In my life there have been many cats. Cats can be wonderful to have around and are usually friendly without being clingy.

Dogs are lovely, mostly. I’ve had two dogs, both loving and good companions.

Both animals have their down-sides though.

Cats like to be independent. They love to go out and keep an eye on what’s going on around the neighbourhood. They are, sadly, liable to wander across roads and sometimes find themselves on the losing side of a close encounter with a large and heavy vehicle.

I had a cat called Coco when I was about 8. He was a Siamese cat and very loving. One day he ran out the front door, down the 50-odd steps to and across the road, to hide under our parked car. I could do nothing but watch. Car after car drove by. I thought, “That’s good, he knows not to run when a car is coming.”

That was true but, sadly, he didn’t also know not to run when a huge, heavy, noise-making monster (a truck) came past. I think he was so scared that it could ‘get’ him, that it ‘got’ him.

This was an early lesson which I did not heed. If I had I would never have had another cat!

Scroll through Mocha and Java, a Siamese couple who had a litter of kittens – all of whom were allegedly taken to a rescue centre after Mocha (the dad) allegedly ate the male kitten; Burlap, whom we had to leave in America when we emigrated to the UK; Adam, whose name we had to change to Madam when he turned out to be a she; Daisy who developed a hideous growth on her forehead; Mama, who came to visit one day as I sat in our rooftop garden and who started to give me one kitten after another, twenty minutes after arriving; Orpheus, Winnie, Dudley, Frankenstein and Poppy, those same kittens; Moosh, who arrived when we had worked our way back down to having only one surviving cat (Orpheus); Tiggy, who came into our lives while we were living in digs* for a while; Pigpen and Tiggy 2, who were given to us by a friend; and Dizzy – my last cat who was my baby until, the inevitable.

Other cats wandered into and out of our lives. No cat could ever be as wonderful as Orpheus, who lived (unlike his brothers and sisters) until he was about 20 and my baby, Dizzy, who came to us as an unweaned kitten, sometime in the late 1970’s. He was the one who sucked on my ear lobe for comfort, even when he had grown up to a fully-toothed cat, until it just became too painful!

One by one the last cats we had, living in the countryside by a narrow but dangerous road, all managed to die of old age. Each one’s passing led to days of mourning. Dizzy’s passing was heart-breaking to me but fortuitous in a way, in that we were moving from the countryside to a suburban house on a very busy road. Time went by, more or less catless. Then:

We moved to the seaside. We went to the dog rescue place and found Rosie. Rosie was a dog of indeterminate heritage. She was the same colour and size, more or less, as a golden retriever and had a wide mouth similar to a staffie*. We chose her because she didn’t bark at Julian! From the minute she arrived, she was Julian’s dog.

She had been found wandering in a poor area of a city in northern England and no one knew anything about what might have happened to her between her birth, about two years earlier, and the day we adopted her. She loved people but took a complete dislike to any dog that came near her. This made it very difficult for me to walk her as there are loads of dogs being walked around here. One day I was walking her along a quiet road when, suddenly, I was face down on the pavement and Rosie was across the road trying to attack two dogs who were being walked by their owner. She had the presence of mind to grab Rosie’s lead and hold it tightly away from her dogs. I got up and went over, apologising profusely. After that, Julian walked Rosie!

Though she was fond of Julian, Rosie allowed me to love her. She would sometimes lie down next to me and fall asleep. She took up a lot of room on a bed!

Rosie got ill and died and for well over a year we couldn’t bear the thought of looking for another but, eventually, we decided to have a look and see if there were any smaller dogs that we could give a home to. For that story and more about Rosie, go into my archives where you will find photos and short articles about both Rosie and Lola, our present dog.

I wouldn’t have another cat – their nine lives don’t last as long as my one! I sincerely doubt that I would have another dog after Lola as her life is likely to be longer than the time I have left. If something should happen to Lola, it would be unfair to look for another dog. Perhaps a guinea pig or, even better, a goldfish!

*digs – rented room(s)

* staffie – Staffordshire bull terrier