In memory of..

Olivia(Munchie)

In May 2006 we said good-bye to our adored cat Olivia. She was somewhere between fifteen and eighteen years old and had had a good life, winning friends and admirers wherever she went; whether it was with neighbours, visitors, at the cattery or at the vets.

Her life had not started promisingly - she was found dumped in a shoe box on the doorstep of a neighbour when she was a kitten just a few weeks old. He must have been known locally as a cat-lover although as a tiny tortoiseshell ball of fluff we would have thought that she would have been easy to home anyway. He took her in, and for ten or more years she lived a happy life with her constant companions Rupert (another cat) and a small dog. By all accounts the three were inseparable. We saw little of her during these years as she seldom strayed outside of her own garden.

About five or six years ago both Rupert and the dog died and we don't know whether she was looking for them or maybe she took a dislike to their replacements in the household, but at this time she started visiting neighbours and spending most of her nights under the stars. With her natural beauty and friendly manner, she charmed her way into homes for tasty treats or a warm spot and soon built up a small network of local "hotels".

For a long time we were the "breakfast stop" and we had a ready supply of dried food and milk. She was a regular sight peering in the patio door when we got up and having eaten enough to be polite, was on her way, not to be seen again until the same time the next day. It was several months before she trusted us enough and decided that she would like to see what the rest of the house was like. She approved of our bed straight away but did not stay too long, nor did she make this a regular habit. It was some while later when I arrived home in the pouring rain at about midnight and a bedraggled Olivia raced me to the front door and pushed her way in first. She stayed the night. This continued over the next year or so with her "sleepovers" becoming more and more frequent.

It was only about three or four years ago that we realised that we had been elevated to "Hotel Number One" in her life and that we had to take full responsibility for her. Being a long-hair she had a slightly snub-nose and consequently tear ducts which were prone to blocking, although thankfully none of the breathing problems that afflict Persians. This watery eye was made worse by spending long nights in the cold and the damp so we did everything we could to encourage her to stay in.

We had, by this time agreed that she resembled a Munchkin and so addressed her mostly as Munch or Munchie, rather than her true name. Early in 2005 we were going on holiday for four weeks and after much soul-searching booked her into a cattery. Previously, our holidays had always been shorter and in the late summer so we had not felt too bad about letting her take advantage of other local hospitality during our absence. We doubted that she had ever been in a cattery before, nor did she have any of the necessary inoculations so these had to be sorted out as well as asking everyone we knew for recommendations of a good cattery.

Country Cats near Maidstone welcomed her and she hardly glanced back at us as she settled down on her heated igloo for the first time. When we came back though, after being stand-offish at first, once home again she would not let us out of her sight for days, and showed off her new-found vocal skills. She had spent the holiday next to a very talkative Bengal and in that short time had acquired an amazing vocabulary of greetings, questions, complaints (usually - "Don't you think it's time we went to bed?") as well as words that we would never understand.

For the last two or three years she was a part of every day (and night) of our lives: "helping" with household chores (except the vacuum cleaner -she hated noise); observing our activities in the kitchen and then joining us on the table as we ate, usually sharing in any meat, chicken or fish; sleeping three to a bed with us - often with her head on the pillow; she would even wait outside the shower, eager to be picked up and cuddled however wet we were; stretching out on our laps as we watched television; and always there to greet us when we came home. Her favourite was supervising in the garden although she became quickly bored and would run between our feet to try to trip us up when she had decided it was time to go indoors for a rest and a cuddle.

We always knew that we would not have long with her, but the diagnosis of a growth in her stomach which would be difficult to operate on came out of the blue. Then, taken with all of the signs over the past months which had been dismissed as old age; the increasingly frequent stomach upsets, the loss of muscle to her legs, the general weight loss and growing lassitude forced us to make that hardest decision of all.

We held her until her last breath faded, talking and comforting her but our tears would not subside so readily. We buried her in her favourite sunny spot in the garden.

Munch - you were a very special and truly beautiful cat in every sense of the word; and if there is a heaven, you are sitting there now waiting patiently. And when our time comes, first you will ask "where've you been? What time do you call this?" and then you will push your way through the gates - "me first, me first!" as you always did when we came home late. You were unique, a very special personality whom we will miss very much. We will always love you.

Steve & Millie