TWIGGY AND MOTH

I am very happy to report that Moth is recovering well from her operation and is lapping up all the attention lavished upon her,particularly by my son. Always rather partial to him,it seems now that she has chosen to be his cat,she seeks him out in his room if he is away for long;and when tell you that until a few days ago she had never been upstairs this will show you the strength of her feelings for him.

To reach him she must brave passing through the living room,Twiggy,s domain and this requires considerable courage. It seems a pity that the cats do not get on,it is not that they fight all the time,in fact they have,so far,seldom come to blows,it more a question of threatening posture,squaring up to each other with tails like Christmas trees and swearing like a couple of fish wives,really ,the language is truly atrocious!

Last night they met on the stairs,the performance went on for some time and was deafening, so that in the end I was obliged to intervene with my own howling version of a very angry cat!!!. This gave them to understand just who the alpha female is in this family, both looked at me incredulously then both backed away and turned to their allotted area. When I had finished it must be said the the boys also looked pretty incredulous too, but if it

works,what the hell!

At the moment an uneasy truce has been declared,this of course is likely to break down at any moment and we are prepared for the worst. I hope and believe that things will settle down soon , now that Moth is getting about more, she and Twiggy will meet more often as that eventually familiarity will breed contempt. If they just ignored each other I would be satisfied.

I confess that this level of animosity between two cats is new to me. I have ,in the past owned as many as thirteen cats at one time, along with two dogs ,two young owls and a polecat which lived amicably together in our small dwelling . No fighting,in fact the owls and the cats played together and often ate together as the owls developed a taste for cat food!

Perhaps my powers are fading with age, I have since early child hood possessed an odd affinity with all animals and birds too. My poor mother recounts the story of how she discovered me at the age of two holding what she says appeared like a rat circus,me in the centre with a posse of rats running around me,then to her horror she saw that I was cuddling one of the rats like a pet and feeding it bits of toast. My father always said that he heard her screams from the pub which was half a mile away.

After that for poor old Mum it was all down hill and a host of small animals and birds passed through my hands as a child,including a nest of mice which I hand reared after a dog had dug up their nest and killed their mama.

For the present Twiggy is asleep on my bed and Moth is asleep in the kitchen,long my it last.