well, it was and it wasn’t, really. Tough decision.
we had a cat – Molly – a silver tabby Maine Coon, who we got at the same time as Aliss and Zool. They were all born on the same day, and Aliss and Moll are litter twins. They came to us in August 1999.
all went swimmingly for, oh, a couple of years. We have many photographs of heaps of cats including a beautiful, chocolate box grey tufty girl. Then for some reason, Iggy took against Molly, and so did Aliss.
she took to spending more and more time out of the house, but somehow, when the weather was particularly bad, a truce seemed to be struck, and she would sleep under the bed in a cardboard box with a sweater in it. And she would come in to eat, and have a cuddle. Every now and again, she would disappear for longer that we liked, and we would leaflet the neighbourhood, and she would come home again.
but we hadn’t seen her since August 24th. She was microchipped, and so we felt sure that if something had happened to her, we would have been found out. We guessed that she had found another home, where she wasn’t persecuted by Aliss and Iggy, and although we were sad, we felt this was best for Moll.
this morning, we had a call from the vet who fitted her microchip (I’ll have a rant about these people later). Molly had been taken to the local animal sanctuary as a stray. I had a long chat with them, and we went up to see them, and Molly, this afternoon.
they say that Molly was brought in by a woman who lives on the main road through the village – she’d been living with this woman for a while (don’t know how long), and the woman had acquired her from some neighbours, where the wife had taken her in, and then the wife had left her husband, who then threw Molly out.
there were claims that the first woman had taken Moll to the vet because she was “very thin and matted”. But if she had, and had said the cat was a stray, any reputable vet would have scanned her. And she was perfectly fit and well when we last saw her. And I do wonder about someone who takes in a cat they believe to be stray, then a few weeks later moves away and leaves her …
Holly Hedge is lovely, and so are the people that work there. Molly clearly remember us – with some fondess, I like to think 🙂 – and it was *such* a delight to see her. She’s well and happy, and still as beautiful as ever. But, after much thought and many tears, we have left her there to be rehomed. No chance of a change of mind – we have signed ownership over to them.
she wasn’t happy here, or she wouldn’t have left. And our feeling was that if we brought her back (and we *did* take a cat basket to the sanctuary!), she might very well leg it straight out again, and lord knows what might have happened to her.
so … no more Moll for us, with her fabulous coat and her beautiful face and her completely mad eyes. But I know we’ve done the right thing, and perlmonger and I feel good that we have seen her again, left her in eminently safe hands, and that she will be rehomed somewhere that suits her – no other cats, and no kids.
be happy, Molly – we’ll miss you so much.
and there’s been ltogether too much cat trauma in the past few weeks, I think.
more background on all these cats here