1341 Alice, the Cat

You may have read my previous post about my pets. (I am kind of obsessed with animals. If you have read it, you will probably know about Alice. If not, why not? I mean you a little bit behind now, you don’t even know who Alice is… If you haven’t read it yet, that’s alright, I will let you off but here is the link to the post.

For those who don’t know anything about Alice, don’t worry I will tell you about her now. If you hadn’t guessed from the title, Alice was a cat… not the young girl who fell down the rabbit hole. Well, Alice was but the one I am talking about today wasn’t ‘Alice’. She does have a story of her own; you see, she had a total of three homes by the time she died.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with any of her homes, the changes were all circumstantial and it was her owners trying to give her a nicer life. This is how we (and by ‘we’ I mean my grandparents) ended up with the pretty little girl. Originally, Alice belonged to my uncle on my Dad’s side. Unfortunately, life changed, and they had to find a new home. It wasn’t hard, they found somewhere that fitted both nicely.

The only problem they ran into was my uncle had to find a new job once he found somewhere to live. He managed to find something new, but it meant doing long shifts. With Alice at home for 12 hours a day on her own, my uncle felt sorry for Alice because he wanted to continue caring for her, but it was unfair that she was on her own so much.

Then one year (more than 10 years ago now) as a family, we all went to Spain for a week (There were 9 of us in total I think). My uncle didn’t have anyone to look after Alice while we were away. He brought her to my Grandparent’s house so their neighbour could check on her throughout the day and make sure she had eaten etc.

So, guess what, the plan was that my uncle would take her home when we got back. That plan did not happen! My grandparents offered to keep Alice, so she wasn’t on her own during the day and it took the pressure off my uncle to rush home. It also meant my uncle could see her whenever he wanted to.

At first, Alice was very nervous, she was a sweet girl but hadn’t had a great deal of human interaction, it was a strange place and where she would have gotten used to being alone suddenly there were lots of people coming and going. We worked on it though, and she did warm up to us. Alice eventually ventured outside once she had worked out how to use the cat flap (known as the cat door in the USA I think). I spent a lot of time showing her that humans are nice and that we just want to care for her, love her and play. The trick with animals is to come down to their level and let them approach you (in my experience, not professional knowledge). Show them that you are decent by letting them sniff you and they will let you know when they feel safe and comfortable.

As far as cats go Alice was quite small (the bigger cats bullied her a bit). For most of her life while at my grandparents’ house I was the only one that she would let pick her up. My tip for that is to make them feel stable and safe. Support all four limbs and stroke gently, when they want to get down let them. If you keep holding them, they will not want you to pick them up again. Thinking about it, very rarely did Alice have her claws out.

Occasionally, if you were playing with her, you would get a little scratch, but she never tried to go for you.

She wasn’t a very playful cat; she would play with pens on the floor, but she was not one to chase a ball or any toy. Sadly, she has now passed. If I can find any, I will show a couple of pictures of her.