Pixie

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Pixie

Postby vannin » Fri Mar 09, 2012 7:37 pm

1.This is the story of Pixie.

She arrived in our lives in the year when Christmas was memorable for a continuous deluge of rain, 1986. On Christmas Eve, my husband had just brought me home from midnight mass, so in fact it was about 1.30 Christmas morning, soggy with the rain tipping down, and pitch black. While getting out of the car, we heard a mewing sound fairly near but beyond our own garden. I commented it sounded very young, a kitten stranded and wet.
We identified the direction of the sound as being on the corner, our neighbor's garden and they were away but had never had a pet. In the prevailing conditions, it was impossible to see or to find out the reason for this distressed little creature being out.

Feeling worried, we went to bed but with our thoughts full of the crying sound. On Christmas morning I had to be taken out again, still in a deluge, and be picked up at mid-day. When leaving, there was still a faint sound, and on return it was still there, so we climbed over to the neighbor's garden to investigate - first to the row of Leylandii and there we found her. The poor little thing, was caught, wedged in the conifer tree between the trunk and a branch. The more she had struggled the tighter it would have become and might have been there for days.

She was bedraggled, exhausted, muddy-looking, like a little drowned rat. My husband was so careful extricating her because her chest and ribs must have been so bruised. We wrapped her in my jacket and brought her indoors, much to the consternation of our existing 6-year-old cat Suki, and the amazement of our two children. We put her on a beanbag before the fire, the rain from her coat streamed through onto the floor before we towelled her dry. As she rested in the warm, we observed her size expand, oh so slowly, until a fur reappeared which was dark tortoiseshell.

So this was our 'cat that came for Christmas'. We tended her carefully on the day and, on Boxing Day, knocked on doors in the locality (still in the rain) to find an owner, but no luck. So this little stray became ours, not without resentment shown by Suki, at first. The vet reckoned her age to be 9 or 10 weeks. We called her Pixie.

For years we puzzled over how she came to be in the tree, were children involved? Was she being carried and dropped enabling an escape? She never liked being picked up and remained for years an extremely defensive cat with teeth and claws, although eventually she ventured onto my lap.

Then recently 2010 - when she had been gone six years and I had just adopted my rescue cat (Trixie), I was chatting with a lady at the bus stop and she asked, Do you remember that winter when people left, first one litter, then a second litter of kittens in the woods? I had never heard of this and latched on 'Was one of them left around Christmas over twenty years ago?' She said 'yes'. One litter had been less than a month old, and she had taken two of them to hand rear. The second litter had older kittens - they might have turned feral.

I strongly believed one of those had become our Christmas Pixie, and, to get from the woods to where we found her, she must have about a hundred yards.

She became very ill in 2003 with thyroid disease followed by kidney failure, fought the illness like the tough little character she was (although quite mellowed with people) and after death, was buried in the garden. , Suki had died age 19 in 1998, much missed even by Pixie as they had accepted each other eventually.

The strangest seasonal present ever to appear in our Christmas stocking! Pixie.

2. Cat flap or be intruded upon? The year 2011

Trixie came to me as a year-old rescue cat in April last year, so she is two years and two months.

I had help with reinstating a cat flap which had been boarded up since our last cat died six years ago. All was well until a horrible smelly tom became a very unwelcome visitor last year. My cat was very good at 'seeing him off' and really hated him, having probably been attacked in the early days. As he left us alone for a while in Winter, I deferred changing to a magnetic-type flap as I really disliked the thought of inflicting a collar on Trixie.

Back he came before Easter,sneaking in to eat her food, and when one day he tried and was chased off, between them, the cats broke the flap off its hinge. In this emergency, I got a basic Staywell fitted as quickly as possible, still not wanting to introduce the magnets-on-collars to go with a magnetic flap. I had to overcome this, three weeks ago, and get the Staywell 400 plus spare collars and magnets.

In the first 24 hours, she limped home, having put her leg through the collar (which had NOT been loose) so it was round her chest and armpit. I was annoyed with the makers because this collar which had been supplied with the catflap, was called a 'safety snap-open coller' but was not. Since then, in the three weeks, two new safety collars with magnets have been lost 'somewhere' - probably in the woods, and another was left carefully on the kitchen floor last night! Enough is enough and this morning, having bought a last collar and two magnets, I enquired about the catflap that operates by 'reading' the cat's microchip ID.

So far £140 had been spent on the three flaps, Handy-person fees for fitting them, and collars and magnets. I don't begrudge it, because she is special, like all our cats. The new 'electronic' one will be about £74 plus the labour of an electronically-minded 'fitter' and I would have gone for this in the first place if I had known someone with the know-how to do it!! (Early May)

Add-on (a month later) I found catflapman who covers the south of England and cost a 'discounted' £80. Altogether the four flaps and three sets of labour plus collars/magnets, have amounted to £300. It took Trixie three weeks to learn how to use the microchip-activated flap and in that time, full of doubts, I often had to leave it taped open, defeating the object of the exercise. It was so she would not have to stay 'locked-out' all night. But the smelly strays came in then (I left only the kitchen open, containing Trixie's bed) made themselves at home so she went right off me AND the kitchen of course.

Conclusion. She has learned the knack and uses flap, enjoys her home, and from all accounts, both male and female strays are dead.......one by RTA and the other by trap.
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vannin
 
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