Blue skies and the love of a cat!

Today, 21^st February 2014, there is a rare view from my office window. There is a beautiful blue sky.

For so long now the sky has been grey or even black so to see blue – well, that cheers one up for starters. OK, so the blue is peppered with clouds, some white, some white tinged with grey, an omen perhaps of the rain that is forecast later. But nevertheless, seeing another colour other than the dismal dark shades for the past three months just brings hope that perhaps we’re emerging from the wettest winter in 250 years and that perhaps spring is on the way.

It’s still pretty breezy out there judging by the movement on the trees in neighbouring gardens but at least Casey is moving from the sofa now to the back door where he sits and waits until I happen to come downstairs (from the office) to let him out into the garden. There IS a perfectly good catflap at his disposal but cats train their staff well and he knows that if he waits long enough, sooner or later I’ll come downstairs and open the door for him. I think he even engages in those Jedi mind games so that I suddenly get the urge to pop downstairs!

The New Year didn’t start so well for us, losing Sam on 3^rd January, and a family drama unfolding, but for Casey – well, he is lying on my desk right now while I’m working on the website and Mewsletter – and he has a way of looking at me upside down. It’s very cute and hits the spot perfectly. ‘I’m so cute,’ he’s saying, ‘and you can’t resist me!’

And he’s right, I can’t resist him. I lean in to kiss his belly and he wraps his front paws either side of my head. I don’t linger in case the back paws are about to come and shred my face to pieces but I think Casey knows he picked the right house to make his home. He is most definitely loved and he’s helped to ease the pain of losing first Ollie and then Sam. There are days when I come across pictures of Ollie or Sam and I feel sad and his cute upside down look with that enigmatic smile of his just puts everything back to rights somehow.

In the March 2014 issue of Your Cat magazine in the letters section a beautiful photo my brother took of Ollie shines out from page 22 above a heading ‘My ginger gem’ (not my words). It’s a letter I wrote back in July of last year when Ollie had just died. So it was a bit of a shock to see him looking so vibrant, so alive. He was a beautiful cat and I’m hoping that through his diaries which I’m revamping at the moment, many more people will come to know him and love him.

Back to Casey: he spends a lot of time asleep on my desk while I write. If I go downstairs to make a drink I usually ask him if he wants any dinner. If he stays where he is, then I know that he’s ok for now. But sometimes he leaps off the desk and waits for me at the top of the stairs, looking at me with an expectant expression on his face. He hurtles down the stairs and skids to a stop by his bowl in the kitchen where I join him moments later.

I put fresh food in his bowl and tell him to come upstairs when he’s ready. Nine times out of ten I’ll hear him padding up the steep stairs shortly afterwards. He jumps onto the ottoman which all my cats have loved sitting on to look out of the window, and he’ll stare out at the birds or maybe the trees as they bend and sway in the winds. Sometimes he will have a thorough wash and lie on the pillow I made for Garfield or he’ll jump across onto my desk and with a back leg resting on the CAPS LOCK he’ll stretch right out and I somehow work without his input into my article or whatever I’m trying to write.

I’m very blessed to have Casey in my life. I have no idea what brought him to our back door but I know it was Ollie who alerted me to his presence that winter of 2012 when he used to pitch up under one of the patio chairs or table on the decking outside the back door. And after months of putting food out for him he finally faced his fears and came through the catflap, and curled up in the bathroom next to the radiator.

Cats – and dogs – do give us mere humans so much unconditional love and sometimes I actually ask myself ‘why? Why would they do that?’ But I’m so glad that Casey made his way to the Daily Mews Mansion (or Lazypaws Guest House for Discerning Felines) and he decided to stay and make his home with us.  I know my world is a better place for having him in it. 

Pauline

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