as they’re so close we’ve kept them together and are reviewing the situation continually for what’s best for them.

We also have lovely Sage in her foster home.  That’s been a bit up and down.  She was clearly very happy there initially and its a tried and trusted foster home, with no other pets to stress her.  Unfortunately she continues to lose fur …. at quite an alarming rate.

Not just from her tummy and legs but now from her head as well.   We’ve been back at the vets today and she’s had treatment for her itchy scratchy skin.  Let’s hope it starts to settle down now …. she’s a lovely little cat but must be feeling miserable if her skin is irritating her so much.

Our recent arrivals have been distant but desperate.   Last week we went up to Leeds  to collect little Sage – saved by the same young woman who rescued Pixi & Pudsey.    She’s such a sweet little cat but she’s had a stressful time and is pulling her fur out with over grooming.  Really quite heart breaking that she’s ripped out most of the fur on her tummy and insides of her legs, and even on her feet. This had started before she came into rescue but has continued.  She loves snuggling and cuddling, but each morning I’d go into her bedroom and there were handfuls of fur on the desk near her bed.

on the journey here

hiding

in her bed

One of our committee members offered to foster her, in the hope that a pet free home will help her to settle. We took her over there this week. Paws crossed that things will be ok now ….. its certainly started well

The other two were longer distance. A very distressing situation in North Yorkshire … a kind man living on the edge of a small village had cared for numerous strays who lived in his yard. Sadly his poor health meant he could not continue to offer them this care. It wasn’t easy to estimate how many cats or how many may be pregnant. We could only offer space for two.

Given that it was a long journey, and that when I went to Lincoln to pick up Molly Mable the sat nav was seriously out of date and for large amounts of the journey the map showed me sliding sideways in a field as I drove along a newly built road, I decided to be sensible and responsible and invest in a map update. All updates carefully downloaded the night before the journey, I carefully keyed in the postcode of the destination the following morning ready to set off.   The sat nav looped and re started, looped and re started looped crashed restarted!   The brave guys in North Yorkshire had managed to catch a couple of the cats ready for me to collect (despite having been badly bitten in the process) and I was sitting in South Yorkshire desperately fiddling with the sat nav.  In the end I gave up and threw myself on the mercy of my road map book.

Thankfully it proved to be an easy and very lovely journey up to Scotch Corner and turn left.  Lovely people trying to help out these cats and the guy who had cared for them.  There’s also an amazing facebook group of cat rescue people who are  doing their best to sort out rescue spaces and transport for the others who need care.

“The Richmond 2” were silent the whole way back to Sheffield.  They’re very scared …. I’m not sure they’ve ever been indoors until now.  They’re not really touchable so its not easy to know quite  what’s going on, but we think they’re both pregnant and due in the next couple of weeks.  I’m anxious to make some sort of bond with them in case they need any help with birth or kittens.  After an initial wall of death race around their room when they arrived, they’ve settled.   The little tabby will take chicken from my fingers …… quite carefully, not snatching.   Her (?) sister/cousin mostly just looks at me with wide eyes, but in the last couple of days has dared to eat whilst I’m in their room.

Apologies for poor photos …. not wanting to be intrusive or using flash at this stage.

Let the mourners come …. Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun … Our beautiful precious Sooty Ryan has gone.

He arrived here one inauspicious Thursday evening some five years ago.  Another stray cat needing to get in from the cold and the snow.  He’d persuaded someone to let him sit in their house until they found a rescue space for him, and I went to collect him at 6pm … I still have the email arranging it.

I remember being teased at for producing a “Found” poster which described him as “handsome”.    Once I stopped and thought about it objectively …. he probably wasn’t that handsome …. he had a single dracula fang canine tooth which was loose, and a large tick on his back.

Anyway, he moved into my back bedroom and made himself at home.

There was no response to the posters.  A trip to the vet revealed no microchip, relieved him of his tick, and diagnosed him with hyperthyroid and some arthritis.   We also realised that he was deaf.   Not a great prospect for rehoming.  An elderly black deaf cat with health issues.   Something about him though …… and he got on well with our Jango

Before you could say dental work and medication he was ours.

He kind of started as he meant to go on by stressing me out disappearing the day before I went on holiday to India.   A lifetime ambition to see the Taj Mahal blighted by waiting on a text from home to say that he’d turned up.   He followed this up a few years later by going missing when I returned from another holiday.   This time he’d found himself a human girl friend in the next street.   The affair continued for months, collecting him on my way home from work, either in the car or on foot.  Always purring the whole way home, but invariably going back round there again when I went to work.

Sadly these escapades had to be curtailed when he began lying down for a nap in the middle of the road on his way home.  Thankfully it was a friend who was driving down the road, carefully, and spotted him.   He continued to go out a little but only whilst supervised and wearing his smart butterfly jacket.

Recently Sooty’s health has deteriorated.   He’s always been keen to take his thyroid tablets and managed that quite well, but then his kidneys started to fail, he lost weight, and lost more weight.   Despite hand feeding him since Christmas and starting on meds for his kidneys things continued to go downhill.  He was admitted at the vets on Monday for a last attempt to hydrate him using a drip.  Sadly he gave up the fight on  Tuesday morning.   My lovely friend Jenny almost carried me to the vets to collect him, and we brought him home to explain to the other residents what had happened.  Little Flipper was devastated, she’s always been closest to Sooty, even though her head bonks with him recently have nearly knocked him off his feet.

Then carried him to the crematorium where he was cared for gently by the staff and returned to us in a lovely black cat casket

Feeling quite stunned at the moment.   However much a bereavement is expected I think it still comes as a shock.   In time I hope I’ll smile at so many memories of him.  He used to like to show foster kittens a thing or two about hunting toys

and he was a real foodie.  Maybe, sadly linked to being a stray and having to scavenge, he loved human food.   For a deaf cat, his ability to sense when the fridge door was opening was second to none.  He loved cheese particularly, all types of cheese, and cake and tomato soup …. there was nothing that didn’t deserve just a little Soot Taste.

For now part of my brain resolutely tries to count to 5 when I’m checking on my residents, prompts me reliably but pointlessly and heartbreakingly to remember his medication, and cruelly taunts me with glimpses of him out of the corner of my eye.

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

*Thanks to WH Auden

We’ve been a bit quiet online recently and there’s several reasons for that.

The black dog of depression has been snapping at my heels again as our elderly black cat Sooty is getting gradually more and more poorly.   We’ve also taken in some cats from very difficult situations that its not been appropriate to blog about.   Nevertheless there’s great news about rehomings; Kiri, Knut & Kitty, and Molly Mable have found lovely new homes.

Two of the cats who came in from difficult circumstances Jinja & Jet have also found a lovely home, and we’re pending a very exciting announcement about the W kits.  ,,,,,,,,,,,  However its all overshadowed by our Sooty.

Sooty arrived with us just over 5 years ago, already in his teens, deaf and with thyroid issues.   For a while he did well on medication, but over the last couple of years its been a bit of a rollercoaster ….. and now I fear its stopped rolling and we’re just on a downward straight.    His kidneys are failing, and so is his appetite.   Always one to jump at the sound of the fridge door opening (despite being deaf) it’s become hard to interest him in food and he’s losing weight rapidly.   The logical part of me says he’s an old cat who hasn’t been well for a long time.  He’d never have survived this last 5 years if he hadn’t come into rescue.  He’s had a lovely life here, spoiled to pieces, top cat, but they can’t live forever.   The other part of me is going through hell trying to do everything I can for him, hardly able to leave him for 5 minutes, probably annoying the crap out of him asking him all the time if he wants anything.

Thankfully if I look at it objectively, I think I’m probably in more distress than he is.  He potters from his seat in the chair next to me, to his litter tray, to his water fountain, and back. He’s had a few little walks in the garden with his butterfly jacket and is regularly offered tasty morsels from supermarket aisles that veggies rarely visit.  This evening was my first (reluctant) encounter with “pulled pork” … but he’s had a mouthful or two and clearly enjoyed it.

He’s still purring.  I try to not cry too much in front of him.

After our rendezvous at Donington Park a couple of weeks ago, we kind of got the travel bug 😉   So when a Mablethorpe based cat posted, in distress, on Sunday we offered to help. Poor little Molly Mable had had a wretched week.   She’s nearly 13 and had lived with her human since she’d been a kitten.  Then the worst of all furry nightmares happened:  her mummy died.   Molly Mable hid inside the base of the bed wondering what on earth was to come next.   A week later, when the family were looking for the will, she was discovered.  We dread to think what might have happened to this elderly puss if an over full Lincolnshire rescue hadn’t stepped in and taken her over night.

The plan for the following day … both the Lincs rescue and I were busy .. was to message each other once we knew what time we were going to be free … and then meet to hand over Molly.   It was more complicated by my being in Nottingham for the day … so different journey and traffic to account for.   There were various potential meeting points: Newark, Lincoln or Mablethorpe depending on which of us was free to set off first.

Eventually a meeting point was set: Asda south of Lincoln.  The  Lincs rescue suggested “at the petrol station” so we could find each other apart from the rest of the huge car park.    I arrived early and whizzed into the store for a few shopping bits and then headed off to the petrol station.    There wasn’t a lot of space to park unless you were filling up with fuel, so I settled into a spot just behind the “free air” and tyre pressure machine.   The appointed hour arrived, and shortly after that a young woman pulled up behind me.  She looked a little uncertain, but smiled and waved.  I also smiled and waved.   It was very like picking up Knut & Kitty at Donington.    I  got out of the car, got the cat carrier from the back seat and went over to her.  Something … what was it? … just something made me not so sure.   She looked a little worried and unsure.   It just wasn’t right.  She got out the car … saying “um … was just wondering if you were waiting for the tyre machine?” ….  “er …. no … I was thinking you had a cat to hand over to me”.  I’ve gone away and written a blog post about the experience.  Goodness knows how she’s dealing with the confusion.    I moved to a different part of the car park, sending a message to the other rescue at the same time..   A little while later another young woman pulled up not far away … with a similar sort of look..  I made sure that this time we exchanged a couple of messages before getting out the car!

 Molly was an excellent, calm passenger who navigated far far better than the Ks did.  She purred and fussed and cuddled when we got home.    Apart from asking where the beach was, and why Sheffield roads were so bumpy she was just purrfect.   However she just would  not eat.   Everything we tried was rejected other than a couple of dreamies.   It seemed she’d eaten a fair bit at the first rescue when she’d arrived on  Sunday evening, but nothing since.   We struggled to get any food down her .. but grabbed the earliest vet appointment we could.    Molly’s teeth were ever so sore, and bled just on being examined.

So today she’s been off to the dentist.  At least 5 teeth out as far as we can tell.  Mainly her top teeth.   She refused to eat anything at the vets when she came round from her op.    Thankfully, with quite a bit of encouragement, she’s been eating since she’s got home.

All we need now is to find this poor old lady a furever home.