A very fine cat

We lost Molly today.

No easy way to say it, and caused a lot of tears too.

But it was time.

Since coming back from Hamburg, it was clear she was going blind in her left eye too, she was sneezing a lot, having trouble eating on her right side of her mouth and even keeping her tongue in. Last night she walked into one of the huge loudspeakers.

It was time.

She was always a cat so full of joy but the joy had left her some weeks ago.

I adopted her from the RSPCA in November 2005. She was a tiny kitten when I went to the shelter. She was the only cat there, as she was so nervous, he would hide, and only eat if someone stroked her. The lady assured me she would come out of her shell, so we went home together. Molly lived in the sofa for the weekend, but came out to eat and use the litter tray.

She was born a feral cat, and separated from her mother before she was four weeks old

With me she became a house cat, and when I worked, she would sit in the front window waiting for me to come home. We watched TV together, especially on Sundays when there would be Premier League games followed by NFL. When it was time to go to bed, we used to race each other up the stairs. She always used to win. She wagged her tail when you said her name, even did until the end, and when we lived in Oulton Broad, used to love chasing and returning ear bud sticks.

But our life together was to change.

I lost my job, and all I could get was working on survey ships, being away from home weeks on end. Jools said she would look after Moll, so one Friday I drove down with Molly in a box so she could live on Crabble Hill.

Until then, Molly had only been out on a lead, and was frightened. Now she would be going outside, and share the house with three other cats.

But she coped, and quickly became alpha cat, bossing the others about, except Sulu who really didn't care.

In a year or so, we moved to the house here in St Maggies, and things changed again. No main roads, but a huge garden and the farm below, all full of wildlife.

And so we fell into our life here, and with each change, Molly rolled with the punches and coped, and seemed to get happier. Can we be sure a cat is happy? I think so.

There was that time when she vanished for a week. We thought we heard her call, but we could not find her. She returned one Friday night with a burst abscess on her shoulder, but in good spirits. Like she had never been away.

She was alpha cat until just before Christmas when she first fell ill. We thought we would lose her then, but we had her for seven more months.

Its been a hard day, a heck of a day, as my dear old Dad would say.