Have been meaning to post this for ages after I found some old photos. Hope some of you will enjoy the story
My Mum and Dad live in a (crumbling) old house with a boiler room which had a very old (Edwardian!) cat flap in the door. One day my brother found a tiny kitten abandoned in some old netting out there. That's how Cheddar arrived into our family
We knew nothing about cats...
She used to sleep in my Mum's old shopping bag and woke up every day 5 minutes before I came home from school
After a few months Old Tom and Mother Cat, her feral parents moved into the boiler room...back in the 80's and new to cats we had no idea about how to neuter ferals, so more kittens arrived quite soon. Old Tom was an excellent Dad and always looked after his babies
He and Mother Cat provided many kittens for us to re-home, and to try and keep (awww, please Mum, juuust one more
). Sadly Cheddar died from a rare virus aged 18 months
Cheeky then tugged at our heartstrings...
She was always small, cute as a button and a little bit wild, but very clever and *always* getting into trouble. She was always kind enough to take time out of her busy schedule to scratch or bite you
and lived to be a grand old lady of 18.
Over time Old Tom became quite tame, and we knew a bit more abut cats by then, so he had the snip. Sadly Mother Cat was as wild as they came and *knew* the very second we put food out with a sedative and avoided about 20 traps in her time! Once Tom was sorted she occasionally had a litter of kittens, and she, Old Tom and their son Little Ginge (a big softy who became very tame) lived their lives out in the boiler room.
Wonderful cats, every one of them
