A year or two after Juniper and Bracken joined my family, the friend needed to go to stay with her youngest daughter somewhere overseas and it wasn't possible for me to be at both houses, so the Kattery was opened with the three cats coming here!
We had ups and downs, my oldest cat Shushu - full name Princess Shushila from MM Kaye's book 'The Far Pavilions' - wasn't pleased about Trivy, a beautiful mix of browns, wanting to be close to me in bed. Matters came to a head when Trivy jumped onto the bed and landed on Shushu - who gave her a quick slap and the lesson was learnt. Trivy was a very loving cat, so we made sure there was time for attention away from Shushu. Juniper and Bracken's litter sister, Bluey, went upstairs in a neighbour's house, and took some persuasion to let me bring her out - the furniture and orientation was the same as at her home and she thought it WAS home. The middle visiting cat was Lucy, all black. She didn't mix too well, even with the cats she lived with, and Juniper wasn't welcome in her life because he was a tom, albeit neutered.
Over the course of alternate summers when my friend went to Mexico [twice] and other places, the cats were a regular feature of our lives. The last time all three came was hellish. Shushu had gone to the Rainbow Bridge, and my two kept out of the way as much as possible. After the second night when Juniper couldn't come on my bed - Lucy kept him out - I decided that the only way he and Bracken could feel comfortable in their own house was to sleep downstairs. A single bed isn't very comfortable with 3-4 cats getting up and down all night! Added to that was the drawbacks of different lifestyles. I don't like light in the night and always close curtains, my friend didn't close them - so Trivy decided Juniper was deliberately hiding from her. Cue her jumping onto the dining-table in front of the window - biffing Juniper through the curtain and Juniper in distress.
When the cats had arrived, Trivy was suffering from kidney problems and wasn't able to jump onto beds so to see her jump directly onto the table instead of using the cat tower was amazing. The flip side was that all night she drank water as though it was going out of fashion. [All the cats refused to use a bowl for water, preferring a plastic beaker in the fill-hole of a watering-can. Yep, home of crazy cats!] So, I had to keep a jug of water nearby to refill the beaker after Trivy emptied it - then she used the catlit tray, came back for more water all through the night. I had to move the cats' biscuits into the rear hallway, someone crunched as noisily as possible. To add to the nightly mayhem Bluey decided to slurp cat food!!!
That was the last summer for Trivy to visit us for her holidays, but my friend knew how fond I was of her oldest cat - over 20 years. So, she called in en route to the vets and I had the privilege of some lovely interaction on our way to the vets. Had the carrier on top of my large shopping trolley and needed to hold on to the carrier door, cue loving from Trivy for the last time. Since then there were fewer cats to attend the Kattery, the last being Lucy. Who only came on her own once as my friend's daughter returned to the UK from Canada. Around Christmas she went to the rainbow bridge A new Lucy lives with my friend, but the Kattery closed a few years ago - no need for it any more.
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