Introducing Miss C

Apart from about 3 years when I was first married and living in a ghastly furnished flat in the centre of Stockton on Tees, we won’t be going into that, I have always had cats. I was brought up on a farm and there was always a family of mousers around, and yes I did dress them in my dolls clothes and yes they did let me and were quite happy to sleep in front of the kitchen range in little frocks. At the moment we have just one cat, Cleo, aka Clee Clee or Miss Cleethorpes, who is about 16 and very healthy and active, a bit too active in the middle of the night when she comes into our bedroom with gifts of mice.

She came to us 10 years ago from the house next door, the family were moving overseas and we offered to take her in rather than have her re-homed to a new area. She settled in really well, we had begun encouraging her into our garden before she joined us, to the disgust of the other two cats we had the time. Once she moved in here she did go home a few times and try to get in through her cat door, but the new family were aware that this might happen and since they had a dog it didn’t happen very often. After a few years her original family came back to Scotland and the children did suggest they might have Cleo back, their exact words were ‘we love Cleo can we have her back’ and my exact word was ‘no’. Just as well because they eventually moved overseas again, Cleo would have been so confused.

And she can be confused easily, sometimes she doesn’t know which way is up.