A new kitten and memories of an old one

We have a new kitten amd her name is Suki.

We have four other cats, but my daughter’s own cat, Phoenix disappeared last summer. Suki is her new cat.

She is really pretty, tabby and white with long fur. She is the splitting image of a kitten we had years ago. When we first got married we adopted an adult female cat called Tiddles. She was beautiful to look at, a  long haired tortoiseshell with a tabby face. She was very bad tempered though, and didn’t like us at all. When we first got her home she sat under the sideboard for two days spitting and swiping at us whenever we went near. Later she calmed down a bit but still had a habit of sitting just inside the kitchen and hitting us whenever we went in there! She wasn’t a cuddly cat and the name Tiddles didn’t suit her at all, but she refused to answer to anything else.

After she had been with us a little while we realised she was pregnant which may have accounted for some of her emotional problems. Eventually she had four kittens They were born on the day of the queen’s silver jubilee, June 7th 1977 We decided to keep one, but I very nearly kept two. I had fallen in love with a little tabby we named Tiger, but another was tabby and white with a cute little face and the biggest eyes you ever saw. I called her Mandy. We thought three cats would be too many as we were living in a mobile home at the time. I  was on the verge of changing my mind when someone called to say they had heard we had kittens and could they have one.

I decided that if he didn’t choose my big eyed friend I would keep her. But he did pick her. In fact he offered me £5 for her which was a lot for a moggy in 1977. She went to live in Kent and I thought that was that, but a year later they sent us a photo of her with her own kittens.

Suki looks a lot like Mandy. It’s funny she should come into my life now as I am involved with a village film project that is set in the month of the Silver Jubilee. Next year is the queen’s diamond jubilee. My how time flies.

Suki