Fluff turned up on our doorstep, with the unerring instinct that some stray cats have of finding a soft touch for a saucer of milk and a stroke. At the time we still had Heidi, so we had some food to offer this rather scruffy tabby and white cat, who had at some point lost a decent-sized portion of tail. With the inspired obviousness of a small child, I decided to call her ‘Fluff’, since she was a longhair.
Over time she worked up the courage to enter the kitchen, then the hall, and the living room, and ultimately to adopt us. She was quite affectionate, in a sort of serious way – she liked to lick your hand, but she did so in the manner of a solid, middle-aged matron wiping the corner of your mouth with a moistened hanky. She liked laps too, and would purr like a steam engine, while drooling onto your jeans. She couldn’t half snore, too.
She was there for pretty much all of the childhood that I can remember – she certainly had a good innings, not stalking off to the cat bed in the sky till I was away at uni. I think all of our Christmas photos from my youth have a few shots of Fluff, mostly refusing to pose nicely for the camera. Naturally, she got some cat treats for Christmas; initially these were wrapped and placed under the tree, but she could sniff a treat at 1000 paces, and after shredding the wrapping paper one year (well before Xmas morn), these had to be hidden until the last minute in subsequent years.
Leave a Reply