Beauty on a sad day

I think that some of you guessed that my blip of Bowlby earlier in the week was likely to be the last one. We had to reach the sad decision that she had had enough of limping around and that the painkillers were no longer helping her. I took her to the vet this morning and he agreed that the time had come to say goodbye.

I have always stayed with our cats when this has happened and I did so again, but it gets harder every time. This is the first time in over 30 years that we have not had a cat.

Bowlby was never intended to be our cat. She was one of a litter of 4 kittens born to Boris, (yes Boris), who belonged to our then cleaning lady. Boris seemed a bit under the weather and was taken to the vet, who roared with laughter. The kittens were born a couple of days later. Sadly one died.

We saw them at 24 hours and chose two, Ziggy and Carla. Bowlby was never intended to be ours. In the event, they came to us much sooner than we planned. The owners were going on holiday and wanted to separate the kittens from Borisina. We were about to move into this house and were living in rented accommodation along with loads of packed boxes and a touch of chaos.

Then they asked if we would take the third kitten for a couple of weeks, because the person who wanted her was also away. The first two were named after psychoanalysts, Freud and Jung (see above) and I christened Bowlby after the one famous psychoanalyst I had met, John Bowlby, famous for Attachment Theory.

The kittens lived in a bathroom at first and enjoyed climbing the chain for the plug and sliding down the bath sides!

After 2 weeks, we could not part with Bowlby and she stayed with us. Ziggy disappeared age 2 and we never found him. Carla died in 2016.

Bowlby was a very funny little cat who woke me by licking my eyelids or ears. She was a fat cat for most of her life, but lost a lot of weight last year and became much more lively for a while.

We are going to miss her terribly but we know she had a great life here. In looking forward, I thought we might remain cat-less, but I suspect that another cat or two will find its way into our lives, once we have had time to adjust.