Thimphu

People who dismiss the loss of your animal companion telling you to go get another are clueless. Animals have personality. You love them as individuals. They are not replaceable.

Returning home with Yeti’s empty carrier, I felt lost. She had been my close companion for 17 years. Of course I knew she couldn’t live forever. Of course I was grateful for the years and the love we had shared. I was familiar with all the phrases people speak at such times.

They do nothing to relieve the heartbreak. Some of those phrases make it worse.

Having the other cats around was certainly a comfort. They were new friends, but I loved them too, in different ways. Cisco and Panther endeavoured to entertain me and the girls, Annie and Grisabel, were very sweet.

Cisco had quickly grown into a very large cat! But like many large animals, he was gentle and shy. He and Grisabel competed for Panther’s attention.

Although I didn’t realise it till several months later, Panther had established himself as head of household. After all, he was now the senior cat.

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From the pretty little kitten she had been, Grisabel grew to be a beauty.

In her adolescence she found herself baby sitting…

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Yeti died on 19th November 2003.

On the 17th, a nearby cat breeder had welcomed a litter of Himalayan kittens.

Kind colleagues knew how deeply I was affected by my loss and wanted to help, but understanding the sensitivity of such a situation, decided to put out cautious feelers.

My friend Denise mentioned to me one day that her mother had an acquaintance whose Himalayan cat was expecting kittens. Might I be interested when the time came?

There was no suggestion of it being a replacement, but I adore kittens and Himalayans are special. Of course I would love to have one, when they were old enough to be adopted.

Time went by, but my sadness did not shift. One morning before work I went to have a manipulation on sore muscles. As the practitioner worked on my neck, tears slid down my face. I couldn’t shake off the mood and couldn’t bear the thought of facing people, so I went home and called in sick, something I very seldom did.

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Denise happened to be on a day off, but she must have spoken to someone at the airport and been told about my situation She called to check on me and asked if she could come by and take me for a “little drive”.

Before long, we were pulling up behind a car with one of those personalised license plates. I’ve forgotten what it said exactly, but having noticed it, I was not surprised when I was ushered into the house, to discover I’d been brought to meet kittens. Denise’s “mother’s acquaintance” had just been a clever bit of fiction.

The intention had been to surprise me with the kitten on my birthday, but because I was so sad that day, Denise decided to bring me to choose my new baby.

Twice I’ve been asked to choose a kitten. I’ve come to the conclusion it’s something I should not do. In Kina, I’d selected a cat that did not care to live with me. With the Himalayan it was something else…

As with Kina, this kitten was purebred. I was encouraged to select a name so that it could be entered onto the certificate when it was issued. It would be a couple of weeks before I could collect my little girl. Yes, girl. I had two boy-cats and decided having three girls might perhaps work out better than three boys.

(At no time did I consider that four cats would have been an even better choice.)

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Choosing a name wasn’t hard. This was a Himalayan. Tara is a female Buddhist deity, regarded as the protectress of the Tibetan people. The name would be perfect.

Would have been.

A couple of days later, I got a call from the breeder. During the night her dog had killed the kitten. I was too stunned to think much about it then.

The lady was apologetic. There was a little boy-kitten they had been referring to as Tipper because of his constantly protruding tongue. Would I like to take him?

Of course. Denise knew which kitten I’d chosen, that it was to be Tara, so there was no hiding this development from her, but what an awful thing to have to tell her. I was sad about the kitten, of course, but I’d only spent a few minutes with it. My main concern was that my friends would be upset that things had gone so sadly wrong.

In retrospect, I thought about what had happened and I had doubts. What sort of breeder allows their dog near tiny kittens unsupervised? I had to wonder if it was true. The woman would have realised that I was equally enchanted by both kittens on offer. She had drawn my attention to the boy called Tipper but for the reason given, I’d chosen the girl.

Had another buyer come looking and particularly wanted the one I had chosen? Or was the woman interested in getting the boy adopted because her children were becoming too attached to it? She had said the kids were playing with him.

Or perhaps I just have a suspicious mind. But some time later I did read something about the breeder that suggested she was not entirely on the up and up and her business closed not long after.

It’s nice to imagine little Tara had a long happy life, but there is no way of knowing.

What do you think?

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In due course, the kitten came home. I hadn’t needed to look far for a boy’s name. Thimphu (“Tim-Pooh”) is the capital of Bhutan – in the Himalayas. It suited the little lad perfectly. I’d given the name to the breeder, but I never received the certificate, with or without the name. Not that it mattered in the least, but the woman had made such an issue of it.

Little the lad really was. He was no bigger at 8 weeks than Yeti had been at 5 and it took him forever to gain weight. My vet admitted to me later that she hadn’t expected him to survive. He had the very flat face some of those cats are bred for, God knows why. It is so cruel. Poor Timmy snuffled and snorted. He had weepy eyes, his tongue constantly stuck out.

He was adorable, but he suffered and although I would have paid for surgery to make things better, the doctor told me there was not enough cartilage to work with in Thimphu’s head.

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Suddenly little Grisabel seemed enormous. She was very sweet with him, but so were the others. Maybe they felt protective of such a delicate creature, or maybe they just thought of him as their little brother. Thimphu was such a funny little scrap. Everyone loved him.

Even my old dad thought he was cute.

My father always disliked cats until he came to live in Seattle. Till he moved into his condo, he stayed with me. I showed him how to access the BBC on my computer, which he did when I was at work. One day as he was reading the news, he felt something move on his lap and it was Yeti. She’d gone to check up on the old man. I could tell he was rather pleased. Then later, he was very taken with Thimphu.

It was good to see flashes of warmth in a man I’d always found so cold and unemotional.

Animals can break down barriers where we are not able.

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