Random reminder

Press, 15 August 1980, Page 14

Random reminder

THE DEAR DEPARTED

Alice, a small elderly tabby cat died recently. She had • no great claim to fame except that she had lived for 22 years and nine months, not enough to put her in the Guinness Book of Records, but still an achievement. She arrived on the doorstep of a young married couple in 1959; obviously a stray. She was taken jn, checked by a vet and he gave her an official birthday of November 5, 1958. She never grew much bigger than when she first appeared as a halfgrown tabby. She was a gentle, affectionate cat who went through the normal part of family life, being made great fuss of by her owners, coping with the children arriving, which was the first disruption to the pleasant tenor of her life but after inspecting the babies in their cots, putting up with them crawling after her on the carpet, she accepted them as part of her life. She did achieve some minor fame, as three times she appeared in Random Reminders for odd situations in which she found herself. A speyed cat, she did not have kittens: but did have several admirers. One was a disreputable ear-tom grey and white tom who, in her middle age, used to court her by sitting at a respectable distance underneath the window ledge and simply looked at her with silent adoration as both basked in the sun. That affair lasted for a year until one day the old

tom cat did not appear. But other strays turned up and becan.i part of the family, all far younger than Alice, and as she got older they gave her due respect so that her own chair, which she occupied for the last 10 years of her life, was never the subject of any dispute or possible dispossession. Alice had her favourite spots in the garden — nice dry sunny places where she snoozed happily during the day — but as she approached her twentieth birthday the house became her home except for an odd foray into the garden on a warm sunny day. Alice did have health problems but the veterinary surgeon considered that even at the age of 22 she would have to be run over by a train for her to die and the veterinary staff were rather proud of her, as she was by far the oldest animal on their books. But finally old age caught up on Alice and she had to be put down because of a tumour in . her jaw just before her twenty-third birthday when as usual she would shave had her tin of birthday salmon. It was a sad moment for the now middle-aged couple who had taken her in 22 years ago. Rather fittingly, the other three cats who are part of the household have not as yet tried to sleep on Alice’s chair where she had sat happily dreaming, in the sun during the day and warmed by hot water bottles at night for her last few years. (It would be lese majeste).