by Marcelle Mccallum

Created on: May 24, 2009   Last Updated: May 25, 2009

Losing anyone, who is part of your family is terrible, but when it is the pets we choose to keep with us, on the understanding that we will look after and care for them, it can be particularly difficult. I was recently reminded of this in the most harsh of terms, so much so that I, and my family, are still reeling from the loss. Let me tell you the story of our beautiful Lil Man who was taken from us before his time.

We have a lovely middle aged lady cat, and a little over a year ago, she started behaving strangely. She'd eat all of her food and then ask for more, and more, and more. She didn't appear to be ill or obese, but the food was always gone. About the same time, we started hearing strange sounds downstairs, eventually, we saw a bright orange flash dart into the area under our house. Guessing this was a stray cat, we started to put food out under the house and slowly coaxed what appeared to be a very young female cat out and into our home. Our grand lady cat was relieved and stopped asking for extra food, and quickly became friends with the little orange flash. Once we got close enough we could see that he was older than we thought, and male, just in extremely bad condition, so we fed him up and taught him the difference between a pat and a kick. He was a cheeky little boy, of pale ginger coloring with white highlights, who took a real shining to all of our kids. My eldest suggested we call him Scally-Wag, because he was a bit of a scally wag and the name stuck. He was our Scall, our Scally and could always be found with the children, playing games with them, or just sleeping on their beds. He was even tolerant of our twin babies who were but one when he passed away.


He and the other toms in the neighbourhood used to play together, with very few fights ever breaking out. He was a happy go lucky kind of boy who was very affectionate, even climbing our chests to give us little kisses with his nose. The one day, there was a commotion in our backyard. My eldest and one of my neighbours children went to investigate, while my second and her friend from next door headed through the house to see what they could see. They came back to the front yard panicked and pale to tell me that Scally was hurt, his was tail was bleeding. Well, you know how kids can exaggerate so I quickly calmed them down and went into the kitchen to where they said he had run to. I hope that I will one day stop seeing the picture I saw when I did, if only because it means my children will

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