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The Apartment!

1001Cats.com

Fidy Says
26th November 2007

The Apartment!

posted in Cat Stories |

For 7 months back in 1997/98 we were between homes, having sold one, but not yet found another. That’s how we came to be squatting in 4 rooms above our shop, with our 4 cats.

I use the term ‘squatting’ as there was no kitchen, no cooking facilities and the bathroom, such as it was, could be found in the cellar, which made for an interesting journey if you were ‘caught short’ during the night.

The shop was on a busy road, so we had decided the cats would have to be confined to barracks for the duration of our stay. We looked for ways of keeping them entertained. It’s amazing how many hours of fun you can have with a pecan nut!

That was OK to a point, but the real entertainment started in the evening once the shop had closed and the door was securely locked. The cats then had access to the shop. The two eldest, timid as ever, preferred to stay upstairs, but Dulcie and Creamer loved to ‘play out’.

They would sit in the shop window and watch the passers-by. Some people would ignore them, others stop and make a fuss of them through the glass. Creamer would strut up and down, loving all the attention, whilst Dulcie just ignored everybody, though I think she secretly loved it too.

An even bigger treat was to be allowed down the cellar. A dark, damp, musty old place with lots of hidey-holes to explore. I’ll never forget the sight of Creamer, emerging from these expeditions, his whiskers festooned with cobwebs and brick dust.

It may not have been ideal, but we all made the best of it as a means to an end. A plant pot of grass on the widow-sill provided their ‘greens’, and it wasn’t long before we had moved to our new house where the cats had acres of space to play out in.

I often wonder what the man who saw me carefully potting up a plant pot of grass from the back yard thought. Something on the lines of, ‘it’s that crazy cat woman again’, I expect.

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