The traumatic day of Tilly the cat

Tilly the cat is a rather small, black moggy who lives at home with my parents. Her favourite pastimes include cuddling my Dad, catching squirrels and trying to escape into the wider corners of the family home. This is what happened to her over the last few days.

My parents went away for the weekend to visit my little sister and a usual, one of our neighbours popped in a couple of times a day to feed her. When my parents returned from the said trip on Monday, they were informed that the cat food had not been eaten and that Tilly hadn’t been about.

Being a nosy sort of cat and a complete opportunist, over the winter Tilly had made friends with some people down the road who had been feeding her and thought she was a stray. As with any sensible creature who is given a free meal, she kept going back (and we WONDERED why she had put on weight).

Over the weekend, the couple decided to ask about her and spoke to a good family friend of ours if they knew anyone with a small, black cat. After being told ‘no, we can’t think of anyone’ (grrr – when they have seen Tilly, like, 1000,000 times), she was promptly captured and whisked off to the local RSPCA.

On arrival at the RSPCA, Tilly was identified as being 18 months old and pregnant. Now the story takes a dramatic turn for the worse, as Tilly was spayed after she had kittens. In 1998. Yesterday then saw her being operated on for no reason, as she has no lady bits which need disposing of, whilst my Mum frantically phoned the RSPCA and then the vet, trying to find out where she was.

After a series of incredibly unhelpful conversations in which my Mum was berated for not putting her in a cattery whilst they were away and told she’d need to pay £50 for the operation poor Tilly didn’t need (cat held hostage in Kidderminster – who’d have thought it??), Mum finally managed to recover a very sad and sleepy Tilly from the vet and bring her home. Oh, and the people who had ‘adopted’ her had named her Alice. That’s almost worse!!