In the next six months, I will meet no fewer than 16 kitties and their humans. I will live in their homes, care for them and learn their individual charms and peccadilloes. As I meet them, I’ll post their pictures and stories here.

 

I’ve done my very first cat sit! I was pretty anxious about getting it right, so of course the bus was late leaving London, then we sat at the Birmingham bus station for an hour waiting for the next shift driver, who was caught in a traffic jam. Go figure. But it all worked out. Carla and Colin are sweet kitties, rescued from the streets of Borneo by their human, who brought them back to the UK. What luck for them!

Both Carla and Colin are tiny little cats, astonishingly quiet, even for felines. Until they talk. How can someone that small make such a noise? They are darlings, though, with short, almost stumpy, kinked tails that are as expressive as any tail many vertebrae longer. Colin is a wriggly cuddler, but Carla isn’t having any. I am not her human, and I can just go to hell. And return her human, please.

 

Most of you know I spend the past year house and cat sitting in Washington DC for a Foreign Service Officer stationed in Pakistan. I had 13 months to get one (just one!) photo with all five cats in it, and failed spectacularly. So you will have to imagine Handsome Luke, the tuxedo; his sister Sophie – emerald eyes in a coal black presentation case; skinny, loudmouthed, black-to-the-soles-of-her-feet Sasha; Bengal littermates Raul, resident thug and snuggler extraordinaire, and his petite sister Paloma. And just to round out the numbers, my homeowner brought a marmalade kitten with the biggest feet ever home from Islamabad.

So if I ever get a photo of the six of them together, or even a selection that can be made into a montage, I’ll post it here.

But in this life in Washington DC and beyond, there is only ever one cat for me, and that is the kitty of my heart, my beloved Mz Mitz. Mitz moved to Calvert Farms up in Rising Sun, MD, aka Kamp Kalvert for Kitties, where she thrives on succulent voles and field mice and her choice of gourmet cat foods presented for her delectation by her new love, Farmer Paul.