And then there were four ...

And four is the magic number. There's a sort of cosmic, karmic balance to this post. In a previous post I was mourning the loss of yet another of our adopted charges: Tia, Cheeky's mum, who we'd befriended, fed and neutered, and who went missing - probably due to Spanish driving - about six months ago.

Another, almost identical, Tia has been turning up on our windowsill over the last few weeks. She's a dead ringer for Tia except, presumably, she's not been neutered. The only difference between Prima (Spanish for 'cousin' - she must be closely related to Tia) and Tia is that Tia's belly hair never regrew after her sterilization.

I'm posting this from London, so I've no access to pictures but next post I'll try to allow readers to compare and contrast the two cats.

Sadly, after I took the little injured black cat to the vets a week or so ago we decided he had to be put down. Sue and I, and our neighbour and good friend Anna had fed and cared for him for a couple of weeks before the inevitable trip to the vets. The vets confirmed that he was in a dreadful state, probably diseased and could hardly walk so it was probably the best course to take. Still and all, there's a feeling of guilt at taking away a life. However, we all made sure that he didn't go hungry during his last couple of weeks and he had the pick of dried food, terinne, fresh fish, and cream.

So, at present, Sue's restoring the delicate balance of intra-cat relationships disturbed by our recent holiday. Elvis has to be tamed all over again, Tango has to be fetched from hiding on a daily basis and Jaffa, well he hardly noticed we'd gone; his bowl was regularly filled and there was a lap (Anna again) to sit on so he wasn't moping for us.

The holiday took us to Gozo for a week and Malta for the last three days of our nine-day trip. As before I was hugely impressed by the efforts taken by the city council in Sliema to deal with street cats: they live in a park between the promenade and the sea; they're regularly fed and most have been sterilised. They even have little covered cat houses with bedding.

All the cats looked healthy and most were friendly enough to jump on your lap for a quick scratch or a more liesurely lie down on an accomodating lap. As our luggage was overweight for the return flight we had decided to ditch our aging beach towels and we could think of no better place to leave them than folded up as additional bedding in a couple of the cat casitas.

So, we're back to four cats and a balance is restored, if not to the universe at least to Residencial Bellamar.