Lancaster, 1972 |
York 1974 |
We are both cat-lovers, and have shared our home and
boats with many cats over the years. Wendy was brought up with both cats and
dogs, but I wasn't.
We moved to our present flat in 1971 and in early 1972
we acquired a couple of kittens, siblings from the same litter, whom we
christened York and Lancaster as they were always fighting. York
was a long-haired black female, and Lancaster a short-haired black-and-white
tom. |
Mistress Quickly, 1974 |
Next, probably in about 1973, came Mistress
Quickly, a mature cat who needed a home. She was a black short-hair. She'd
been a shop cat and the shop had been sold. Her people assumed that the cat
went with the shop, but the new owners (a chain of newsagents) didn't want her.
Her name came from her nature as a scold and the fact that I was at the time
rehearsing The Merry Wives of Windsor with our local amateur drama
group.
Caligula & Snufkin 1974 |
The next arrival, in 1974, was Caligula, a
kitten we took from the Warden of our school's rural study centre. He was
ginger and white. The genesis of his name was a bit complicated. The original
Caligula was a Roman emperor whose name meant "Little Boots". Our Caligula's
mother was called Boots, and his full sister was called Calico, so the name
seemed obvious.
Caligula, 1975 |
When quite young he had an argument with a car which
resulted in a broken bone in his ankle. He put up with having his leg in
plaster for a remarkably long time, so that when at last he started showing
signs of irritation with it and the vet removed it, the break had healed
perfectly, leaving him with full movement in the joint. But several weeks'
running around energetically with a heavy plaster on one of his back legs had
the effect of stretching him into a long cat, most unlike all the others of his
family.
Snufkin 1974 |
Also in 1974 came a kitten called Snufkin
(after a character in the Moomin books) who, sadly, died very young after a
road accident. He made a really heroic journey home after the accident, through
an alleyway, over a fence and up our fire-escape to our cat-flap (we live in an
upstairs flat), all with a broken pelvis. Sadly the vet failed to save him.
Megaera (Meg for short) was the next arrival,
one of a litter of feral kittens that Wendy's mother had domesticated. She was
named after one of the Furies of classical mythology. She was a most attractive
torty-and-white with a real sense of humour - she used to mimic other cats and
take the mickey out of them. |
Nero & Megaera, 1976
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A year later, we had no difficulty in naming
Nero, since this kitten was Caligula's sister's son, exactly the
relationship between the emperors of the same names. He was a more compact, and
slightly darker-coloured edition of his uncle, but with much less white in his
coat. The maximum cat membership of our household was five, for a number of
years when York, Quickly, Caligula, Nero and Meg were all with us. (Lancaster
had died some years before in a road accident.) |
Mistress Quickly, 1976 |
Caligula, 1980 |
York, 1975 |
Nero, 1976  |
Eventually, York, Quickly and Meg died in fairly rapid
succession (and in York's case, at quite an advanced age for an urban cat) from
the sort of degenerative diseases that cats are prone to. |
Megaera, 1979 |
Spitfire in her prime, 1980 |
In 1989 Wendy's mother died and we took over her last
cat, Spitfire, who was of very considerable age, slowed down and
eventually died quietly in her sleep. |
Caligula and Nero were clearly pining, so we adopted another
kitten to cheer them up. This was Dido, another female short-haired
black cat. We named her, not as you might expect, after the Queen of Carthage,
but after Dido Twite, a character in Joan Aitken's children's books (who was
named after a barge which was named after the Queen of Carthage). I can't
find any photos of Dido.
Arlecchino, 1991 |
When Nero & Caligula died (also of degenerative
conditions), we got another kitten, Arlecchino, so named because when he
was little, his tummy fur was in a black-and-white diamond pattern just like
the traditional Harlequin costume. |
A visiting stray moved in with us and we named her
Orinthia, after a character in George Bernard Shaw's play The Apple
Cart, very beautiful, very sure of herself and very arrogant, all of which
described this cat to a T. We knew nothing of her background, but there was
clearly some exotic ancestry, our vet thought probably Abyssinian.
Three pictures of Orinthia
on the
boat in 1998 |
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Tilly 1998 |
After the tragic loss of Arlecchino (to a fox, we think,
while boating with us on the Stratford-on-Avon Canal), we acquired another
kitten, Tilly. That's not her full name, which is another complicated
story. When she first came to us, she loved tearing things up, so Wendy wanted
to call her "Atilla the Hun", but as she was female, I thought
"Atilla the Hen" might be more appropriate. I also fancied
"Tilly" because at that age she looked just like the brass model kitten
on our boat's tiller-pin. So at the suggestion of our boating friend and
erstwhile colleague, Ian, we compromised on "Atilla the Pun", or
"Tilly" for short. At the time of writing (June 2003) she is still with
us, now as senior cat.
Tilly 1998 |
After a while Orinthia decided the new cat was too young and
boisterous for her liking, so moved out to a neighbour's home, in the same way
as she'd moved in with us in the first place. So for nearly two years Tilly was
an only cat. At one time she had a good friend, a ginger tom kitten, from next
door who visited regularly (and a couple of not-so-good friends who tried to do
the same). But Henry (the ginger tom) later grew a bit to big and butch for
Tilly's liking, so we had to try to discourage him. We planned to find another
kitten to be company for Tilly.
It was quite a while before that plan came to fruition and
some other things happened first. Henry's people moved away from the area,
taking Henry with them. But the vacuum for a visiting cat was filled from time
to time by a Siamese called Elvis, with whom Tilly did not get on at all, so he
was regularly chased out.
Then in early May 2003 we finally acquired another cat - in
fact a small kitten aged about 11 weeks when she joined the household. She was
one of a litter born to a neighbour's cat. We were put on her track by the
local pet-food shop who knew we were looking for a kitten and told us when one
of their regular customers for cat food starting buying a load of kitten food
as well. We waited a few days before naming her, in order so see what
personality traits she showed. She rapidly gave us the impression that she had
a good sense of humour, so we named her Amanda after a character in
Shaw's play The Apple Cart, who is a politician who wins elections by
singing comic songs about her opponents. She's the second cat we've named after
a character in that play. Amanda gets shortened in daily use to
Mandy or, most often Mandicat, or she just takes the name our
youngest cats have all had in their turn - Titch.
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July 2003. Above, Tilly. Below, Mandy |
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In June Mandy had her first boating trip with us - a long
weekend of local pottering near our home mooring. At that time Tilly was still
a bit suspicious of her. But by the time came for them to join us on our long
summer cruise, they had become firm friends, which helped cure Tilly of going
walkabout for several days at a time when we let her out of the boat.
July 2003. Mandy & Tilly together |
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After a couple of years which didn't present opportunities
for the cats to come boating with us, just before Christmas 2005 Wendy & I,
with Tilly & Mandy moved home to live on our new boat, Felis Catus
III. At the time of writing (January 2006), we've not done more than local
boating, and the cats are settling down well and finding their own (not always
predictable) favourite corners & hidey-holes on the boats.
Tilly & Mandy settling into their new floating
home, December 2005 & January 2006 |
Mandy exploring
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Tilly in the bedroom
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Mandy feeding
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Both
cats in the saloon
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