If you don't like kittens - you won't like this post.

Me again.
I have been thinking about kittens. It's been a while.
A kitten called Tom walked in through the bathroom window one day and stayed. We were living in Cork.
A year later we moved back to Wicklow and Tom ran away. A couple of days later we found him sitting on a fence. Somehow we managed to convince ourselves that it wasn't actually Tom but another cat. So we called her Moppet after my childhood kitten who had died at only a few days old. I now wonder if maybe Moppet really was Tom after all and that Tom had not been a boy but a girl all along. I don't remember anyone looking to see what his/her gender was.
Moppet had two kittens one halloween night while I was out at a party. They grew up in the bottom drawer of the old chest of drawers which my grandfather had taken to sea with him while travelling the seas in the Navy. The Tabby used to stand there rocking on her little legs while trying to walk, so we named her Rocky.
Rolly used to roll around in our hands when picked up, so she got named Rolly. It wasn't til later that we realised the 'Rock and Roll' analogy.
We moved again, this time to a little cottage by the sea which I named Railway Cottage, it being near to the railway track. The three cats came too.

I don't like blaming people for anything, but the vet did tell me that they were too young to be neutered, in which case they were also too young to have kittens, which they did. There were ten between them the first time, and the second time there were eleven, so all in all twenty one kittens in six months. They all got names and then they got homed. Rolly, was the mother of all of them. A very busy six months needless to say. Moppet simply pretended there was nothing amiss and went about her business of ignoring everybody. "Nothing to do with me" you could hear her body language shrugging. Not the Earth Mother type. Rocky inherited this attitude and decided she wasn't having anything to do with any of them either. So the onus was left with Rolly, and she stepped up and fed all of them, yes, all twenty one of them. We tried to help her with suppliment milk and weaned them a little early. This incredible little soul just out of kittenhood herself, won my heart hands down. She is the cat who stayed the distance until she sadly died at the age of fourteen.

Moppet died on my bed while the kids and I were watching a comedy eating a chinese take away, laughing :( We didn't sleep well that night. I felt so bad not to have known it was her time. She was getting old but I thought she had a few years in her yet.

Rocky was adopted by one of the adoptees, who came to take one of the kittens. She jumped into their cat box and looked lovingly at her chosen owners and I thought 'What the heck' if she wants to go, then take her. She didn't like the chaos in our home much anyway. When we moved again, Rolly was the only cat left, and she became my best friend. She would help me look for the dog when she went missing which was pretty much all the time. A loving compassionate soul who more about animals than any other animal I had ever been in contact with.

So she has been gone for while now, and now I have connected with Milo, my daughter's kitten, I am for the first time actually wanting another cat. Up till now cats have chosen me or been born into my life, this time, it will be a conscious decision. Also it might be good company for Louis the dog, when I am out.
He is off in the luxury kennels, while I am here. I know he likes it there because he comes back happy, not like when he went to the other kennel once and came back a little crazy.

Well that is my craving to write something taken care of.

All the best

Fiocle.