I suppose having shown Layla I should show my previous cats (they have all crossed the rainbow bridge but will live forever in my memory:
This is Olivia. She came into my home as a stray kitten that somebody abandoned at my cottage. They abandoned her and her whole litter, but Olivia was the only one we could catch - we lured her out with a hot dog. Audaces fortuna juvat (fortune favours the bold), as they say. She passed away this summer at the ripe old age of eighteen.
Murphy. The first year my husband Troy and I were together we visited his mother in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia (about a three hour drive away). While we were there we observed some teenage children tormenting this kitten. They were trying to throw her over a chain link fence. I stopped the car, Troy jumped out and put the fear of God into those kids, and we took Murph home with us, and there she stayed. She eventually went deaf, then senile. She passed away in 2019 at the age of twenty.
Stinky Pete: Another cottage stray, and another bold one. We went to the cottage, got out of the car, and this orange and white kitten came running out of the woods and ran right up my leg. He would not let us leave him, and so we didn't. He disappeared about five years ago after slipping through a hole in a window screen - we think a neighbour saw him and nabbed him.
Stewie: The only cat we had that we got on purpose. Troy's mother knew a person breeding Himalayan cats and he had to have one. Enter Stewie. Poor eyesight thanks to crossed eyes. Large and in charge, he had the attitude of his namesake (Stewie Griffin) and was constantly beating up the other cats - it got so bad that we had to give him away for the health of the others.
Cigarette, another cottage stray. She was an adult when she came to us (pictured here sleeping in the cottage sink), and what a hunter she was. She routinely took down animals that were larger than her, and she was the one cat Stewie couldn't push around. She was also the only "outdoor" cat we had, mainly because she was an outdoor cat when she came to us. She disappeared when we got Layla. She took one look at the new puppy, said "Nope!", and we never saw her again.
Igor: Came to us in the oddest of ways: Troy and I had been visiting his parents in Yarmouth. After the long drive home we went to bed, and while lying there we heard a strange sound. I got up to investigate and discovered a mother cat in our bedroom closet with a freshly born brood of kittens. She had come in through a torn screen in our bedroom window and had kittens in our closet! We put up posters and nobody ever claimed her - the best we figure was that the people who lived in the apartment before us had owned her. We let her stay and gave away most of the kittens, but nobody wanted Igor because he was an ugly kitten (which was why we named him Igor). We kept him and he grew into a gentle giant: He weighed 28 pounds and was the most loving cat you'd ever see. He lived to be 14 years old.
