Unlike the Furries the year previously, Flora Fourpaws and Furrileesa Fourpaws were not born in the garden. Rather The Cat chose somewhere out in the fields to raise her litter for the first few weeks of their lives. There was an inevitability that, all being well, she would bring the kittens back to the garden for weaning and, one evening around six weeks after their birth, she did exactly that, carrying them carefully but briskly one at a time from their nest in the fields, scaling walls with them in her mouth and finally depositing them inside one of the pods provided to give shelter in colder weather. She proudly showed them off to the humans; Flora was a calico, three colours (like her tortoiseshell mamma) but with much more white, rather like The Cat’s daughter Ratchet, born a few years previously. Furrileesa was black with a tiny white dot at his throat; the humans guessed Longtail was his father.

The next two weeks of the kittens’ lives were spent exploring, learning to walk more securely (Flora was very wobbly) and getting braver (Furrileesa was very shy). Then, one day, the kittens were gone and so was The Cat. Mealtimes revealed that she was coming to eat from the fields once again, having taken her brood away, for some reason unknown to the humans. She came diligently back and to, eating, leaving to feed her young family, and then coming back to refuel. She did this multiple times a day (the Fourpaws were obviously growing) for two weeks before Flora was discovered, sitting quiet as a mouse, in some long grass in the garden one warm spring day. The Cat tasked the humans with kitten-sitting her daughter while she went out of the garden, returning proudly five minutes later with her son in her mouth. Both kittens safely delivered to the garden, weaning commenced.

In the interim period during which the Fourpaws had been away from the garden, their characters had changed. Flora was no longer the friendly girl she had been, and Furrileesa had taken her place as the gregarious kitten, happy to be touched by the humans. Flora shunned human touch, wanting only to be close to her mother. She refused solid food, unlike Furrileesa who was only too happy to tuck in. It was another week before Flora ate from a dish, a week during which she appeared worryingly quite unwell, sitting in the garden huddled and small, while her brother filled his belly and grew bigger. It was a great relief when Flora finally took her first mouthfuls of solid food (it was fish) and from then on she started to flourish.

Days and weeks passed and a slightly older family of three foster kittens joined the Garden Family providing companionship for the Fourpaws – new faces and characters to get to know, tussle, snuggle and adventure with. Fun was had by all until a virus swept through the kitten population, sadly claiming Furrileesa’s life. The other kittens clawed their way back to health – it was a hard few weeks for them, but a relief for the humans to know that, tragic as it was for Flora to have lost her little brother, she had her new cousins to comfort her and provide a distraction at such a sad time.

Cats are survivors, life goes on. There is a big gap in everyone’s life where Furrileesa used to be. He has his place in all our hearts, and being a good-natured boy with a sweet disposition and being the sort to think of others, only one day after he passed away a family of five kittens arrived out of the blue for weaning.

Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe not.