M = Minnie

Minnie is our beautiful cat and part of the family. We have had him for nearly 5 years and love him to bits. Minnie is a boy, with a girl’s name (confused?)...I’d better explain why.

Back in May 2008, we arrived home from work one day to our little cul de sac in Nottingham, UK to find a bunch of the neighbours in the middle of the street, crowded around this cat. I love cats so went over to see what was happening and one of the neighbours just said the cat had been wailing loudly all day and causing a bit of fuss. I asked whether anyone had fed it, because it was so skinny with bones sticking out. They hadn’t so I grabbed some cat food (we had a supply in the house from looking after the family cat) and took it outside, the cat gobbled it up and started sitting on our doorstep after that, wanting more food. One of the neighbours mentioned calling the RSPCA but I said I would try and find the owner first. Someone must be missing this cat surely?


I put posters up, rang around cat rescues and put a message online and in the newspaper, no-one came forward. All the time, I was still feeding this cute cat who kept sitting on our doorstep, but I wouldn’t let him in the house because I didn’t want to get too close. After a few weeks, we took the cat to the vets to see if it had a microchip, it didn’t and they said it was a female and approx 3-4 years old. We didn’t know what to do for the best but we were already getting a bit too fond of the cat so we decided to adopt it. We thought hard about appropriate girls names and because the cat was a bit of a moaner, Richard said what about Minnie?...as in moaning Minnie (probably a British saying?). Brilliant, we had a name! So we took her to the vets to get chipped and checked out again, the same vets I’d taken her to before. When I gave them the cats name to be registered they said:

You do know its a boy?

....what! ...you told me it was a girl??

(Apparently it is obvious whether a cat is a girl or boy)... but we did'nt know that and it was too late, Minnie was used to his name and seemed happy with it. He is a very pretty cat, sensitive and shy around strangers. He is a proper character, scared of so many things including bin liners, tin foil and bin lorries. He doesn’t like much noise (much like hubby).



He comes running down the stairs when you get home from work, he wakes me up in the middle of the night for a cuddle and he wakes us up first thing like an alarm clock. He has to sleep in our room at the bottom of the bed. He is happy to sleep in at the weekends and somehow knows we don’t have to get up for work on these days. Everyone that meets him wants to keep him (one friend looked after him when we were on holiday and cried when she had to give him back).

He is settling in well in the US after a long flight. We don’t let him out anymore (worried he will run away or get attacked by coyotes) so he is now a housecat but he seems happy, wanting lots of cuddles, eating well and using his litter tray like the little star that he is.

Her is my artwork based on moaning Minnie, I call them rainbow cat!



One artist that I love is Rosina Wachtmeister, you should check out her website, its beautiful http://www.rosina-wachtmeister.de/index_en.html. Here is some of her cat artwork:



So, do you have any pets and/or interesting stories like mine to share?