Blue eyes and black coat

George still had some of the blue eyes of a kitten when I took him home. Within weeks that blue tinge had grown into a light golden colour, better suited to his little black face.The skin inside his ears was pink, and they seemed unusually large for his face. They were ears to grow into, like baby clothes bought large to allow for longer wearing. The hair of his face, and most of his body, was medium long and stood at right angles to his body, except for the short hair of his tiny black nose. Little wisps of hair stuck out of his large pink ears and single large hairs grew from his face. His whiskers were modest, as befitted an animal of his size - the only modest thing about him. He looked not so much fluffy as sort of starey haired. Not the most beautiful of kittens except in my doating eyes.
As he grew, his hair stayed the same length and started becoming tougher. The way it grew out of his body changed. It began to grow parallel, sleeking down to become shiney in sunlight. The bottom of his feet, the thick leathery skin of his paws was a bluish black. Those paws that had, like his ears, seemed too big for his tiny kitten body began to take on adult proportions. Small, soft and starey, the little kitten was to grow into a sleek elongated cat, from sweetness to strength.
The poet Robert Southey lamented the end of kittenhood. "Kitten is in the animal world what the rosebud is in the garden; the one the most beautiful of all young creatures, the other the loveliest of all opening flowers, " he wrote. "The rose loses only something in delicacy by its development, - enough to make it a serious emblem to the pensive mind; but if a cat could remember kittenhood, as we remember our youth, it were enough to break a cat’s heart, even if it had nine times nine heart strings."
To my mind, however, the chubbiness of kittenhood has nothing to the full grown beauty of an adult cat. Besides, George was fully grown in character from the start. He was always quite certain what he wanted and he was always ready to play.

Bold George's education.

George was bold from the beginning. He squeaked his protest when Lou, his foster mother, handed him to me but settled down in my arms immediately. I placed him in the cat box and drove him home. No more kitten noises. He accepted being alone in the carrier with equanimity. And when I placed him in the crate (a kind of large cage) within the living room, investigated it thoroughly, ate some of the kitten food, used the litter tray and climbed into the bed.
Kittens have to be handled between two and seven weeks in order not to fear humans. George had been handled by Lou and indeed bottle fed by her. He had no fear of humans. In theory the fear instinct in cats is meant to appear at the age of about five or six weeks and according to the books even a kitten who has been well handled by humans may go through a period of avoiding them. By 10 weeks this fear period disappears and the well handled kitten becomes an affectionate cat.
George just cut through this theory. From being a helpless fearless kitten he moved into being a fearless affectionate adolescent without ever going through the fear of humans stage. I could pick him up and cradle him on his back - something I did a lot as I had always wanted a cradle cat. I introduced him to everybody I could think of - the postman, the delivery people, friends, neighbours. Anybody who visited the cat got George to cuddle. When I took him to the vet for a check over and vaccinations, I passed him to the receptionist, the nurse, and each person in the waiting room. He met about 24 people in the first month.
I was giving him the ideal upbringing as a pet. George was going to be a bombproof cat. He was bold. Very bold.

A real little corker.

"He makes his wishes known," said Lou Tyack of West Oxfordshire Cats Protection. "He's a real little corker, this one." She handed the small black kitten to me who squeaked in protest. He was not frightened, merely indignant. His fur positively bristled with outrage as he realised he was being transferred to an unknown female.
George's early life had been spent with Lou Tyack in a cat chalet at the bottom of her Oxfordshire garden. Four kittens had been rescued as a wild litter and handed over to Lou - two black ones and two black and white. I had heard of them while lying on my back with my legs in table top position during a pilates class. As we drew in our muscles and indented our stomachs to get the second leg up to table top, one of my classmates turned her head in my direction and whispered: "Do you know that Lou has some kittens."
Kittens in October are rare, particularly kittens born in the wild. It's normally too late in the year for kittens to survive the winter and most female cats don't come on heat so late. Nature knows the effort of pregnancy may well be wasted. The only winter kittens are those produced by unscrupulous pedigree breeders or equally unscrupulous low life people who think they can make a few extra pence by selling kittens as Christmas presents. These wild kittens, the tiny black male and his three sisters, would probably have died that autumn. How did they arrive so late into a cold world so unfriendly to wild kittens? Perhaps their mother was as fearless and irrepressible as her son was to be, and just fancied a handsome passing tom that autumn despite it not being the right season for cats living wild.
Her four little kittens, if by some miracle they had survived in the wild, would have grown up feral. Their mother was just one of the many unknown cats who live a hidden life in the wild sheltering in damp hedges, or dusty derelict buildings or creeping into factories at night for the warmth left over from day time work. Some of them, the best survivors, are wild from birth, others are pets that have got lost, still others are pets that are thrown out by owners who no longer want them. Their lifespan is often less than two years, as they scrounge for food among the dustbins or try to keep themselves alive by hunting rabbits and rats in the wet fields. For an entire tom cat, it is a life of roaming in search of sex, caterwauling around the roof tops, or dodging the gamekeepers and their guns. For the un-neutered females it is a desperate and short life bearing litters of kittens. Near starving mothers do their best to rear their offspring but few of them survive.
The tiny black kitten and his sisters were alive thanks to Cats Protection and Lou's bottle feeding. But it was unusual to find unwanted kittens in a rescue centre that time of year and I had thought I would have to wait until Spring. I couldn't adopt an adult cat. A kitten was what I had to have, as in 2006 I was spending part of the week in London and part of it in Oxfordshire. A young kitten could be acclimatised to the car and would grow up relaxed about having two different territories. An older cat would have hated each journey. So, though there were cats more desperately needing homes, I had to have a kitten. and a young one at that.
A black kitten was my choice, because black is the least popular colour. Tabbies, gingers, tortoiseshells, blues and whites are quickly chosen out of the rescue pens regardless of their temperaments. Black and whites are not much desired but are taken eventually. In rescue centres where the public are allowed to walk by looking at the cats, they often fail to give black cats even a second glance. Friendly black cats will walk hopefully towards the passing human only to be ignored. Taking a black kitten was the least I could do, to help Cats Protection and the rescue movement in general. I also wanted a black cat because my last cat, Fat Mog, had been strong minded and black. Mog had been put to sleep with kidney disease about two or three months earlier.
A young kitten, as young as eight weeks, would grow up thinking car journeys were a normal part of life. "I can't give him to you yet," Lou had said a week earlier. "He's eight weeks old and he's eating solid food but he still likes his bottle. I don't want to wean him too early if he wants to continue on the bottle." Obviously the small black kitten, rather me or Lou, had taken charge of the the timing of his adoption.
I named him George because I knew he was valiant and irrepressible, and I hoped he would grow up to be loving and gorgeous.

Day 11. No George

I went round four or five places calling and checked out a guy who is said to shoot round my nearby woods. It turns out I know him and he wouldn't have shot George. So that was reassuring.
I think George is dead otherwise he would have come home. I am way for three days and will resume this blog on my return with an obituary of his life starting with his arrival at my home.
Cellia, George's human.

Day 10 - still no George

This was George playing in the sink. I wanted a photo to place on www.catsinsinks.com ( I think that\s the website). He was always happy to oblige for the camera. I have scores of pictures of him playing - in sinks, in waste paper baskets, up trees, with dead mice, with cat toys. He was a good player.
The search is on hold for a few days as I am going to look at standing stones this coming weekend. Ronnie will be at home just in case he turns up. I have decided to write George's life story in this blog, starting with the small black kitten with a mind of its own. A sort of extended obituary.
Thank you, Oscar, for the quotation. I knew the first half but not the second bit.