? 2004 - 18 April 2019
This page is about Fluffy. Fluffy is probably a pedigree Norwegian Forest Cat, but it's not confirmed as he turned up at my Father's farm in the early winter of 2007. My father slowly became aware that the two farm cats weren't the only ones on the farm, and that there was a very shy black cat living in the west barn. It took a couple of months before the cat could be persuaded to come into the lighter shadows, but he wouldn't come closer than 10ft to anyone and fled evey time my dad's dogs appeared.
We popped in to visit my Dad for Christmas 2007, and as soon as Fluffy heard the children, he set up a-yowling and waved his paw at them under the barn door. He was desperate to meet the children and jumped on them as soon as they entered the barn, purring loudly almost hugging them in his desperation to have their company. Over the next 3 to 4 days we grew very fond of Fluffy, but at the time we didn't know if he was a stray or just someone's cat who happened to have been lost. So, over the next year my father & step mother fed him regularly, but didn't have much contact with him - as their dogs were never far away and Fluffy remains frightened of them - and tried to find if anyone had lost him.
By Christmas 2008 we were convinced that Fluffy had been abandoned and was a domestic cat, but wasn't prepared to share his house with dogs. As we knew Jack was seriously ill, we thought we'd get another cat and try to introduce them to each other. So, we brought Fluffy in a cat basket the 6 hour drive home. Only to find that Jack had died that night in the cattery. Not nice.
Anyway, Fluffy has become a loved member of the family. He's not boss cat - that's Squeaky's job. However, regardless of Squeaky's opinion on the matter, Fluffy will do what he wants. And when Fluffy wants a lap, he's going to get it, even if it's already occupied...
Fluffy is such a softie, he's a bit of a hunter, but out of preference he will hole up somewhere and sleep through the day, coming indoors of an evening to sleep on a lap. He never wanders far, so he cannot have arrived at my Dad's farm on his own, and must have been dumped. The only reason we can think that he was dumped is that he is more of a dark brown than black, so someone wanting to show him would loose points through a poor colour. Otherwise he is the perfect shape, conformation and looks for a pedigree Norwegian Forest Cat. What is more, he exhibits a Norwegian Forest Cat's wonderful temperament.
Fluffy is wonderful, and we think that whoever dumped him was a fool, but we have benefitted so much from their foolishness that all we can do is to thank them.
Here he is with Squeaky in our conservatory:
In July 2016 Fluffy gave us a scare. He started coughing dreadfully, and basically passed out on us. An emergency visit to the vet resulted in him staying in for a couple of days. Both lungs had collapsed and at least one third of his chest cavity was full of fluid. He had seemed perfectly happy until he passed out.. Anyway after having his lungs drained, everything went well, and on his third day back, this was him in the garden:
The intrepid hunter had been out, and in order to thank us, he brought back a rare, endangered and protected, Dormouse.
At the start of April 2019 Fluffy started to show signs of being unwell, wheezing, panting and generally not being his usual self. We took him to the Vet, and an X-Ray showed that his lungs had partially collapsed again and the void was again full of fluid. This was drained and he got a bit better for a week or so, but we knew from the X-Ray that there was a severe underlying problem. He had very bad heart disease and no amount of draining his lungs would help that. When he started to show the same symptoms again, with a terribly heavy heart we took him to the vet on the 18th of April to be put to sleep. We shed many, many tears. We loved him so much, but it would have been cruel to prolong his problems. No amount of tablets would have reduced the size of his horribly diseased heart. We buried him in the garden next to Jack, Gryff and Floyd.
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