ScoutingSquirrel

One golden retriever, Amber, she's my dream dog - I asked for a dog from the age of 3 to 29 and planned a golden called Amber for about the last 15 years of that. Hubby didn't stand a chance! When I gave up teaching to have Robin I intended to childmind from home and spent a goodly chunk of my maternity pay on my Amber girl.

Then we moved to Sweden and rented a farmhouse ... with mouse droppings and a hole in the cutlery drawer and rats in the stables ....

So we acquired Treacle, brown tabby, and Magpie a black and white Tuxedo. Treacle was absolutely petrified (neighbour snatched him from the golf course, with permission from the humans!, as the slowest kitten who appeared among 30 cats when food was out down) Treacle sat on the windowsill of the tack room and shook for three days, got up on a beam and stuck there, crying, then suddenly decided that we were OK and became a furbaby like the flick of a switch. He is Amber's best pal.

Magpie was born in a farmer's barn and concealed until she and her sister were of a size that the farmer wasn't comfortable with 'dealing with'. Ironically, given her name, she is a horror for hunting birds, and particularly for bringing live birds into the house to show us ... we're getting quite good at chucking her out of a room, opening all the windows and then evacuating to give the bird chance to get out again safely!

We neutered those two, because we really didn't need more cats ... and so a feral cat came and gave birth in between the packing crates stored in the stables. After a while of hearing crying we dug our way in to find a nest of kittens cuddled up to hubby's good quality loudspeakers, packed with cushions around them. Moved them to the tack room - warmer, safe from dog, with straw bales and food and water ... and Mum came and took 4 of the 5 away ... after 24 hours of Shadow crying we brought her inside and she became ours. Mum brought the others back to the stables and then disappeared. So - 2 weeks before I gave birth to Joseph (who was 11 days late) we were bottle feeding 4 week old kittens every three hours day and night, and I was leaking breast milk whilst I bottle fed them! 2 of the 5 survived, which is pretty good for feral kittens and for the state they were in. The male took himself off and we saw him occasionally as a feral on a nearby farm.

Shadow, a grey tabby, and my older son bonded from the very first moment and she is his cat, she is a superhero cat and secretly flies to other planets and saves people's lives ... She's also a very pretty young lady and my quilt inspector!

Shadow gets right in the middle of my sewing, Magpie sits on a nearby cushioned seat and observes, Treacle doesn't appear to have noticed the workd of sewing yet! Probably because there is no food involved! Amber lies nearby and occasionally rolls a ball in my direction with an impatient look on her face!

The animal stories on here were a good part of what got me totally hooked!
Helen