The unconditional love of a furry friend......

Well it's New Year's Eve ..... very late afternoon in fact ...... and I thought it would be nice to have one last memory of Jonesy for 2011. Don't get me wrong, as I will certainly write more in future posts, but this one is important to me. I am not sure why, as it definitely is not an ending, or a finalisation, to my missing Jonesy. Maybe it is because I want his memory to carry on into next year. It probably sounds daft, but our 2012 calender is the type you buy and put your own pictures in, and yes, you have guessed it, the pictures each month will be of Jonesy! Today I feel under the weather, with a sore throat and a cold, and it is a time like this that I feel emotional and could do with a cat to cuddle. The girls are not really attuned to me like Jonesy was, and only appear when they need company. Funny, but he always seem to sense when I was not 100% and needed a cat to mope with. If you are a cat lover you will know the overwhelming sense of comfort you get when you bury your head in their furry softness, and feel the warmth of an unconditional loving purr? It's a mutual love that is different from that with a human, and I was always grateful to receive it! I think I have been building up to being ill, to be honest, because over the last few days I have gone into a reminiscing mode. For example, yesterday when we pulled up the drive after shopping, I really felt Jonesy ought to be racing out of the front door to howl around our legs as we unloaded the bags from the boot. How could we leave him so long......wow what fantastic goodies are in those rustling bags.....I need food 'now'.......and all the palaver that went with him!! It was a very intense feeling of something missing, and no amount of meowing from Ripley or Peanut made it feel the same. I wonder why that is? Gosh, he was such a demanding cat......and yet I miss that part of him most of all.
The girls are pretty old now, 17 in the first part of next year, and they seem to be going pretty do-lally! Either that, or Ripley, in particular, is mimicking how Jonesy used to vocalise his demands? She has always been a 'talky' cat but over the last few weeks she has become extremely loud. Just like Jonesy would have particular meows, which would vary in sound and loudness depending on if anyone was taking any notice of him, Ripley has started to do the same thing. Do cats remember....do cats miss each other....do cats know another cat is not around any more? Who knows? It is funny to hear a cat meow in a plaintive 'is any one there?' way. Jonesy used to bound in from outside and stop short in the kitchen. From wherever I was at the time....in the sitting room, upstairs, wherever.....I could hear this. He would do that meow like he was calling out. If I answered he would do a chirpy meow, and race to find me. The deep satisfied purr of welcome was always a joy to me. My sons and husband tell me he did the same to them. I wonder if cats do that all the time, even when no one is in the house? Only a tape recorder would show that, I suppose, lol? Ripley does it now. She never used to. I do wonder why?
As 2011 comes to a close I want my memory of  Jonesy to be one that brings a smile to my face......the smile that I always had when ever I was privileged to have his company......and indeed that smile is on my face right now!

It's Christmas......

It's just a short post today. It's 5pm on Christmas day and i am feeling relaxed and full. the cats are asleep on my son's bed after meowing the house down for some Christmas dinner. This morning I woke up really early, around 5am, because Ripley started to meow and howl and generally wanted someone to get up. As hubby has to work tomorrow, and won't get another lay in, I got up. While I pottered about fiddling with getting the dinner prepared, and the table laid, it did feel peaceful and quiet. Just once I went and looked at Jonesy's picture hanging on the tree. It was all okay. Maybe I am finally getting used to him not being here, but when I went to get dressed later I did have a little cry......it did feel a little too quiet, in spite of Ripley howling in the dark hours of the morning!! I know we did the right thing and I am happy Jonesy felt no pain.......so I raise my glass to my noisy, annoying, loving, wonderful, one-of-a-kind cat Jonesy. I miss you fella........

Cats just love clean washing..........

Over the last few days I have been busy preparing for Christmas, and some of that time was spent ironing, and in particular the napkins and tablecloth for the Christmas lunch table.I hate ironing and was glad to get it done! Placing it carefully on a side table, along with crackers and games, I congratulated myself on being so well organised. That is until I came home this evening to find a cat had slept on the table cloth. By process of elimination I knew it had been Ripley.....the fur remains were black...she has dark fur...Peanut is ginger...the fur remains were not ginger! Simple!
It has made me realise how long Jonesy has been gone, because I have got pretty complacent about newly washed and ironed clothes. Yep.....he was a devil for sneaking into my washing basket when I was busy, and curling up to sleep. The resulting mangle cats hair and what was clean washing used to send me into a muttering wreck. It didn't matter if I put the basket into the utility room and shut the door, because he would somehow get the door open and end up sat in the basket. Maybe it was the wonderful smell of the fabric softener I use, lol? Jonesy would always entwine himself round the ironing board which often caused me moments of panic that the whole lot would topple over. While he never attempted to attack the iron flex as it waved back and forward when I ironed, Jonesy would generally pat, bap or tug at any item of washing hanging over the board. That would generally end up with me shouting "Jonesy gerrroffff" and Jonesy finding his claw was stuck in the said item, so I had to stop everything and rescue him. Why I never banished him to another room while I ironed, I will never know. Oh hang on, yes I do...the constant, gradually escalating, howls of agony at being shut out would be worse!
Changing the beds, and putting fresh new bedclothes on, always resulted in all three cats sprawled over the duvet cover. Or at least one of them tucked in behind a pillow. Any newly washed clothes laid on my sons bed for him to put away were quickly used as a cat bed should my son not bother...which was frequently! The only thing weird was that the girls liked smelly socks but Jonesy had more style. He only ever liked clean washing!!

Stocking-gate........

Cats have an extraordinary sense of smell! Ours can smell a chicken cooking a mile away. Certainly Jonesy could smell it even from the caravan park (see earlier blog post), and would race back home before we could even start the electric carving knife. On that note.....cats have extraordinary hearing too, lol. The whizz of the carving knife starting up has always been the cue for our cats to storm into the kitchen, and seat them selves impatiently right under my husbands feet as he strived to hack a joint apart. I suppose association could factor in the sense of smell, but it seemed to us that our cats were pretty sneaky where food was concerned...and Ripley and Peanut still are!
As humans go, I imagine our cats have always thought we are pretty dense. Why do I say that? Because we try in vain to hide the fact we have food, cat crunchies, cat treats and even cat Christmas stockings from them. Every year I ask my husband if we should buy a cat Christmas stocking, and every year he says an emphatic no! It's all, no doubt, because of 'stocking gate' which ran for two Christmases.
In our wisdom, when we were relatively new cat owners, one Christmas we decided to buy a great cat Christmas stocking and wrap it, and hide it under the tree. Silly us!! Arriving back from work one day shortly after, we found some of the wrapping paper strewn around the tree. The cat Christmas stocking appeared to be okay so I gamely re-wrapped it. Oh how daft. The very next day we came home to a totally dismantled present, with cat treats missing from the bag, and cat nip toys dotted across the lounge! All the cats were snoozing around the house...indeed Jonesy was under the tree. How could we tell who had been 'naughty cat'? Ripley was (still is) champion paper shredder, Jonesy had the sense of smell that would spot food miles away, and Peanut usually sat there egging the other two on! I will admit they did not get any more treats that Christmas.
The following year we tried again. You can tell by that statement that the important word is 'tried'!! This time I took the drastic action of hiding the stocking in the wardrobe. Of-course I forgot it was in there, like you do? I even totally ignored the fact all three cats would go off into the wardrobe if I left the door open. After all, if I caught them in there I would shout and flap my hands, until they manoeuvred themselves out of whichever shoe/bag/rubbish they had been hiding under.I never thought, in a million years, that one of them had managed to chew open the cat Christmas stocking again...and eat all the treats! In fact it was Christmas eve when my husband went to fetch it, cleverly hidden as we thought, to place it under the tree. Oh woe is us, for the stocking was ripped to shreds and the toys were over the wardrobe floor and the treats were gone. Which cat had done the deed? To this day we have no idea. Cat nip sends the cats into ecstasy, and then sleep mode....nothing unusual for all the cats at some point in the day. We were oblivious to the sneaky cats! Have we bought a cat Christmas stocking this year? No, lol.............

The Christmas present wrapper.....

Oooooo the sound of paper...any paper...drives my cats wild with excitement! All three of my cats loved newspaper, paper bags and most especially wrapping paper. Ripley still is mad about newspapers and if you leave one lying on the floor she will literally take a flying leap and skid across the pages, scattering them every where. She also likes to shred it with her teeth and claws, which makes a nasty confetti mess that takes ages to clear up. Peanut simply watches her, and certainly only ever watched Jonesy in his paper escapades. I suppose too many times being whacked across the ears by the other two made her pretty careful about getting involved?
Over the last week or so wrapping the Christmas presents has reminded me of the times I spent with Jonesy. It has made me miss him terribly and feel pretty sad, because Jonesy followed me everywhere, unless he was sprawled over the bed or sofa, and he would trot after me with excitement if he heard the rustle of wrapping paper. There were two places I wrapped presents...one being my bed (no idea why as bending over the bed would give me back ache) and the other being the dining room table. Now it was okay if I used the table....Jonesy would sit on one of the chairs, and from time to time bap the paper if it came close to him. Leaving any ribbon or bows around was fatal though. Rolls of ribbon would cascade off the table if he managed to grab one with his claw, and he would launch himself onto the floor to chase it around. This would result in me shouting while trying to retrieve the ribbon, and him sulkily getting back on the chair to sneakily grab anything he could. The bed scenario was worse! Why I ever thought wrapping presents on a bed was a good idea I will never know (and do you know what....I still did it last weekend!) If you have read any of my previous posts, you will know that shutting Jonesy out of a room resulted in rapidly louder howls of misery, until you would just let him in and suffer the consequences. I learnt that wrapping paper apparently is good to sit on. Oh and good to lie on. If you had a present on the paper, or in the paper, it was even better. Add ribbon to the recipe and you had the ingredients for a disaster. Oh, and picking sellotape off cats' fur is no fun for the cat or the person doing it! Even remembering all that hassle, it was far too quiet when I wrapped the presents last week....and way too easy.

The mad Christmas 'apple' dash.......

Putting up the Christmas tree over the weekend reminded me of how all the cats reacted during this time of year. We quickly learnt that having a real tree when you have kittens is not such a good idea! Finding a cat half way up a tree clinging for dear life to a branch, while pine needles rain down onto the carpet caused total mayhem. We took to tying the tree to a shut door handle each year to stop the inevitable teetering of the tree, as 3 cats chased each other round and round, and in and out of, the carefully wrapped presents. Jonesy, as ever, was particularly interested in the decorations on the tree. Every day, on returning home from work, we would find many of the lower tree decorations scattered around the room. In particular, Jonesy loved some 'apple' decorations we had. They were the size of a ping pong ball, and made of some light polystyrene painted red, with two small gold leaves attached. These were obviously very easy for a cat to bap around, and made a satisfying clunk when they hit a wall. Jonesy would trot around, holding the apple in his mouth by a leaf, once he managed to get one off the tree. From time to time he would drop the apple and whack it with his paw, and then race around chasing it. Many a time my husband and I would end up flat on our stomachs trying to fish an 'apple' out from under the tv, or sideboard, or sofa, with some spatula or wooden spoon! It got to the stage where he would sit patiently, wherever the apple had disappeared to, and meow for one of us to fiddle for ages attempting to get the 'apple' out. Funny enough neither of the girls were interested in this game! Over the years we kept the 'apples' out of the decoration box so Jonesy could play with them all year round. Even up to last year I would be able to go to the drawer where it was kept, and hold it up to Jonesy while saying 'apple Jonesy....do you want to play with the apple'? He would perk up and meow, so that I would roll it across the floor towards him. There would follow 10 or 15 minutes of frantic bashing of apple, and one mad excited cat racing around the whole ground floor of the house! If you were not fast enough to leap out of the way you were in danger of getting hit by a flying decoration! It was certainly a great way of wearing out a cat if he was bored!  I still have one of the battered 'apples'in a drawer.....the girls don't play with it, but I am keeping it for now as it reminds me of Jonesy's mad apple dashes.......

The king size duvet fight.......

Allowing cats to roam your house can make it hard when you don't want them in the same room as you when you are busy! It was always easy to make Ripley vanish as she hated the hoover....and still does. Turn it on, drag it into the same room as Ripley, watch Ripley haul herself up and whizz out of the room. Peanut has always ignored the hoover and simply stays asleep. Jonesy, on the other hand, had to follow you from room to room. As I have said in a previous post, he loved water and the bathroom. This made for exasperating moments where I would clean the bathroom, clean the bath and sink, exit the room and then hear the scrabble of cat's paws. I would go back into the bathroom to find Jonesy cat ALWAYS sitting in the damp bath. If he had recently been outside there would be dirty paw prints dotted around, and if not, then ginger cats hair would be scattered everywhere. Even if I turned the shower head on to try and get him to jump out, Jonesy would simply watch the water trickle towards him and disdainfully edge backwards. I never learned to shut the door after cleaning that room!!

Changing the bed was an exciting game to Jonesy. The girls would simply move to another room if they were on the bed, but Jonesy would obstinately sit upright, watching me intently. He would allow me to yank the duvet slowly from under his feet, so that he toppled over and ended up sprawled out on the sheet. I would do the same again, and he would also do the same! The rest of the bed clothes Jonesy would ignore as he perched in the middle of the mattress. Now the fun would begin as I would try to remake the bed with clean bedclothes. Cats LOVE clean bed clothes....indeed they love clean freshly ironed anything, as I have found out to my cost....and Jonesy was no exception. Trying to place a king sized duvet cover on a king sized duvet, while a cat tries to help, is no fun. First Jonesy would stay in the middle of the bed. I would manage to get part of the cover on and shake the duvet. Jonesy would end up under the duvet. There would be a mound in the middle of the duvet. I would chase him out from under the duvet. I would then try to finish getting the covers in the duvet. While I was at one end doing this, Jonesy would somehow manage to get inside the duvet cover. There would then be a spell of 'chase the cat in the duvet cover' round the duvet trying to get him out. In the end I would have to literally haul him out, while he meowed and protested and generally gave me a hard time for spoiling his fun. The remainder of the bed making time would be spent with the cat and the duvet having a game of 'which can stay on the bed for the longest'.  Most of the time I would win simply by sheer will power of shoving Jonesy off the bed, and then racing round to position the quilt before he could leap back onto the bed. Sometimes he would win. That was when I would have to just ban him from the room. (No idea why I never did that in the first place?) The noise of a cat who is upset, because he has been shut out of a room, is enough to make you weep. The protesting chirp would start first, then that would progress to a pitiful meow, which then went on the a full orchestra of yowls mixed with howls, depending on if he was being ignored by me. Do you know what? It was easier to let him in and fight the king sized duvet fight than leave him to make his displeasure known. That was one indulged cat!

One disobedient cat..........

Most cats like to be high up! All three of ours are no exception, and only today, when I came home from work, it was obvious that one of the girls had decided to suspend herself from the top of my net curtain. How did I know that? By the fact it was hanging half off and there were claw marks part of the way down. To be frank it did seem like which ever cat it was, she had grabbed the curtain on her way down from the top of the window. The mind boggles as to what they get up to when we are all out? I suspect it was Ripley who had gone curtaineering (as aposed to mountaineering!) as Peanut is just too darn lazy, but you never know.
Jonesy always preferred to survey the world from above. You would walk through the hall way, something would grab your attention out of the corner of your eye, and low and behold you would find Jonesy peering through the banister at approximately 5 inches above the level of your head. Even when the Christmas decorations were entwined round the bannisters, with baubles and all sorts on, he would still manage to wedge his head through, generally knocking much of the artistically placed items off in the process. At the landing level our banisters had wooden posts and as you went down the stairs he would often gently bap your shoulder or head as you got level with him. As he grew older it became a game where Jonesy would wait on one side of the landing banister. Someone would walk part of the way down the stairs and then stick their hand fast through the banister posts poking Jonesy.....Jonesy would attempt to get the hand with his paw......the hand would pull back fast and go through another area of the banister posts....Jonesy would run to the hand and try to pat it.....and so the game would go on. We would end up for ages on the stairs and Jonesy would have fun...and you would usually forget what you were supposed to be doing, but it was amusing to realise he wasn't as fast as we were. Ripley, on the other hand, is a lethal cat weapon with daggers for claws and the game was never attempted with her! Humans like to keep their hands whole!!
Only Jonesy would jump onto the dining room table, though. Naughty, naughty cat. He would often skid over the highly polished surface and come to a halt with a scrabble just by the edge. There are quite a few scratches in the table that are testament to his lack of ice-skating techniques.I would go up to him, tell him off, and snap my fingers at him, moving my hand in a 'get down off the table' movement. He would chirp back at me in a 'if you think I am moving you have another thing coming' attitude. We would carry on this argument for a while, with my hand movements getting rather more frantic and his chirps turning into louder meows.His whole body would crouch lower and lower on the table until he was lying down flat out. I would then proceed to try and push him off the table! Jonesy's body would go completely ridged, so that it would end up with him sliding in a circle on the polished table surface as I pushed. Eventually I would have to pick him up to put him on the floor, where upon he would nonchalantly stalk off as if nothing had happened, leaving me to dust off the cat's hair. If he was feeling particularly disobedient he would instead, launch himself at the dining room door close by. With extreme amounts of scrabbling Jonesy would manage to get on the top of the door, where he would pace up and down looking haughtily at us, or crouch down and dangle his leg just by our heads. The protesting meows as we grabbed him off the door were as loud as if we were killing him!! Let's face it, he did not want to get down....

The shopping night ritual..........

The rustle of plastic shopping bags was like music to Jonesy's ears.....it meant the possibility of food for a gut bucket cat, as well as unlimited fun getting your whole body into a small space and then scaring the girl cats silly by leaping out at them! Forget special cat nip toys, (although those were a favourite too), because a plastic bag was much more exciting. I am not sure when Jonesy began his fascination with bags, but most kittens and cats find them great entertainment. The association with food, on the other hand, didn't take long to work out. We tended to always do our shopping after I finished work on a Friday, and by the time we had got home it would be close to 6.30. Cats have super sensitive hearing and ours could easily recognise our car pulling up the drive. As soon as the front door was opened so we could go back and unload the shopping from the car, Jonesy would shoot out to have a nosey at what was happening. It didn't matter what the weather was like...if it was raining he would race under the car and peer out excitedly...if it was summer he would ponce about our legs getting in the way...if it was snowing he would yowl from the doorway to tell us to hurry up! Even when we changed to 'bags for life' that didn't rustle so intriguingly, he would still sniff them in frantic excitement. The girls were far more sensible. Ripley would perch on the banister post and meow hello as we walked past....Peanut would perch on the middle stair and peer through the banister silently. The minute the shopping was unloaded we would coax Jonesy back in and shut the front door. All three cats would high tail it into the kitchen and therein began the fun. Well, fun for them, exasperation for us. It is almost impossible to unpack shopping with three cats milling about. At least one of them, if not all three, would at some point meow to tell us to hurry up as they were starving and hadn't been fed for ages and ages! Jonesy would try to help with the unpacking by sitting on as many bags as he could, in turn, to let us know which one to unpack. If he could get his whole body in a full shopping bag that was a bonus....if he could get his whole body in an empty one that was even better. Getting his head stuck in the handle, and then trying to walk away with a bag attached to his body, was the icing on the cake. The girls rarely messed about with the bags, but to Jonesy this was a shopping night ritual he never veered from, even when he was ill....and he always knew which bag had the cat crunchies in! In fact he tried to help us so much he would even attempt to get into the cupboard where the cat food was kept. I ask you, as if we didn't know where that was kept!

We were well trained by Jonesy!........

Being responsible pet owners we always make sure that our cats have fresh food and water every day......a fact that should make our lovely felines happy, happy, happy? Was Jonesy satisfied with this? Was he heck! Did he want fresh water in the cat bowl twice a day? Did he heck! Nope. He wanted fresh running water on tap...literally, lol. Jonesy was always vocal in his demands, and any gentle chirp to catch your attention would soon escalate into a full blown yowl if he was ignored. Trying to pretend you did not hear him did not work. We once managed to go for a full half an hour of ear splitting pathetic 'no one is taking any notice of me' howling before we gave in! He was persistent and in the end managed to get us trained rather well. Jonesy didn't bother with wanting running water from the downstairs tap. Oh no...he wanted running water from the bathroom sink tap upstairs. Generally he would wait until after we had eaten, and were slouched on the sofa relaxing. One bound off a lap, and rapid thuds of a four legged creature storming up the stairs, followed by frantic scrabbling noises as he hauled himself onto the banisters, would signal the start. Jonesy would utter one short, quiet meow. We would ignore it. Silence for a minute. Jonesy would utter a slightly louder meow. We would ignore that in the hope he would get fed up. Silence for another minute. Then Jonesy would start to yowl. This would go on for as long as we could put up with it before giving in and charging upstairs to open the bathroom door. Jonesy would drop down to to the floor with a thump, and then race into the bathroom, leap onto the toilet seat (which we fortunately we always kept down!!) and wait impatiently until the sink tap was turned on. While he was young he had no problem in getting onto the slippery sink but as he got older, bigger and heavier various acrobatic movements accompanied his effort to get onto it. Usually much toe tapping would occur, by whichever one of us had gone into the bathroom, as Jonesy took his time to drink and shake his head and splatter us with droplets of water! Oh yes we were well trained! Why do cats do this, lol? How come the fresh water in the bowl was not good enough? Neither of the two girls ever did this, except for once, a few days ago, when Ripley did exactly the same thing as Jonesy with regard to the bathroom/sink/tap. She had never done it before, and hasn't done it again since, and it freaked me out. Only Jonesy used to do this, so why did she suddenly behave in exactly the same way as he had now he was gone? She howled at the bathroom door, I let her in and she leapt onto the toilet seat. I was a little perplexed but turned on the tap, and to my amazement she scrambled onto the sink and proceeded to drink the running water. She only did it for a few seconds and then jumped down, but it was strange. The girls tended, and still do tend, to avoid water, but Jonesy would love to sit in the bathroom while I had a bath. He would place his front paws on the bath rim, and peer intently at the bubbles and water in the bath. If I playfully splashed the water he would jump onto the edge of the bath, and skid and slip as he wobbled up and down. He did fall in twice, but it didn't seem to put him off! Gosh he made me laugh, and gosh, he exasperated me at times.What a character he was!

Roast dinner and trifle make one fat cat............

I am not sure if it was because Jonesy was a tom cat that he wandered so much? The girls, Ripley and Peanut, would perhaps stray over to the next door gardens, but no further. To be honest does anyone know what your cat gets up to while they are out? Well we didn't realise the extent of Jonesy's territory until he went missing one summer. Because of 'duckling-gate' everyone in the family knew Jonesy would nosey on down to the river, and when he didn't come back on evening when we called for him my heart sank. Although my husband slept, I certainly did not and even went out during the night to 'whisper call' his name......you can't really shout a cats name in the middle of the night when everyone is asleep! Jonesy and the girls were as regular as clockwork in coming home from their forays, especially where food was concerned. We used to rattle a box of cat crunchies as we called their names, and that was the cue for lots of scrabbling and thuds as the three cats would haul themselves over fences from where ever they had been sunning themselves, to come home. Well the girls had come home, but not Jonesy, and I was worried. Being a total gut bucket meant he liked his food, and never missed an opportunity to wolf down some titbit! This was not normal behaviour for him, and  to be honest I was scared he had fallen in the river. The next morning he still hadn't appeared, and I hated having to go off to work not knowing where he was. After two nights of no cat we couldn't stand it any more.......he was obviously stuck somewhere, locked in somewhere, or he was hurt! We were going to do everything in our power to find him. I typed up a note which stated "Lost.......our cat Jonesy is missing........" etc, along with our telephone number, and printed out enough to weigh down our arms. Then my husband and I went from door to door in the immediate neighbourhood, and across the main road, knocking on doors and giving out the notes, or posting them through letter boxes. That was when we learnt how well known Jonesy was. It seemed EVERYONE knew our ginger cat!! It also appeared he was loved by everyone, and the little old lady that lived round the side road said she fed him and that he would sleep in her sitting room. Amazing! No wonder he had a rather rotund tummy. I even walked down to the caravan park that was based at the side of the river and left a note there for their notice board. It was the note at the caravan park that proved to solve the mystery of where Jonesy had got to. It took over a week of frantic worry before a phone call put our minds at rest. The caretaker at the caravan park had seen Jonesy wandering around, and not only that but the holiday makers there had thought he actually lived in the park because he was so content there. In fact it was a passing comment from a holiday maker that had first alerted the caretaker to the new cat on the block. When she rang us Jonesy was actually in one of the caravans, and the holiday makers had shut him in so we could collect him. Well, we raced down there with the car and cat basket and could not believe what we found. Sprawled out in the caravan sitting room, purring his head off and looking like the cat that had got the cream, was Jonesy. Indeed he had got the cream, along with a roast chicken dinner and trifle, so the holiday makers told us. It seemed that he had taken a liking to them when they arrived at the park....latched on to them...got fed and watered...and put out to go home at night. Except the flipping cat hadn't gone home. Another holiday maker had fallen in love with him, also fed him and allowed him to sleep on their bed at night. Why come home when you were being pampered like that? They all realised he belonged to someone because of his collar, but each had thought he went home when he wasn't with them....in fact all he did was yo yo between them and ignore us!! Great! Abandoned by a cat. We did get apologies from the amused holiday makers, and a warning that they came every year for two weeks, and that they had seen him the previous year but he had not stayed so much. Hmmmm, something to look forward to......a cat who goes on holiday from his family. Well we took Jonesy home, and actually kept him in for a few nights to get him acclimatised to home again :-)

He never stayed away at night again......probably the pampering he got when home, tuna to eat and prawns and cream, was enough to make him realise we had missed him. Certainly the hugs and loving cuddles we gave him must have worked. At the same time the following year he vanished again for two weeks, but came home late in the evenings. My boss and his wife were actually staying at the caravan park temporarily while they were waiting to move into a new house...and yes, they saw Jonesy. We got the phone call from them and went and fetched him home......one content and fatter cat!

"You don't scare me Mr hoover"

I hate hoovering, but having cats makes it fun. Hoovering and Jonesy cat made it very good fun!! The other two cats hated the sound, and even look, of the hoover, and would run a mile when I got it out. Ripley, in particular would end up being chased from room to room as I moved about the house, skulking under furniture if I even ventured through a room door. She hated the hoover with a passion, and still does to this day. Peanut, on the other hand, totally ignores it....in fact carries on sleeping the sleep of a knocked out cat while I whizz around her. Jonesy was a different kettle of fish! He would challenge the hoover's very existence. Right from a little kitten...okay from a bundle of podgy kitten....he would look at the hoover as I got it out with utter disdain. He would cock his head as if to say "what is this thing" and sit bolt upright. When I switched the hoover on he would not even flinch as Ripley shot away into the distance. He would nonchalantly wash himself in the most awkward place, like the middle of the sitting room, or on the stairs, as I tried to get him to move. I would have to gently edge up to him with the brush and shove at his backside to try and get him to move. At times I would have to shove hard to get him to even stand up! Once I took the brush off and used the nozzle close to him to see if it would make him move faster....nope.....I ended up sucking his fur, much to Jonesy's shock. It didn't make him move, though. He simply swiped at the nozzle with his paw! Even his tail was sucked up the hoover when he wouldn't get out of the way. Many a time Jonesy's fur got the hoover treatment...he just would not move. Even as he got ill he would still peer down from the great height of a table as I hoovered as if to say "you don't scare me Mr hoover"!

Chirp....mew....meow....MEOW.....

It is a fact that no one in our house arose earlier than Jonesy! It didn't matter if we were getting up at 5am, because he would be wide awake just before we were. How did I know that? In the winter I would 'come to' in the mornings and realise it was time to wake up, I would also be aware of a cat perched on my chest.......or on the pillow above my head....or right close up next to me. This cat....Jonesy....would be purring like a train rumbling through the station. Loud does not describe the sound! The magnitude of an earthquake maybe! If Jonesy was on my chest and I opened my eyes, it would be to find his nose about half a centimetre away from mine. His eyes would stare into mine and his purr would raise the roof. He was VERY happy that one of us was awake. Of course as he got older he would dribble sometimes...not a pleasant experience to wake up to if he was half a centimetre away from my nose, I can tell you. No matter if we didn't wake up until the alarm went off,  because Jonesy will still be perched rigidly upright somewhere close to one of us, wide awake.

In the summer it was different! Dawn would break at some ungodly hour and the birds would start to sing. That was Jonesy's cue to be awake....even if we were not! It was light...the world was alive....he wanted to be out.....NOW. There would be a tentative chirp at first....we would ignore that. The chirp would change to a mew....we would shuffle and turn over, and ignore that. The mew would change into a meow.....a plaintive meow. We would snuggle under the covers and try to ignore that. It didn't work! Jonesy's meow would, second by second, rise up the decibel scale until it was, indeed, impossible to do anything but get up and let him out. We were fortunate in that we had a flat roof over our sun lounge, below our window, and as my husband slept on the side of the bed next to the window he was designated 'window opener'. He would grumble, believe me he would grumble. My husband that is! Jonesy would bound out the window and we would attempt to drop off to sleep again. Which we always did...only to be woken up when Jonesy would leap back in the window. The first warning of the impending four legged creature would be the thud as he landed back on the window sill. If that didn't wake you up then the leap from the window sill onto your stomach/back/leg/body part would. It didn't matter that Jonesy could jump onto the foot of the bed. He always landed on my husband...who would shout, so Jonesy would then leap onto me. The 'oof' bursting from our mouths as he leapt onto each of us probably would be funny to hear, except we were usually in shock! Throughout his whole life Jonesy never waived in his routine, come winter or summer, until this last year. I suppose he was getting older, and stiffer, and the effort of leaping up to the window sill was too much for him to bother with, but he still always managed to wake up before us!