While this is perhaps not the very best image of Tabitha, it is one of the last (it could take numerous hours to search through the records for a favourite and so it will suffice…she looks her age & slightly grumpy!). It was taken on one of our last ‘planting out’ days and during the course of her nineteen & a half years, she was present at most of them, generally sitting precisely where I wanted to dig….keenly watching my fork and trowel or stretched out in the sun, waiting patiently ’til I’d finished. She was almost more obedient than our dear old black labrador, Rollo. In their young days, they were a fine pair of friends (when the big beast wasn’t antagonising her!) and now they’re lying beside each other once again.
I’d never intended to have a cat, but when a young boy from the village turned up at our kitchen door on Boxing Day 1995, suggesting the kitten he was holding was ours or was about to be drowned (eeeeek & Clemmie’s eyes were getting bigger and bigger as she stood beside me), well….somehow I didn’t have much choice in the matter. Tabs certainly had her moments and survived many more than her allocated nine lives, but for the most part I think being the Glenmore puss cat wasn’t a bad life….not a bad way to come back, we often jested!
It will take me some time to stop expecting to see her at the kitchen door, demanding to come inside; sitting sphinx-like on the verandah enjoying the winter sun, watching the fish in the courtyard pond, a-top a fence post with tail wrapped around out-turned paws, bounding along behind us on long family walks or generally just being under my feet. She was a pretty puss cat, a great character and much loved….by us and countless visitors to the garden. But she was on a downhill path with an appointment at the vet just a whisper away. I’m so glad she went of her own accord. I found her stretched out in the sun under the Mulberry tree on Tuesday afternoon last week. She had a smile on her face (as she so often did). She will be much missed. Farewell puss cat Tab.