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Pudding / Nephyr / Taree / Tigger / Mac & Mabel / Hinge & Bracket / Taritu / Tinkerbell

This is a first! A photograph of Tinkerbell taken on Andrew's HTC phone and e-mailed home - yes, I know it sounds easy but it's taken a bit of a marathon to get the phone fully functioning - only 15 months to sort out sending e-mails! But we think it was worth the wait.

Tinkerbell - Her Story

Tinkerbell showing her spectacular grey markings

We met Tinkerbell a couple of months after our beloved Taritu died at an indeterminate age as we didn't know how old she was when we first invited her to live with us. We knew a little more about Tinkerbell as she had her own 'Adoption' page on the Cats Protection web-site.

We visited the Shelter and were invited to have a look at the current visitors to the luxury bays. In a softly lit annexe we saw that quite a few of the bays were occupied and everyone was a little quiet, shy and perhaps sleepy. Each pen is appointed with a private area, a cat flap to get to their own exclusive exercise yard and toilet area. In the first bay there was a little black and white cat who was still very nervous and I think we did believe that we would go home with a black and white (preferably two who liked each other) in memory of those other black and white cats that had shared our lives : Pudding, Tigger, Taree and Taritu. A couple of pens along were cats who had already secured new homes and were waiting for their prospective owners to come and claim them and a few more pens which housed cats that still needed to adjust. Then we arrived at Tinkerbell's pad.

We had honestly come prepared to take two cats home with us if we could find the right combination as we didn't really have the stomach to deal with an 'acclimatisation' problem, we'd lived through lots of those in our lifetime and we aren't getting any younger! Across the way, a young family of about 5 or 6 were just beginning to stir and demand attention from mum, except for one young kitten who was very adventurous and had a very healthy pair of lungs and and excruciating screech - Viktoria Azarenka would be hard put to beat him on a good day. The kittens were not yet weaned, but this was definitely a warrior kitten - all of them had lovely markings ranging from tabby to torty with rich dark areas of colour - very little white visible anywhere.

Then we noticed that one of the pens hadn't got a 'sold' sign on (metaphoric) and we entered Tinkerbell's domain. I think it probably was instant kismet - and adult female looking for a home, classed as white (which she is predominantly) and grey and around four years old. We decided we should like to get better acquainted with her. We were assured that she was a friendly cat and loved being cuddled - in fact insisted on a cuddle first thing in the morning. We liked the idea of a cat that would agree to being cuddled because we were never able to share that with Taritu who would only allow contact if we were safely in bed under the duvet covers when she would settle quite happily knowing we couldn't move too freely. We miss the fact that all our previous cats had allowed themselves to be cuddled by us and would settle on knees irrespective of whether or not it was convenient.

Unhappily Tinkerbell has not proved to be a cat that enjoys a cuddle - but she will come and sit 'with' us on her terms. She will sit on the chair armrest next to whoever is in the chair and she will snuggle up to me on the sofa but not on me - she retains the right of her own independence.

Tinkerbell showing her best sides and how she can dominate the armrest of her favourite chairs.

She is a healthy and very powerful cat with an excellent appetite. She doesn't mind being outside so long as she can get back in without having to use a cat-flap so the back door and bedroom window are her ingress and egress points and she is quite sanguine about being kept in when we have to be out or at night although as the weather improves she does enjoy trying to get out earlier and earlier, in fact as soon as it is daybreak. She also has an uncanny internal clock when it comes to mealtimes she knows exactly when it is 7am, 1pm and 7pm when she gets a fresh sachet.

The real turning point in inviting her to share her life with us was the fact that although she wasn't black and white, her markings resembled those of Dr. Evadne Hinge who shared a short eleven years with us. Evadne and her sister Dame Hilda Bracket were refined torties - grey and pink. Evadne was predominantly white, her tail was a magnificent pale ginger (pink) with tabby markings, she had an oval splodge of grey and another of pink on her back and one grey ear and one pink. Tinkerbell has the same markings other than the tail is silver grey tabby and her ears and splodge on her back are grey. But her markings mirror those of Evadne. Evadne was not as powerfully built as Tinkerbell and the final decision was based on the fact that Tinkerbell starts with the letter T and several of our other cats had also been 'T'-cats. As she was already four years old and had presumably had this name for the same length of time it would not be easy to take that away from her or get her to respond to a new one - T.S. Eliot's 'The naming of Cats' always comes to mind!

Tink's Pixie Dust Pale

Isn't this superb? With Andrew's interest in Beers (understatement) it's a must to feature this on our own Tink's page. For more information about the Welbeck Abbey Brewery follow the link.

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