Mitsie

Mitsie chose to live in our home about four years ago.

She originally moved in next door with a young couple and would make the occasional visit to us with her sister, Pickles. All of that changed when the young couple had a baby. Things didn’t change immediately when the baby girl arrived, but once she took to crawling, on what Mitsie believed to be her sovereign territory, the visits became more frequent and longer. Eventually, her residency became permanent. Even when her original home was sold and the people moved away, all of us decided Mitsie could stay at Omar Towers.

Now, as regular readers may be aware, we already have a feline named "Omar." Hence the name "Omar Towers." My wife and I live there under license from the great cat himself, Omar. And the mistake we made about Mitsie was not consulting him in anyway about this extra set of paws coming into the home. Consequently, when Mitsie arrived, and for about the next three years, her relationship with Omar was a bit tense to say the least. Almost to the point where we even considered finding her another home away from Omar.

To reduce areas of contact and conflict, we fed Omar in the office upstairs and Mitsie in the kitchen. Omar made it very clear that the back garden territory was his, so Mitsie ended up with the front garden. Mitsie had to sleep downstairs—or in any other safe havens she could find around the house. These safe havens included book cases tucked in behind the books, on top of Welsh dressers, in the baskets containing our shoes, and, in fact, anywhere well out of the way of Omar who would jealously guard his prime position on the main bed that he shared with us—his servants.

Over the last year we have noticed a change.

Mitsie has now taken over the main bed while Omar goes off to odd corners of the house for peace and quiet. I would like to say that he secretes himself on the tops of Welsh dressers and behind books in book cases, but he doesn’t. His lack of exercise inhibits his ability to reach the tops of those dressers—and as for hiding in book cases, one only has to think of putting quarts into a pint pot to visualize how impossible this feat would be.

Over the last month things changed, again. Mitsie still has prime rights over the bed, but Omar has now started joining her. It might be something to do with the winter setting in? Or perhaps it is the re-balancing of power in politics of the feline world? Who knows?

Even the people who had Mitsie before us were not sure of her age. Their best estimates were anything up to 10 years old. So, if that was an exact number, she would be 14 now. She could be younger or she could be older. We just don’t know.

What we do know is that she is deaf. She does not like going out much, except for the necessities of life. She loves her food. She loves the bed and sleeping.

What we love and adore about her is that quite often when we are reading in bed, or getting ready to go to sleep, we will be aware of a small furry body near to us. It will twist and turn before settling down. Then it will settle and her chin will rest on one of our arms, looking deep into our eyes while they are still open. When we wake up the next morning, provided we haven’t moved around too much, and there will be Mitsie looking up into our faces.

We are grateful Mitsie made that wise choice four years ago.