It's been a long time since my last post. The original idea was to chronicle the fun and frustration of domesticating street cats in Spain. Starting with one cat, Tango, She brought two, unexpected kittens into our lives: Jaffa and Minnie.
Sadly, last August, Minnie came staggering into our kitchen and collapsed. She'd been hit by one of the cars which drives far too quickly down our supposedly quiet road. We rushed her to the vets, but she didn't survive an operation to try and mend her.
We felt as if the stuffing had been knocked out of us, and the idea of continuing to blog about our cats was thrown out of the window.
Just before Minnie died we'd been adopted by another kitten: Cheeky came into our lives after we started feeding the three-quarter's starved offspring of Tia, the local matriarch. We had Cheeky - a female - sterilised and while she was recuperating in our house she made the decision to stay.
Two weeks ago Cheeky disappeared. She'd disappeared once before, for five days, when she'd received a glancing blow from a car. She'd gone to ground to recover. When she disappeared this time we were worried but kept hoping she'd turn up eventually, with another of her nine lives gone.
One of our neighbours found her body a week ago. She'd obviously been dead a long time. Our hearts were broken, especially as it seemed as if she'd fallen victim to a driver again.
So we've lost two of our sweet cats in eight months. This on what should be a quiet road. There's a kids' playground across the road and we don't live on a main road, so I'm cursing all car drivers who carelessly whizz past our house.
In another blog I'll tell you about why she was such a lovely cat and why 'Cheeky' was such an apt name if I can bear to do so. At present I still feel very raw, as any pet owner who's lost a beloved animal in such an arbitrary way will understand.
Bye bye Cheeky, you were a lovely cat.
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