So there we were 3 days before Xmas trying to decide on a name for our new friend when the phone rang. The lady said she was calling in response to my advert in the Post Office about a lost black cat. She said it sounded like her mum’s cat, Poppy.

Funnily enough ‘Poppy’ had appeared on the short list of names we were discussing.

This is her story.

She’s about 14 years old and was a feral farm kitten. The Cats Protection League removed all her siblings to a place of safety, but couldn’t catch Poppy, so she got left behind.

Eventually she was caught and given to the lady who rang me, but after 5 years she and her husband went to live in Dubai, so Poppy was given to the ladies parents.

The parents only live a couple of houses down the road from ‘Grassy Bottom’, so Poppy has been our near neighbour ever since we moved in.

Sadly Poppy didn’t really settle at her new home and her feral heritage kicked in. She decided she preferred living outside, but was still being fed and looked after by her second mum.

Poppy’s first mum returned from Dubai and bought a house just further down the same road, so the 3 of us all live within a few hundred yards of each other. You couldn’t make it up.

Unfortunately Poppy couldn’t return to her first mum who now had 3 cats (2 rescued from Dubai) and 2 dogs.

It seems the final straw was a family situation which saw a ginger tom cat being moved into Poppy’s home. As a result she disappeared completely, re-appeared then disappeared again, turning up in our garden on November 27th.

They were worried that Poppy was being a nuisance to us, I was worried they might think I was trying to steal their cat.

Once we’d sorted that out and agreed there was nothing anyone could do to stop her coming back even if she was taken back home, we decided that Poppy should have the final word and live with who she liked. I made no secret of the fact that I hoped it would be us.

So that’s where we are at the moment. She’s very timid, but does like being made a fuss of. Trouble is she forgets from one visit to the next that she likes it, so we always have to start back at square one.

I did manage to get a photo though. Here she is with one of her favourite things, the wooden bench in front of the house!

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 7th, 2017 at 11:36 am and is filed under Cat Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.