I’m going to tell you the story of Tripping Over Pebbles in the Dark.
Stupid name for a blog.
Pebbles is our little cat, also known as Cooking Fat.
Pebbles came into our lives when Lashes, as a small child, developed an irrational fear of cats. We thought the best course of action was to get her a little cat to scare her with when she misbehaved. No……wait…….. That’s not right. I’ll try again.
We thought that having a teeny, tiny, cute, little kitty around the place would get her over her fear of cats before it turned into a major phobia. It sounded like a good plan to us. So we duly turned up at the rescue centre that weekend, which is bloody miles away, only to be told that they didn’t have any kittens in but they knew of some – ten minutes away from home. Sigh. We drove all the way back to go and see said kitty.
It turned out that a woman had taken in a stray cat which promptly had kittens. Before she got rid of them all, one of the kittens had kittens. She was up to her ears in cats and fed up to her back teeth of her dog trying to eat them. We walked in saying that we’d like a little boy cat. “This is a boy” she said as she pointed to a tiny black ball of fluff. To be honest, I think if we’d gone in saying we wanted a martian she’d have pointed to it and told us it was a martian.
“Ok, we’ll take it.” That was when the fun started. This little ball of fluff had had to fight to survive the gnashing jaws of the dog and the squabbling of other cats. I don’t think it had been treated terribly kindly by the owner either. It had quickly learned that the best strategy for survival was to be quick on its feet.
As the woman bent to pick up the kitten, it sprang into life and almost literally flew round the room at breakneck speed via the furniture and the curtains. It was bit like watching Evel Knieval on the wall of death. Round and round it went until it finally came to rest – hanging like a bat from the tv where it had got its claw stuck.
I went and gently plucked it from the tv while looking at Boofuls with one eyebrow raised, silently questioning if we were doing the right thing getting this tiny hell beast for our feline fearful daughter. However, once I had the little thing in my hands and it finally stopped shaking and howling we decided that there was no way we were leaving it behind. The poor creature was terrified.
A visit to the vet quickly ascertained that the little boy was a little girl and was younger that six weeks old, maybe five weeks old but probably a bit less.
Lashes decided that the hell beast was to be called Pebbles and I’d love to say that they became the best of friends but Pebbles never really lost her fear of everything and has always been a very skitty kitty and she definitely didn’t like children. If she did become best friends with anyone, it was with Boofuls, they’ve always had a special bond between them. Lashes though totally lost her fear of cats.
That was almost twenty one years ago. We worked out that she must have been a new year cat so her 21st birthday is any day now. Over the years she has remained tiny, a true lady but always fearful and nervous. As the years have gone on she has lost her eyesight and her hearing. She has become senile, walking round and round in the kitchen screaming “I don’t know where I am! Help! Help! He…ooh, food.” She has developed diabetes and arthritis. How she’s lived this long I have no idea. Obviously the country air agrees with her. I open the door in the morning and look down as she looks up and we greet each other. Her by screaming at me “Open the bloody door you fool!” and me by saying, “You’re still here then.”
She spends her days in the kitchen, right in the middle of the kitchen floor, circling round and round my feet as I’m trying to cook. How I’ve never tripped and sent a pan of something hot over her I’l never know. Or if she’s not in the kitchen she’s sleeping in bizarre places, halfway up the stairs, in the middle of the landing or right in front of the bathroom door. Many times I have tripped over her in the middle of the night on one of my nocturnal bathroom visits. Hence ‘Tripping over Pebbles in the Dark’. It’s a tribute to our little black cat.
Yesterday morning when she came in it was very obvious that something was very wrong with her. She was almost dragging one of her legs behind her and was clearly very uncomfortable. Off to the vet’s we went. “Well, you know she is a hundred years old, don’t you?” Basically, he was telling us to prepare ourselves.
It wasn’t with any surprise but with a great deal of sadness that we discovered Pebbles crossed over the rainbow bridge at some point during the night last night. She went to sleep in her basket and just didn’t wake up. Exactly the way we always hoped she’d go. We’re going to miss you, you howling, mewling, trip hazard.
No more tripping over Pebbles in the dark.
