A monster at the back door.

Two weeks after we had brought home Jaffa and Amber from the Rescue Centre, my husband heard a deep sonorous miaowing at the back door and came hurrying through the house to tell us all to come and see this monster of a creature at the back door. He was, indeed, an enormous cat, with black and tan fur, and, as we were about to discover, an insatiable appetite.

We made enquiries in the village and discovered that one of the local farms had been asked to re-home five stray cats, one of which was this monster. The farmer told us to keep him, as they had more than enough cats on their farm, and this one had decided for himself where he was going to stay.

He was a scaredy-cat, running away at the least sign of movement towards him. His coat was matted, with more than a few large ticks embedded in his fur, and one ear turned over at the tip. He, too, would need to be de-loused and wormed. How we were going to achieve that was anybody’s guess.

His sad eyes told their own tale, that his former experience of life had not been a good one. Unwilling at this stage to enter the house, he ate at the back door. It was going to take much longer to tame him, but, in time, Monster, as we named him, would join the ginger toms, and form one of the trio of cats at Barleycorn.