Not Forgotten

When I lost my sweet little conure Rio, you offered me your sympathies. The same happened when my darling Henry died last year.

But when I had my first pet bereavements, there were no digital cameras, no blogs, not even many PCs.

Biggles was my second cat, whose heavily pregnant mother I had rescued and rehomed with my neighbour. He was an affectionate, very naughty not-so-little boy who loved nothing more than to tease next door's boxer dog from just out of reach on the other side of the fence.

He used to come and sit on my lap when I was on the toilet and tuck his head under my arm.

He was treated for kidney failure for 18 months, but finally his health was so poor, and he was so unhappy, that I had to have him put to sleep. He was nearly 15, and he remains the only fur friend that I have ever had to make this decision for. This was in 1992.


Puddy, my first cat, was a stray who arrived, pregnant, when my then husband and I moved into our new flat. As students, we did not feel it appropriate to have kittens to rehome, and Puddy (as in Puddy Tat) had an abortion when she was spayed.

She was dedicated to my husband, and used to follow him up and down the street when he was delivering neighbourhood leaflets. She would also follow me as far down towards the main road as she dared until the noise of the traffic made her stop. She would then look up at the next person walking back up the street, miaow at them, and to their astonishment follow them back towards the house. She always knew when we were coming home. She would wait in a car park at the bottom of the street and come out to accompany us home.


Puddy was a really sedate lady, as compared with Biggles, who was a little menace to her. He would lie in wait for her, then pounce. She never got used to it, and they never got on, in all the nearly 15 years they were together.

I still can't talk about the freak accident that took my beautiful Puddy from me. I had had her for 18 years, and she was probably 20. It was just three months after I'd lost Biggles. I'd already rehomed Shelley and his half-brother Byron.

So it is that, until I lost Shelley three weeks ago today, I had kept cats for 36 years; I had never been without a cat; I had shared my home with 10; and I still had 7 of them. Now just 6.