Where do I begin?….

It’s hard to believe that there was a time in my life when I was not owned by cats. Never-the-less, it is true. Not that I regret it for a single moment, but it all began when my friend Tim decided to buy a house.

He was basically renting the attic of a single-family house. It was pretty scruffy, but it was cheap and I couldn’t wait to take it over. The landlord was happy to agree.

Tim had a lovely cat called Mo and a couple of weeks before the big move, he acquired an all-white kitten that we named Caesar. Theoretically I was to keep the kitten as my new companion, however Tim promptly fell in love with it. So I moved in alone while Tim and his two cats moved to the house a few blocks north.

Tim soon realised that Mo, having not been consulted in the matter of the kitten, was not best pleased with the disturbances to his accustomed life-style. He dem0nstrated this by sulking on top of the refrigerator from whence he fixed a dark look on the innocent newcomer. Then, to emphasize his displeasure, Mo launched a protest in the form of a hunger-strike, announcing that if “That” was going to stay, Mo intended to end his misery via suicide-by-starvation.

Whereas I will always cave, in face of feline threats, Tim was of a tougher mien, or, as Mo would have said, “just plain mean”.

“Not to worry”, said Tim, “no cat is ever going to starve itself!” But after two weeks, still refusing to give in to a “wretched cat”, he advised me that he was allowing Mo to return to his former home in the scruffy attic, and I became a cat owner for the first time.