Expert Author Susan Leigh
I have always said that I am not an animal person. I guess that it was the way that I was raised. Animals were seen as messy, demanding creatures that cost money and needed looking after. Well, now I know that those things are true, but it is fine.
My journey with animals started when I got married. My husband came with a cat. Technically it was his daughter's cat, but she had moved to her own place and left her cat behind. Tiffin used to sleep on my chest until I fell asleep and then she would leave. She was a very reassuring presence, and I lived with her for three years until she became ill.
When we moved house the same daughter rescued a dog abandoned on the motorway, a large black and tan Daschund. She bathed her and brought her to our house as she felt it would be good for us to have a dog. I was horrified, very nervous of dogs at the time, but Daisy moved in and soon took over.
She was love on legs, a real diva with an amazing attitude. If you put bags of food shopping on the floor half of it would have gone by the time you returned to the room, with only a minute wag of the tail to indicate who was responsible. One year all our Christmas presents were opened when we returned from a night out; she left me one champagne truffle. Pot pourri was everywhere, but at least the room smelled nice. If you took her for a walk she would never take the same route twice and would stand, sit and then lie down if you tried to insist on going the way you wanted.
Ben, a standard red Daschund was the runt of his litter, abandoned by his mother. He came and joined Daisy, gaining confidence from her. He was a very nervous little fella, but fine when she was there.
Poppy cat was brought by my husband's other daughter because she couldn't look after her. The day she arrived the two Daschunds ran up to her, she sat and just stared at them both. Harmony ensued from then on. She would often join us when we went for walks, following along the canal tow path, or running through gardens along the way.
Then Pixie cat turned up at my back door. A tiny kitten, goodness knows where she came from or how she got into the garden. She refused to leave. I left it a day for her to return to her home, though I did give her a small bowl of cat milk. She was still there the next day so she moved in.
Clover was a tiny feral Mum, heavily pregnant, who started living in our road. I fed her and she let me stroke her head while she gave birth in my porch. She had two living kittens and the three of them moved in. I was going to give the kittens away to a good home, but no one was suitable! Then the vet asked me if I had given them names. Nothing else to say! So her two sons Sooty and Sylvester joined the brood.
By now the dogs have died, buried in the garden with headstones to mark their graves. Poppy has gone and she has a marker to remember her by. The last animal to arrive was Tiger, a male cat who kept coming through the upstairs window, my cat flap. I'd put him out the back door only to turn and find him coming down the stairs again. I eventually accepted that this was where he intended to stay.
So now I'm living with my original cat Pixie, who is definitely the tiny matriarch, quite elderly now and rarely goes out. She likes gourmet dinners and warm radiators. Sylvester who is now a healthy young male. His brother Sooty had FIV but lived on sliced chicken quite happily for nine months after the diagnosis and got back to good health, but then deteriorated and we had to let him go. And Tiger, who has had to have several teeth removed, thinks that he's a dog and follows me everywhere.
It's been an adventure, but I love it. Love having cats sleeping and hearing them snore, loudly. Keeping the heating on for them, opening several flavours of dinner to see which they will prefer, spending more time in the supermarket at the pet counter than on my own shopping. Yes, I think I'm an animal person after all.