Our Siamese Cats

I had always intended to do some posts on our Siamese cats and having shown a calligraphy version of a poem written for our cat Sandy, my daughter Janie suggested I post a picture of her. So here goes, the first in a couple of cat posts.

This is Sandy on the right, her pedigree name Zarabelle Zavita ( a Seal Point) shown here in a pastel drawing by John Purday, the son of a friend of ours. Here she is with her Mother Misty, pedigree name Anabelle Stasia ( a Blue Point). Sandy, the daughter died first aged 13 and the poem I wrote was part of my grieving for her. It was amazing how much I loved and missed this cat considering my previous life long hate of such animals.

The story began in an unusual way. It was 1978 and my children who were then aged 10 and 8 had been asking for another pet (they already had rabbits and guinea pigs) preferably a cat. A cat was the last thing I wanted in my home as I saw them as smelly and unpleasant.



Then one day we received a telephone call from a friend saying she had a cat for us as she knew that Peter and Jane (our children) had been praying for one in Sunday School. This was the first we had heard of the praying and although we did not want a cat we felt we could not deny our children's answer to prayer. So, we reluctantly agreed to have Misty, a beautiful blue point Siamese cat. The reason she was available was because she had been a present to her owner but with a baby in the house at crawling stage, our friend felt unable to cope with this new cat.

So Misty at 7 months old was delivered to our home. Rules were quickly made. This cat would never go upstairs and certainly not into the bedrooms. What would we do with her at night? My first thought was to make her comfortable in our garage cum store room. This is integral and is not used for a car so has a carpet on the floor and seemed the ideal solution. We supplied Misty with a comfortable basket, with a hot water bottle, a litter tray and water. What more could a cat want? At bedtime, in she went and the door was closed. Remember that at this time I am a novice as far as keeping cats is concerned and I still don't like the idea of one prowling around my home.

The next morning on opening the door she had vomited in one corner, pooed in another and wet in another. This confirmed my feelings about cats. Seeing my children's distress I decided to quickly get hold of some information on the behaviour of cats (no internet then). I found out that this was typical behaviour of a distressed cat. So what do we do now? That night I allowed Misty her freedom as long as all bedroom doors were closed. In the early hours of the morning we were woken by a commotion outside our bedroom door. There stood our children upset because Sandy was 'crying' and trying to get into their rooms! So, that was the beginning of giving the cat freedom of the house including the children's bedrooms.

Needless to say, within a week I had fallen in love with this cat. She was beautiful, loving, had a very pleasant perfume and loved to sit on my knee and purr. I was smitten and Misty became a very important member of our household.

There will be more cat stories of Misty and her 7 kittens when we decided to mate her in the next post.