R.I.P. Banshee

Sadly, we had to have wee Banshee p.t.s. today.  She had been with us 14 years, and for the last year or so had failing eyesight (cataracts and possibly high blood pressure).

It seems so long ago when I was driving up our beautiful valley and what I thought was a baby polecat ran across the lane in front of me.  I stopped the car, to find a tiny stripey kitten regarding me from the grass verge.  She was totally unafraid, and when I picked her up, spent the rest of the journey climbing all over me, through the steering wheel, round my neck, and across the dashboard. You can imagine the expression on my childrens' faces when I walked in the room and said "Look what I've found" and deposited tiny Banshee on Gabby's lap.  She was so small she fitted in the palm of your hand and obviously hadn't had a good start in life.  She never grew beyond half grown kitten size.

She got her name from her loud imperious voice.  She was a Princess Cat.  She liked to sleep in the strangest places, especially if they were high up (the top of the fridge freezer was her preferred winter choice for several years).  She liked to be warm.  She liked cheese, and would demand it at the top of her voice (which could be very annoying, and she soon had us fully trained.)  She refused point blank to use the cat flap, never EVER.  That was for Common cats.  So were litter trays.  Filthy places.  She would only ever deign to use one if she was sufficiently desperate and if it was absolutely clean and untainted by Other Cats having Used It.  Equally fussy about drinking water she took to coming upstairs to our bedroom and drinking out of my husband's bedside glass of water.  One day he had drank some at breakfast time so she went off in high dudgeon as he had obviously polluted it!

We would regularly lose her and she would turn up in boxes, shopping bags, dangling over a warm radiator or - a favourite one with her - amongst the tinsel bag of the Christmas decorations.

In the summer she would take herself off to the little field opposite to hunt, and would only come back home when hunting had been bad and she was hungry, and then off she would go again, unless it was raining.  She didn't like that.

She will leave a huge gap in our lives.  I have been crying all day and my eyes are so sore now.  I know it was the right thing to do - the vet said she might have only just been able to see shadows in the end - but it doesn't make it any easier.