Mary, queen of cats

Mary’s MAIN Obsession is outside. Her whole world revolves around outside, and her “door” to the outside is the bathroom window.
She gets locked up during the day when we are at work, and when we are at home, the window gets opened. There is a long and complicated reason for this arrangement (one we will no doubt delve in to at a later stage), but the long and the short of it is we don’t want her to get herself in trouble and we are not there to help if she gets hurt or stuck.
About two or three weeks ago, she came in with her collar half on, half off.

Collar half on half off

We noticed she had a nasty looking open, raw wound at the back of her neck. We immediately took the collar off, cleaned out the wound and took her collar off to avoid further irritation to the wound. Oh my – was she UPSET about the man handling! Our popularity dropped 10 points on a scale from 1 to 10. But it had to be done. It was for her own good. Problem was, because Mary had no collar on, Mary was not going to go outside. So not only are we torturing and man handling her, we now lock her inside and put her under house arrest!

Wound at the back of her neck

Two weeks later and the wound was sufficiently healed and the collar could be put back on. That meant one thing – the window, the precious precious window will be opened!

Unfortunately, when we opened the window, it was raining and cold. Her joy soon turned in to misery, and we were to blame. It was clear that it was our fault that it was raining and we were even bigger jerks for not making the rain stop.

Mary’s miserable look, blaming us for the rain

She sat at that window, refusing to move, and when it became apparent that we REALLY had no intention of stopping the rain, she decided to get her own back.

Sitting at the window, refusing to move

If she can’t do what SHE wants, then neither would we. She promptly plonked herself down RIGHT on top of the mouse pad of the computer – sabotaging all attempts of getting any work done.

If she can’t do what she wants, neither can we. Sabotaging work.

Later, she even snubbed our offer of treats (she is EXTREMELY fussy but the treats she DOES actually like are ALWAYS met with fanaticism!).

We have a 5 day weekend ahead of us, which means that she would have access to outside for 5 solid days – now if the weather would only play along, all would be well in Maryland!

Mary is my little gift from The Universe.
After we came back from New Zealand, I missed having companion animals. But our situation was unstable and we did not know what was happening from one day to the next, so taking on animals was certainly not a good idea.  Once we found work in Johannesburg and started building a new life, we adopted a big blue-steel gray Great Dane after removing her from an unhealthy environment.
Gia and I bonded almost immediately and she never managed to bond with anyone else. I nursed her back to health and she turned into a beautiful, healthy, big dog that I loved dearly.

Sadly, we had to give her away when we learned we had to move away. If I could have kept Gia, I would have. I adored that dog. I suffered a broken heart when she left us.

Two evenings before we were due to move from Gauteng to the Cape (and the day after we gave Gia away), we heard a soft meow coming from the bushes outside the back door at the kitchen. My first thought was of a cat trapped in the thicket and needing help. This was strange as I had never seen or heard any cats in the vicinity. We lived on a busy street and thus it was not a cat-friendly environment.
I immediately went to investigate, and as I came closer to the bushes, out jumped a blue-steel fluffy cat, in perfect condition. The cat immediately walked straight past me and straight into the house. This may not seem like an extraordinary thing for a cat to do, but this particular cat turned out to be a shy and oversensitive cat that was very wary of humans.

We did not want to take on another animal so soon after Gia and especially seeing as we did not know where we were going to live or how long we would be stable for. The last thing we wanted was to get fond of another companion animal and have to say goodbye because we could not keep it.

I was willing to take a gamble. This cat was EXACTLY the same colour as Gia and she came out of nowhere. We discussed the matter and it was decided that if we could not find the “owners” of this cat before we moved, we would adopt her.

Needless to say, we never did find her previous “owners” and Mary became a very important part of our lives and our little nucleus family. Life has not been the same since.