Meet Smudge!

You could smell the excitement and anticipation in our hotel room when we woke up! We indulged in the fabulous breakfast that was part of our "prepay, no change" deal with the hotel, wandered into Ipswich again for a bit more shopping, packed up the car, and set off for Stowmarket, where Smudge was residing!

It was lovely to see the Wonderspouse's aunt, from whom we were rehoming Smudge. She had a stroke about 6 years ago, and has had to learn to speak again and live life in a very different way from how she did before. She's a lady of considerable determination, and the way she copes with life with the use of only 1 arm is impressive. She's also really nice and really cool! And she'd bought us doughnuts!

As to Smudge! It was love at first sight!

She bounded around, said hello, meeowed at us, purred, rubbed against our legs, allowed us to pick her up, and was thorougly delightful. When the time came to leave she was a bit put about by having to go in her box, but otherwise fine.

Then, a 4 hour car journey with her! She was good as gold. Meeowed a little at the beginning, but spent most of the journey just looking out of her box to see what was going on. Emergency towels and things were not needed. She coped fine with heat, windows open to get rid of heat at 70mph (which is quite noisy), driving through an intense downpour and thunderstorm, and sitting in a traffic queue in Rugby for some time!

Once home we installed her in her new quarters, where, as you can see, she's very happy. She's a little difficult to photograph because she's so curious that she comes and sniffs the camera all the time!

The other three don't seem to be unduly bothered by her presence. Tiggy was a little stroppy this morning, but I'm hopeful that integrating her fully into the family isn't going to be too difficult!

Which is good, because we'd like to have that process sorted by the time Dexter comes so that he gets the full welcome package too! :-)