Sophie's Story

We had our cat put down in March, just short of his sixteenth birthday, and we knew almost immediately that we weren't done with cat owning. So, I phoned the RSPCA to start the ball rolling, in the hope of adopting a mother cat with one of her kittens, once the rest of the litter were weaned. There were two mother cats in waiting, and we went along to be introduced to the one that was due to have her kittens imminently. And so we met Sophie......



Barely a year old herself, Sophie had been turned out on the streets by her owners when they realised she was pregnant, and kind neighbour had taken her in.... but with six cats of her own, she couldn't keep a pregnant queen, so handed Sophie over to the RSPCA.

So, we bought supplies of food and litter to help out Sophie's foster mother, and settled back to wait and see what kittens were produced. And we waited..... and waited...... but no kittens arrived. After two weeks, the foster mother took Sophie back to the vet, who did a scan and pronounced that there were no signs of life inside..... and Sophie was booked in for an emergency spay the following day, just in case she was retaining dead kittens.

We were given the option of choosing another pregnant queen, but in our heads Sophie was already our cat...... so suddenly we had a mad 24 hours rushing round preparing the house for the arrival of a cat, when we'd expecting to wait at least another eight or nine weeks until the kittens were ready to be weaned.

There were no kittens to be seen when the spay was done. We'll never know what happened..... the foster mother saw no sign of abortion, so either Sophie got rid of the evidence very efficiently or she re-absorbed..... or maybe it was a phantom pregnancy all along. Whatever, we brought her home to our house the evening she was spayed, and she quickly made herself at home. We prepared one room of the house as Cat Central, where she could live comfortably while we were out at work, but she had full run of the place when we were at home.



She's a complex little character. Something in her past has made her very wary of being up close and personal with humans, but she craves our company, and enjoys sleeping on our bedroom floor at night. Here she is at the end of May, in more or less the same pose as the photo from the day we met her.....



You can see how much she's grown and filled out, in just a couple of months. Makes me wonder if she was even a year old when we got her.

And Popeye? I'll tell you about him as a separate post on the thread - Sophie deserves the first post all to herself.

Popeye's Story

When we ended up taking Sophie home without a kitten, we left it with the RSPCA that they would contact us once they had a litter ready to be weaned, and we would consider whether to try introducing a kitten to the house. As it transpired, just two weeks after bringing Sophie home we had a call from her foster mother. She'd just collected an abandoned kitten from a vet in the next big town, and would we like to think about adding him to the family? Well, we knew once we saw him we would be smitten, so we'd already decided to give it a go when we went to meet him. This is what we were greeted by.....



No long haired cats I'd said, when we decided to replace our old boy..... and not another black and white like him, we'd go for something different......

Yeah, right.

We went home via Argos, and bought a big cage that takes up about a third of the living room, and started giving Sophie her dinner in there to prepare for a small feather duster's arrival the following weekend. Said we'd give it a fortnight, and if Sophie was still trying to take the kitten's head off by then, we'd hand him back to the RSPCA while he was still tiny, to give him a chance of finding a more friendly home.

The foster mother called him Scruffy. Could she not see the handsome and noble cat that he's going to become? My husband re-named him Popeye, which only marginally better than Scruffy, but I've let him get away with it in the interests of male bonding. Here's Popeye the day he came home - Royal Wedding Day.



We spent the four days of that long weekend gradually introducing Sophie to Popeye. We had him in the cage with her in the room..... then her in the cage with him in the room...... then lugged the cage through to Cat Central and went through the same process. By the second day, Sophie was tolerating (i.e. ignoring) Popeye when he was in the cage, and Popeye had learned to give Sophie a wide berth when she was in the cage. So we gritted our teeth and opened the cage door, ready to leap in and separate the cat fight if necessary. Well, Sophie batted Popeye round the house, but only when he took himself to her - she never took trouble to him. We kept it to short sessions, an hour or two together and then either separate rooms or Popeye in the cage. Things progressed well.....

Then on the third day, I knew we'd cracked it. Sophie was in the living room with me when Popeye got under my OH's feet in Cat Central. Popeye shrieked, and it was a mad race down the hall between me and Sophie to reach him..... I checked him over to make sure he was okay, then handed him to Sophie who proceeded to give him a Compulsory Wash. Sorted! They've been partners in crime ever since, although we do still shut Popeye in the cage at night to give Sophie a break (and to let Popeye stuff his face with kitten food without Sophie helping him scoff it). It helps me sleep at night, knowing Popeye is contained...... he has a disconcerting habit of climbing ten feet up the wallpaper at 100 miles an hour.

Here he is, on 30th May, aged about 12 weeks.....







He's been teaching Sophie how to play and hunt - the poor love didn't have a clue what it was all about.







And he still gets lots of Compulsory Washes.....



The only slightly worrying this is that we're starting to wonder if Popeye is crossed with a Shetland Pony! Fourteen weeks old, and he's already about two thirds the size of Sophie, with a set of whiskers that are already twice as long as hers.

Hi, lovely stories.

Both Sophie and Popeye are lovely looking cats x

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One day i'll learn where the spellcheck is on my phone, so sorry for any mistakes

Thanks - it's lovely to watch Sophie gain confidence through watching Popeye..... she sees him being a doofus lap kitten, and it's gradually sinking in that being with humans can be fun. Rattling the treat bag now brings Popeye running at a full gallop, with Sophie hot on his heels for her share of the goodies.

your girl has an absolutely stunning coat! and as for him he's a handsome little chappy!

He looks so happy in his home with you, he's obviously decided your chest and shoulder belongs to him

I'm glad Sophie accepted him because it would have been so hard to part with such a cute little face!!!!

Popeye looks just like a cat from a story I used to love when I was a child. . .I can't remember the story but I remember my mental image of the cat. . the book used to talk about the end of the cat's whiskers being really long and sparkling and it's eyes being so big and beautiful and he looks just like the cat described in the book

GOBBOLINO THE WITCH'S CAT!!!!!!!!! hahaha sorry my god that was a massive flash back! I loved that book so much when I was little

he is just like the cat described in the book except his eyes look greeny brown in your photos and the cat in the book had blue eyes but he's gorgeous non the less!

My daughter says Popeye's whiskers are like a firework going off.

She also says he likes my...errr... chest so much because it must be like being on a water mattress.

Popeye weighed a whisker under 2 kilos last week, when he had his second injection. He was approximately 13 weeks old. I'm tempted to open a book on what his adult size/weight is going to be.....

I had to do a crash course in cat colour genetics when we got Sophie, to work out what she was. Calico Torbie if we were in the USA, I believe, but a more prosaic Tortoiseshell With White since we're in the UK.

awww that's a brilliant way to describe his whiskers she's right hahaha

and ah yeah Sophie is amazing colours, she's gorgeous. . .we had a tortoiseshell when my cat had kittens unexpectedly (we were told she was a boy and was neutered at the rescue centre. . .but she was a girl and wasn't spayed) and she had kittens. . .my uncle had the tortoiseshell, her patches were obviously of similar colours to Sophie's but they were much larger like half of her face was orange and things but she was a cutie too. . .and someone stole her from my uncle's garden

Hi and thanks for the lovely stories about how you found your fur babys.

They are really stunning !!!

Gorgeous...gorgeous kitties

Kelly xx

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Very proud Mummy of Ella my Gorgeous 5yr old daugher
and my beloved fur babies :
Honey born 23/08/10 &
Indy born 08/01/11