This article was inspired by Ruth (Monty’s mom) who asked on another article if I missed the kittens who Walter and Jozef once were and the answer is, yes I do! But I love our cats as adults too and as the years go by I love them more than ever.

We rescued Walter from a horrible home when he was 2 months old, we had to pay the people £5 to bring him away. The woman was wearing dirty clothes and then the man came downstairs equally as dirty and with a tiny kitten clinging onto his pullover for dear life. He was to be our Walter. Sadly we had to leave his sister, they wouldn’t part with her, maybe they were planning to breed kittens from her to sell.

Walter was shaking but we had to take him to the vets, he had fleas, worms, ear mites and a heart murmur. Ebony was 11 years old and hated him on sight. When he felt better from his vet treatment and good food and tlc he was a real pest to her. She only spoke to him in hisses.

So our solution was to find him a companion and this is how Jozef came into our family. We heard about a farm house with kittens needing homes. Jozef’s mother Mrs Champ had 7 kittens and no milk left to feed them. His 6 ginger brothers were spoken for and going that day too, they were really too young to leave their mother but she couldn’t cope, she was very young herself and all the kittens were already eating kitten food. His gran they called The Other One (strange name) had 4 kittens of her own and had been trying to help her daughter out but she wasn’t coping with 11 of course.

Mrs Champ had one more kitten at Christmas that year, they called him Noel and kept him, then thank goodness they saw sense and had all the cats, both male and female, neutered.

But back to the day we went to see them, Jozef toddled across to us, he was like a little house brick on legs lol. He definitely chose us. Walter leapt up in the air with happiness when we arrived back home with Jozef and wanted to play, poor Jo ran for cover. He said ‘Who is this madman, I haven’t even had time to unpack yet!’ But he soon settled in and they played together and Ebby was left in peace. Jo was so tiny he couldn’t even climb into the litter tray, we put a book next to it as a step up for him.

Walter was hyperactive, he ran up the curtains and struck the wind chimes constantly. Poor Jo was jealous, we had to lift him up to have a go. But we did have fun, we invented all kinds of games, it was exhausting and we used to shut the boyz downstairs to sleep at night so that Ebony wasn’t bothered by them. We could see the relief on her face when we said goodnight to those little livewires.

Tamuri who was around a year old, lived next door, he loved to come and play with them. He loved Ebony too, he made himself quite at home and his family knew where to find him. Walter was almost twice the size of Jozef and went for neutering a long time before him, Jo still hasn’t caught up in size but isn’t shaped like a house brick any more.

Eventually Popsy came to live with us too, she loved Ebby and Jozef but mostly steered clear of Walter, as he grew up he became ‘the cat who walked alone’. Tamuri’s people emigrated and rehomed him. It broke our hearts as we loved him like our own. Sadly we heard he was run over and killed in his new home by a main road. I wish they would have left him with us.

Popsy died at only 5 years old and the following year Ebby died of old age. So since then we only have our boyz, Walter has anxiety if anything changes, we think the bad start in life caused it and he’s a bit of a bully too. Jozef puts him in his place but we feel it wouldn’t be fair on either of them to take any new cats in, maybe depriving them of a home where they would be happier with no Walter to rule them.

Ruth aka Kattaddorra