Bill, Ben and Dan.
posted in Cat Stories |Not long after getting married in the 1970’s, we decided to get two kittens. Ben came from our local pub landlord and Bill from the RSPCA. Ben was mostly white with ‘tabby’ bits and Bill was ginger.
It soon became clear that all was not well. Ben was growing and thriving, whilst Bill seemed to be struggling just to stand still. Several trips to the vet brought no joy and if that wasn’t bad enough, Ben disappeared one day, and was never seen again.
Bill continued to deteriorate, and had now lost all the fur from the rear end of his body. Another trip to the vet brought sad news. They simply did not know what Bill’s problem was and concluded it must be some genetic condition. They suggested that the only solution was to have Bill put to sleep. We couldn’t do that and returned home to consider our options. He didn’t appear to be suffering, so we decided to wait a little longer before deciding his fate.
To our surprise, he rallied. His fur grew back and he started to put on weight. No one knows how or why, we were just glad that we waited. Over the next few months he grew into a normal healthy cat.
Then in the early hours of a Bank Holiday Monday in August, I was looking out of the bedroom window, and there in the street, completely alone was a tiny grey kitten. We went to investigate, and gave him some food. He was gorgeous.
Not wishing to steal him from anyone, we put him back outside, but in the morning he was still there, having spent the night in a hole in the wall where an air-brick was broken. Needless to say, we didn’t need asking twice, and adopted him on the spot. We called him Dan.
Not long after Dan arrived, Bill was knocked down and killed by a bus. I often wonder if that would have happend had we not adopted Dan. Did Bill feel sad and abandoned and become careless when crossing the road? I guess I’ll never know.
Dan stayed with us for the next 14 years. He was sweet and affectionate and when we moved house our new neighbours, a couple of spinster sisters, used to call him ‘Don’. Cosequently he acquired the nickname ‘Donald’.
He died in May 1990 from acute kidney disease.
