Felix

 

 

After our first cat Muffet died following a long and happy life, the kids decided I had mourned for long enough, and gave me a kitten for christmas.  He was a little and ginger, and filled our lives with happiness with his antics.  He was always chasing bits of paper, or wool, or anything he could find, and behaving in the time honoured tradition of all kittens.  As it turned out, he couldn’t have come into our lives at a better time;  one of my sons was badly injured in a car accident on his way home to our place for a late Christmas gathering on Boxing Day.  So the kitten gave us some welcome “light relief” and a little bit of escapism over those first few weeks, until his condition stabilised.

 

We discussed at length a suitable name for this lovely little kitten.  He looked so pretty with his ginger and white colouring, and he had brought a lot of happiness into our lives, so he became Felix, which means amongst other things, happy.  He grew into a very slender and handsome cat, because he had some siamese ancestry, and he always looked as though he needed a good feed, even though he was eating very well.  When he was about three months old, Max came into our lives as well, and it used to look very funny to see this lovely sleek cat playing with dumpy fluffy kitten.  They looked a bit like Laurel and Hardy, or Abbott and Costello.  But they became firm friends and a real partnership.  You would never find one without the other.

 

In due course, he had to go to the vet for his “little operation”.  Of course Max wondered where on earth he had gone, and was rather put out that his playmate had disappeared.  Felix in the meantime was feeling a bit mournful about the whole idea, and cried all the way to the vets, which fortunately was only a few blocks away.  I came back and picked him up from the vets while he was still groggy and took him home.  Max was very relieved, but also very puzzled.  Why was his friend lying down all the time?  Why wouldn’t he get up and have a wrestle?  When Felix  eventually started to come around, he decided he needed a loo break, and headed drunkenly towards the backdoor.  While his front legs were saying onward, ever onward, his back legs kept buckling under him, thus halting the procession.  He just kept on picking himself up and starting again…  After the visit to the toilet, I carried him back in, and put him back to bed where he lay down for a while and rested, with Max hovering concernedly in the background.  Then Felix decided he wanted a drink of water, and headed to the kitchen, and crouched down over the bowl, lapping.  I checked him a minute ot two later, and found he had fallen asleep where he was, head still bent, and nose just out of the water.  Just as well I checked him!  So back to bed where he slept a bit more, and after a few hours, to Max’s relief he was more normal…

 

When I used to come home from work, Felix invariably would rush out to meet me as soon as I got out from the car.  He would then “talk” to me the whole way inside.  It was a constant chatter, “Miaow, miaow, miaow, miaow, miiiiiiiiiiaaaaaaaoooooowwwww!!!!” as he told me of the day’s happenings.  He would keep it up till he was fed, and Max would just watch and listen, and wait eagerly for the food….

 

All went well till Tiggy arrived.  Tiggy was being “boarded” at our place, but it ended up being quite an extended visit.  Tiggy was an adult, older than the others, and after he had settled in, he thought he should be treated with a little more decorum and deserved the status of head cat.  Felix had other ideas.  He, with Max as his right hand man, took Tiggy’s challenges to heart, and we had the feline version of the gun fight at the OK corrall, in the hall way.  Max and Felix up one end, and Tiggy at the other.  They faced each other, but pretended not to be looking at each other.  A lot of spitting went on, and yowling in an unearthly manner.  This continued for a few minutes, then they got serious.  There was a few swipes at each other, claws extended, and a few pieces of fur flew through the air, but it was over quickly.  Felix was the boss, and Max was his right hand man, and poor Tiggy was down the bottom…..

 

All continued on as normal, till I went into hospital for a short stay.  As you would have read in my story of Max, he had a huge abscess near the base of his tail, which I discovered when I returned.  Of Felix there was no sign.  We searched high and low, and for a long time, but to no avail.  We eventually accepted the fact that he had gone, and we mourned him….Max did too.  Tiggy didn’t, and staged a successful takeover bid as soon as he worked out Felix had gone.  But Felix’s memory stays with us……a very “happy” memory…..