A-Z #3 (C)

C is for CAT

I love cats (yes, I do like dogs too).  It is difficult for me to remember a time in my life when there was not a cat in our home.  I remember we had one down on the farm and than a break of a couple of years when we were living in rooms when we came to Perth. The first house we rented enabled us to get a cat and from then on I doubt we were without a feline friend.

Looking back I remember Molly, Fluffy, Timmy, Angel, Charlie Brown, Itsy and Bitsy, Tiki, Whitey, Pumpkin, Koko, Gus, Pip, Soot, Henry and with us now is Precious who is eleven and a half years old and still going strong.  There were others whose names escape me right now but I do know we loved them all and were always very sad when sometimes their lives were cut off too soon.

I only have to see a picture of a kitten/cat and my heart melts.

C is for CANARY

About 8-10 years ago I noticed this little bird hopping around on our front lawn and realised it was a canary.  It was foraging in the grass looking for food and it couldn't fly.  There were several cats in our area and I was concerned for the bird's safety.  Even then I was not terribly mobile so I asked my other half to try and catch the canary.  It proved quite evasive even though unable to fly and fluttered into some nearby bushes.   I grabbed an old net curtain and MOH was able to catch him without much trouble.

We popped this beautiful bird into the large cage with our finches and he lived there happily until last year when one day we found him dead on the floor of the cage.   The finches are always very skittish but the canary seemed unafraid of humans and if I poked grass etc., through the wire he would come over and nibble at it.   We actually sort of carried on a conversation with each other....mainly chirping sounds.  He had the most beautiful song and that is something we miss so much.  We are both so glad we gave this little bird a chance of a reasonably happy life and being in such a large cage he gradually regained the use of his wings and would enjoy flying from one end to the other.  I think he had been kept in one of those horrible small cages which was why he was unable to fly when we first found him.  He bossed the finches around without hurting them and occasionally they would rebel and let him know he wasn't the boss all the time.  We do miss our little yellow friend.