Cat Update

It occurred to me that when I started this blog, we had four Maine Coons - Whisper (Silver Tortie Tabby), Spike (Black & White), Hobbes (Red and White) and Paddy (Classic Brown Tabby).

Sadly, Spike fell asleep forever in 2012; our big cowardy-custard boy, who hid every time that the doorbell rang, effectively had a stroke.

The house felt wrong without him; time passed and we decided that we should find another boy. On contacting our usual breeder, she said that she had a silver tabby lad that she had thought to keep as a show cat, but if we really wanted him.........

When we arrived at her house, we simply fell in love with him - big ears and all. There was a little red and white girl in the kitten pen with him, whose mother had rejected her, the only kitten in the litter. This little scrap had been brought up by the silver boy's mother, but had a tail fault so couldn't be bred from or sold.
We decided that we had to have the silver lad; then the breeder offered us the wee red girl - we hesitated, after all, Maine Coon kittens aren't exactly cheap - but we had misunderstood. We were being offered a BOGOF.

And that is how we left home, expecting to bring back one kitten and returned with two. We could never have separated Bearz from his little foster-sister Rosie, or Rosie from him. What we couldn't have anticipated was Hobbes' reaction - as Rosie hesitantly stepped out of the cat-carrier, Hobbes was struck with a coup de foudre! We have never seen such a perfect example of love at first sight and Rosie was similarly enamoured.

So,until mid-January 2014, we had five Maine Coons. Whisper had, over the previous year, begun to look very old and was becoming increasingly frail. The others took it in turn to groom her and to sit with her, walking out of the room with her (her eyesight was clearly beginning to fail) - we were amazed at the apparent care and devotion that they were demonstrating towards our old lady.

In December, we discovered that she was becoming forgetful (as in forgetting where the litter tray was), but we compensated by checking up on her and mopping up her occasional accidents. However, in January her increased rate of drinking and her enlarged pupils signalled something very wrong, and the vet confirmed that she had kidney disease and would not be with us much longer, even with drug treatment.

We decided to take her home. Our vet trusted us to know when it was time to let her go and so we had her with us for two more weeks. On 22nd January, Whisper slipped away, peacefully and without pain at our veterinary surgery.

So now we have four Maine Coons again.

See you again one day, Spike and Whisper xxxxx