Cats

I grew up on one acre of land with a cat and a dog as mandatory assistants with unwelcome visitors and other vermin. Although we always had a dog as well as a cat, I definitely had a preference for felines over canines.

The only thing I did try to talk my mother around, was to allow our cat to come inside the house. Eventually she conceded but only in the kitchen on a special mat in one corner - we trained the cat in the same manner we trained the dog. It didn't take long for the cat to learn that if it wandered out of the kitchen, it was picked up and placed back outside. Our cats over the years, worked out very quickly that it was better to be in the kitchen only than not in the house at all.

I wanted our cat to come into my bedroom! My mother would have none of that and nothing ever changed her mind. Animals belonged outside in her mind and it was a victory to have the cat inside at all, even restricted to the kitchen. Thinking about it, we did have a mother cat in the old kitchen of the old bungalow (before my father extended our house). When our cat had kittens, my mum knew the kittens needed a dark, warm spot and she placed some old blankets for the mother cat and her babies to sleep on in the warmth of our Aga stove (in a section that did not get too hot).

I had to wait until I got married and left home before I had my own cat which WAS allowed to be inside. It was a tortoiseshell kitten from my older sister's cat and she was named Piccaninny. When my first husband and I moved to Mt.Toolebewong behind Healesville, we had a ginger tomcat hanging around. It took us about three days to coax him inside the house where we promptly placed him in a carry basket and took him to the local vet to be desexed. We were planning to leave him with the vet so he could rehome him however, the cat stared back with such soulful eyes that we had no choice but to return the next day to take him home to our place. Which by the way, he obviously saw as his property. We named him Boris!

Both cats got on very well and had to get used to car travel between Melbourne and Sydney. They travelled so often that it did not take long for them to view my in-laws house as their second home.