Mine were both boys. Reynard, a havannah oriental, and Claudius, a ginger aby cross. Reynard had the most incredible green eyes and a russet coat (hence the name - he looked like a fox) huge ears and a pointy nose that was always getting into mischief. He would hunt avidly, but never quite came to grips with what to do with his prey. So I would come home to find a bathroom full of completely unharmed baby rabbits, bandicoots or whatever else he had found, while he was weaving around my legs begging to be fed. He also used to bring me special treats whenever he went out, like a pebble or stick or some other treasure that was ceremoniously presented to me. He would place fetch for hours and was a total treasure who I adored. He went missing for two weeks once and I was so frantic that I was in discussion with the television station about an advertisement to be aired on day-time television. I came home one night and a brown cat ran up to me. I thought it was Sarah, by brown burmese, initially, then realised that against all hope it was Reynard, back from wherever he had been. I was soooooooo relieved I wept. I killed him one night, coming home after dusk. It was his habit to run from where-ever he was and to escort my car up the drive. That night, the light must have made him misjudge the distance and the wheel of the car just clipped him. I found his body beside the drive with not a mark on it except a drop of blood on his teeth. It was only when I collapsed on my way back to the house with his body in my arms that I saw the matching drops of blood on the tyre of my car. So loved, and so regretted. He was only two years old.
Claudius was an accidental cat. I had accompanied a friend to the RSPCA in Brisbane where they run a dog-washing service as a fund-raiser. It was a long queue and I got bored waiting so went to look at the pens. Was feeling quite smug as had managed to get to the secondlast pen without succumbing. And there was Claude. He was lying on a cat hammock with his back to the visitors. I arrived and he turned his head, reached out a paw in a long welcoming stretch and turned around to greet me. Of course he came straight home with me, to the tune of considerable mocking from my friends. We had to dump him and run as there were other commitments. When I got home a couple of hours later, Bob and Pavarotti, the resident cats, were sitting in the hall staring into my bedroom looking non-plussed. Stretched across the bed, in full sun, was Claudius - lord of all he surveyed. He loved lying along the top of doors with all his legs dropping down like a lioness in a tree. he was such a loving, cheerful boy. Then one day, several years later, I noticed he was losing weight. I booked an appointment with the vet and spent the intervening days tempting him with food like poached trout, and other delicacies, all of which he sampled but did not eat completely. The day of the appointment the vet asked for a urine sample and so I shut him in the bathroom with an empty litter tray and he gave me the sample I needed. It was a strong deep orange brown colour. As he had managed to open the door of the bathroom before I got back to him, I was not entirely confident that it was his sample, but the vet, in the kindest and most sympathetic tone told me that it was. He had gone into complete liver failure from metastatic cancer and he was PTS that day. Apart from the weight loss I had seen no signs of this at all, although looking back at some of his last pictures it is clear to me that he was ill. I will never forgive myself for either death. Both were avoidable, both were something I could have helped prevent, although with Claude it would have only been a delaying tactic. But I miss both of them so much and loved them so dearly. They will remain in my heart forever ...
