dolce far niente

By Mini-Teen

Once apon a time, there was a little 4 year old girl, a big 6 year old boy and another 7 year old boy, who lived in a very sweet house by the railway line, and the house would shake if a train went past. One day the mum and dad came back with a box, and lined all the little (and big) children up on the sofa. Out of the box came and small, black cat...

... and it began.

The little black cat was named Lizard (Izzy for short) and grew into a very big cat indeed. He had come from Izzie, a girl in the big boy's class at school. We had many happy memories with Izzy, including the fact that the little girl was smaller than the cat, and the cat thought it was more important than the little girl (which it wasn't) and so it used to wait at the top of the stairs and when the little girl crawled up, she got scratched across the face, and still holds a scar to this day. However she still loved (and still loves) the little black cat. The cat was very intelligent and waited for the mum when she came in with the children after school. Unfortunately, one day they came home and Izzy was lying on the side of the pavement (side walk for you Americans...), perfectly still...

... the little girl was crying for weeks :(

But before long Another cat was brought home! This cat was called Mrs. Tumnus (yes you Brits, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", the rest of you, look it up and rent the movie!) because she had two little black dots on her head, like she was going to grow horns... she never did, but her descendants all have, to this day, dots on their heads.

One day (they now lived in the Big House near a pond), the little girl came running into the mum's and dad's bedroom, saying there were rats on her bed. She had gone to sleep, curled up next to the cat, and woken up to the sound of squeals, feeling what she thought were rats. The mum came running in (the dad had to get up early for a business trip) and said they were kittens!

The little girl was so excited she kept the dad awake all night chatting away...

The kittens (three of them) all found good homes. The cat then went on to have three other litters, with lots of interestingly named kittens... Some of the best names were:

Fantastic Dan And His Super Sonic Cows (courtesy of The Teen)
Miaow (Courtesy of Teen Two)
Joe Pineapples (The Teen)
Blinky (The Teen)
Private Snowball (a totally white cat) (The Teen)
Barry (Teen Two)
Mort (Me!)
Smelly Cat (yours truly)
Deadlock (Teen Two)
Oreo (Mwa)
Crunch (Me too! G*d I am good at this!)
Buitiful Kitten (You guessed it... Mini- Teen)
Spot (the one with the view) (I want to swap bedrooms with her, but she just won't let me!) (that's mum)
Pingu ( He does kinda look like a penguin...) (Well, what do you think? Yes, it was me! Who else? Honestly...)

And there's so many more than that...

Of course, we all know the grand total is 36. Not joking. We kept one from the first litter (Fantastic Dan), two from the second (Spot and Blinky. Unfortunately one Christmas he died... The family next door ran him over. A very sad Christmas indeed for all involved...) and one from the last (Miaow). Then bad things happened and we had to move!!! We couldn't catch all the cats, so Spot moved in with the next door neighbours (the good ones on the other side, not the muderers), Dan is still terrorising small children who live in the small part of London by the pond. Mrs T was taken to the RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, who also take pets in and they will let you adopt them for free) with a large donation. Another very sad time for all involved.

Then one day a pond lady came and gave us Miaow, and the RSPCA were closed so the little girl spent the night in the kitchen with her. After that they realised even though they lived in a rented house so couldn't really keep her, they could hide her from the landlord (if only they'd figured that out earlier!...).

Then they moved into a house with a roof terrace which had a hammock on it. It was very fun there, and many more cats were born. Currently they have eleven: 6 new kittens (there were 7 and they would be called the 7 Dwarfs, but one is now sleeping...), Miaow, Smelly Cat (who left yesterday!), Pingu, Barry and Buitiful Kitten.