She was a kind of oatmeal brown at first and Oatmeal may well have been her name, had it not been such a mouthful and inappropriate for such a pretty little girl.
We then considered Amber. It was a cute name for our new little kitten.
My first job was to wash her. As I said, she was riddled with fleas, so Pen went to the Pharmacy to get some flea shampoo.
"It had better be good," she said. "It was about 16€"
Well, the thing about cats is, most of them don't like water and Amber was no different. Thankfully, as you can see from the picture of her sat next to an egg-cup, she was too small to be able to escape the bath, although she complained bitterly.
If you've ever heard a kitten wail, believe me, it tugs massively on the heart strings.
Anyway, she was in the bottom of the bath having been soaked ready to be de-flead, while I double-checked the instructions on the flea shampoo.
For a cat of her age, the dose was (according to the bottle) about half a teaspoon. Have you ever tried to stretch shampoo that far? It didn't work for me either, so I just added it little by little until I got an all over lather.Meanwhile, Amber was none too impressed by this and was now exercising what would later become her rather famous claws.
Eventually, I finished, rinsed and wrapped her in a towel. She was not a happy puppy - sorry kitten, I can tell you, but I snuggled her in to give her some body heat and shortly thereafter, Pen took over.Suddenly, we found ourselves with a ginger tiger, who was the prettiest thing you can imagine.
She made us laugh and she made us howl in equal measure. For some reason, she loved being on my shoulders and one day while relieving myself, she decided to climb up on daddy's shoulders.
There was nothing I could do. I mean, I was standing there before the loo, while this little cat employed all twenty claws to aid its climb, oblivious to my shrieking in pain.
It was shortly after this that she got her first visit to the vets.
"Oh, what a pretty little boy..." Sylvie, the vet said.
"Boy?"
"Definitely," she assured us. "He's small, but—" she held him up again. "Yes, definitely a boy."
So "Amber" was not Amber after all and we decided a more masculine name would be in order, which was where Biscuit came in. It seemed to fit and stuck right there and then. Of course, it got messed with, depending upon whether he was being cute or a right little bastard. My particular favourite was "Bikkit".
He never really grew. He was always small and it became a thing that we'd have to convince people that he really was a cat and not a kitten, but as small as he was, he had a giant personality.
He fitted with us beautifully and about the only thing we had to be wary of, was escape—his!
We live right in the centre of a village in Orne and whilst it may be a sleepy little place most of the time, in typical French fashion, the French take elements of the highway code to be suggestions only. So when it comes to little things like speed limits and such, once again, they're rarely adhered to. Some of the people who have driven through our village cannot possibly have been doing 50kmh, so Biscuit had to be an indoor cat.
Try telling him that!
Every time the door was opened, he'd suddenly appear and scamper off, tail in the air. The only thing missing was a sign saying, "Chase me, chase me."
He got out once and was missing for an entire week. We were beside ourselves with worry. We tried looking everywhere, but as a neighbour pointed out, if a cat doesn't want to be seen, it won't be.
Of course, he returned ... well, kind of.
I happened to be walking round the corner to a friend's house, when this little orange cat strutted across the road.
"Biscuit?" I called, unsure.
He turned, let out this incredibly loud wail and ran to me. I picked him up and he immediately went to my shoulders.
We have never been so relieved.
Sadly, Biscuit never learned from his misadventure. We got him back covered in ticks, thin and tired, but it didn't stop him from trying to get out any time the door was opened.
Biscuit was about two when Fidget appeared. He wailed outside our house and when I opened the door, this tiny kitten with huge ears strolled in, used the litter tray and stayed.
They weren't immediate friends, but within three days, they got along perfectly.
And so it was.Biscuit and Fidget became the best of friends. Their antics in the mornings and other times of the day too, made us roar with laughter.
Fidget grew to be a really big cat, where Biscuit remained really small. He just didn't know it.
So for the better part of two years, we had two cats, but over this last weekend, Biscuit wasn't himself. We'd spoken to other cat owners who said that it was probably the hot weather.
We came down on Sunday morning and he was hiding under a table. He was weak and had obviously been sick during the night. He'd tried to drink and eat, but all that happened was he'd bring it back up again.
We rang the emergency vet and took him up there, where the vet discovered a lump. With Ultrasound, he reasoned that it had grown quickly and to such a degree that it was actually blocking Biscuit's digestive tract, which was why everything was just coming back up. He was even weaker by then and terribly dehydrated.
We left him there in the hopes that when the vet put him on a drip and gave him some pain meds, he'd rally. That being the case, he may have been well enough to be operated on the next morning and perhaps the tumour could be removed.
It was not to be.
Apparently, Biscuit did rally during the night, but lost the battle in the early hours of Monday morning.
We were devastated.
As much as he was a little bugger, he was a wonderful friend and pet. Over the four years and change that we had the pleasure of his company, he was nothing but a superb companion to both Penny and I and a brother to Fidget, who at present, is quite bewildered by his friend's sudden disappearance.
We retrieved him from the vet on Monday morning and buried him just under out window in the garden later. It's ironic I know, but at least he can be outside now, which was all he ever wanted to be, but couldn't.
