by Beverley Williams

Created on: February 13, 2007   Last Updated: April 30, 2007

Our two cats started life as feral kittens in a barn, and right from the start they've rewarded us with antics. That first day, we brought them home and opened the cat box door, but no way were they coming out into this new and scary world, no matter what titbits we tempted them with. So we left them to it and went through into the kitchen to make a snack - only to come back to an empty cat box. So were were our new house mates? One had jammed himself through a CD rack in one corner of the living room, while the other was squeezed up the side of a shelf unit in another corner with her behind up and her head down. They stayed like that for hours poor mites!

Since then, they've become much more confident and adventurous, she's claimed my end of the sofa, he's claimed my partners end and we have definite signals for play time - although we do tend to ignore the one where himself drags the dangly goldfish on its stick out of the toys box and up the stairs for us to wave it about for him at 5am in the morning. When they play with each other it's grab hold of your drink and duck as they thunder and fly round the house and over the sofa and your head, two blurry fur balls playing tag.

They have another friend that visits our garden occasionally - I say friend but I don't think they quite know what to make of stumpy, the grey squirrel with the stunted tail. He comes for the peanuts, which he pinches, then buries around our garden and the ones next door - keeping a wary eye on our two ex-feral cats, but totally nonchalant as he goes about his squirrel business. They'll watch him and watch him like tennis match goers, heads moving side to side, sneaking closer and closer until the three are not more than a foot apart - but one give-away bum-wiggle from one of our cats and stumpy's off like a flash and they can do is swish their tails in frustration as he bounds off up the trees..... I'd love to know how he lost the other half of his tail though -overconfidence perhaps?

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