Sitters

Afternoon outings are rare, but a package had arrived and needed picking up from the post office, so I told Willow we’d be right back, and off we went.

Just as well she doesn’t hold me to such statements because instead of coming straight home, as I’d expected, we went off on a tour of the countryside.

Truthfully, it is unlikely that the little darlings are even the slightest bit bothered by our absence. After all, they are cats and even if they were bothered, they would never lower themselves to admit it.

Grant offers the little beggars treats about twelve times a day, so they are never going to starve. Lily might be put out not to have us around to turn on the tap for her required drink-it, but when we are out I suspect she sleeps for the duration.

If we are not there, does Lily still sing her demands, I wonder.

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Some places we would quite like to visit are actually too far for a day trip and we have talked about doing an overnighter. It really would not be a problem for the cats, – only for me. I don’t like being away from them.

Our impromptu drive the other day was probably my fault for mentioning Stump Church. It has never looked as magnificent as in the Fall of 2022, but we check every year.

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This day was too soon and there seemed to be a funeral in process, so we carried on.

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Catching tree photos on the fly is a frustrating challenge. We tend to come upon the best images just in time to miss the shot, or if I do manage to click, there’a too much light in the lens, or a reflection ruins the whole thing.

Long ago, in the days when I travelled, often for fun and more often to keep in touch with family, I was fortunate to have very good and totally reliable sitters for my cats,

Mohammed’s sitter was the elderly man next door whose dog was Mohammed’s best friend. He was a drop-out from guide dog school a golden retriever, as I recall

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Mohammed had been my friend Tim’s cat. I inherited him along with his apartment when Tim bought a house. It wasn’t that Tim didn’t want to take Mohammed with him but that his pussycat did not wish to go.

Or at least not if that kitten was going! Tim had called me one morning to ask if I’d like a kitten for my new apartment and he came home with a little white ball of fluff, but that was the first and last I heard about it becoming mine. Mohammed was much put out and when they all moved, Mo took refuge on top of the fridge and wouldn’t come down. In the end Tim asked if Mo could come back to his old home and of course I was delighted.

As a child in England, Tim’s family cats had been allowed to roam, so after Mohammed had his little snip, he too was allowed out. As far as we could tell, he never went far and it was not a main street. If I jangled my keys, Mo came running. Then one year around Thanksgiving he was missing for several days. I was frantic, but one night I heard Mohammed’s *doorbell and the boy was back.

*It was a toy on an elastic string with a bell attached. It got shut outside one day and Mo always played with it when he wanted to come in.

What had happened, I decided, was that Mohammed had gone snooping in someone’s garage and got shut in when the owner went away for the holiday. Mo came home looking quite put out and a little thin. It was very cold that Winter, so when I kept him in, Mo did not protest and I hoped I had cured him of the need to roam, but alas, when Spring rolled around, he cried pathetically at the door, so I gave in, and one day in 1985 he went out and did not return.

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Some months after, my very kind friends at the airport got together to organise a new cat and I was taken to choose a Balinese kitten who I named Kina after Mt Kinabalu.

Which is in Borneo, not Bali, but the name worked.

Although I am a lover of all cats, they do not all love me and Kina was one of those.

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He adored my boyfriend who, inconveniently lived in England. When my friend came to stay, Kina was on his best behaviour of course, so it was hard to explain our dysfunctional relationship. However my friend discussed the matter with Tim and the two of them came up with the idea that Kina needed a companion.

Thus, on December 23rd that year, Yeti arrived.

In the New Year that followed I got the idea, or perhaps I was persuaded, that it was time for me to purchase a property. Often afterwards, I wished I’d stayed in that grotty but perfectly comfortable and oh, so cheap apartment. The timing was all wrong and having a mortgage meant the end of all my travels, except those family visits.

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At the new home, the cats had a different sitter. A good friend lived nearby and she used to go along, sometimes with one of with her daughters, to feed my two pussycats and to play with them. Kina and Yeti were told how many more sleeps before I’d be home. I’m sure Kina said:

“Tell her not to rush!”

He was busy working on his exit strategy and eventually he got his way, going to live with a family. I don’t know that it was women he didn’t like, or just single women. (He liked to have an audience.) Perhaps it really was just me he didn’t care for.

Not all relationships are meant to be, no matter how hard one person works at it. If the other doesn’t feel the same, there is no point in agonising. If you really love them, you let go.

Letting Kina go hurt, but it was clearly the best thing for him and really for Yeti and me too.

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Quite a few years after all that, the real estate market had recovered sufficiently to make it possible for me to sell my co-op. A job came up in Seattle and I no longer had any ties to the East Coast, so I took a most uncharacteristic step and applied for the position. It was a lateral transfer but a one-flight station would be very different and not necessarily less stressful!

How much trouble could one flight be, you may ask. You’d be surprised!

In Seattle, Yeti again met a new sitter, but only three years later my beloved girl was gone. She had been with me for 17 years, all her life bar those first 5 weeks. You know it is coming, but it is still heartbreaking.

Then life repeated itself. Yeti’s sitter was a good friend. She told me one day that her mother had a friend whose Himalayan cat was expecting kittens. How would I feel about taking one? I could never say no to a Himalayan of any age, but a kitten?

It was just a clever story to find out how I felt. One day when I was particularly blue, my friend came over and wanted to take me somewhere. I didn’t feel like going out but my friend could be persuasive and soon we pulled up in front of a private house. As we parked, I noticed a sticker on the car in front. It said : HIMALAYANS.

My friends at SEATAC were giving me the kitten for my birthday.

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