Sophie

Last week our beloved black and white cat Sophie died after a heart attack. She was just over  four years old. She bravely struggled on for a few days and we had her back home from the vets for a couple of days, but she had to be returned as she was so weak. The vets tell us she had a congenital heart condition, as did it now appears certain, her sister Jess, who died two years ago.

She was the gentlest cat we had ever had and a real character. It’s hard to imagine I won’t see her chasing crickets and butterflies around the garden or staking out voles in the grass. The garden and the surrounding woods were a paradise for a cat and it’s comforting to know she had such a good, though short life.

She will be greatly missed, an integral part of our life here, as was her sister.

Jess

 

Jess

Our beautiful tabby cat Jess died this week, which has been a huge loss for myself and Caroline. Together with her sister Sophie they have brightened our lives the past 18 months. She was only 2 years old and died from natural causes. We had rushed her to the vet but she died on the way there. She was a lovely affectionate, placid cat and will be greatly missed here in Grahy.

I posted about our  life with the cats earlier.

And here are some recent pictures of them both.

Sophie

Jess

Life with two cats

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Living in this very rural part of France its nice to have some feline company. Our two cats Jess and Sophie (sisters) give us endless entertainment and earn their keep catching many rodents!

We acquired them as six month old kittens originally from a french farm. They arrived wide-eyed and nervous about their new home and we kept them indoors for a fortnight before letting them loose. We have no fences around our property and the garden backs onto the forest, so we needed to make sure that they were able to find their way back home. We shouldn’t have worried as for a few weeks they gradually expanded their territory with regular appearances back at the house for reassurance.

We keep them in overnight, on the advice of our neighbours, due to the number of feral cats, martens, badgers and wild boar around.

We have some large dogs near us who do bark loudly and they have learnt to belt back into the house via the cat flap at the first sign of any dogs. This happens more in winter, with the local chasse (hunt) quite active in the forest around us, and their dogs often get lost and end up whining at our door. They usually have a telephone number on their collar tabs and some of them are now kitted out with GPS collars!

They have completly different characters with Jess being more independent and regularly disappearing for hours. Sophie tends to stick nearer to the house and is more easily spooked by anything out of the ordinary.

They both hunt and catch a large number of mice, shrews, voles, and rats. They eat everything except the shrews, which apparently have a liquid produced by glands on the skin making shrews taste rather unpleasant to cats. They do kill the occasional bird, but not that often. The birds here are much more nervous than in the UK.

The large number of trees around provide them with endless opportunities for climbing. Jess is the more agile of the two and can get up and down with some agility. Sophie is not so agile and usually descends rapidly and not with a lot of control!

Its hard now to think of life without them around, they can be very boisterous in the house, especially if the weathers wet and they can’t or don’t want to go out, but its worth it for the pleasure they give us.

A quick rinse?

Wordless Wednesday – Sweet Dreams