I’ve always loved animals. I grew up spending almost every weekend on our family farm. And while that has meant I still can’t stand snakes (and regularly have nightmarish dreams about them), I love all cute two- and four-legged animals, and the ones with fins but no sharp teeth are ok too!

Acquiring The Lunatic

One of our good friends works as a large animal vet. In early October 2023, she sent a message to a shared Whatsapp group that while driving back from a job in Wales, she’d found a tiny black kitten in the middle of the road with nothing around for at least a mile. The closest place it could have come from was a farm just over a mile away, which had no cats. She sent a few photos of the poor small, emaciated, flea-ridden little thing and said that she was trying to find it a home, would anyone like to take it?

It turned out to be a her, weighing only 900g at around 4 months old - she’d already lost most of her baby teeth - but skinny as she was, she had spunk! I fell in love with the photos and luckily our landlady was happy for us to have a cat, so off we went to fetch her.

We didn’t have a name picked out, but we’d sort of toyed around with the idea of something like Shadow or Jet, but none really seemed to suit her. The day we fetched her was Friday the 13th of October (Spooky Season), so we decided to name her Luna, after Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter. Fittingly, the nickname Loony fits her exceptionally well, as she is possibly the oddest cat I’ve ever met, and that’s saying a lot since I grew up with a Siamese cat called Whereyou!

This is Whereyou at the ripe old age of 17, with our dog, Ting

He got his name because we couldn’t decide on a name when he was a kitten so while we were arguing, we spent 2 weeks just calling “Where are you?!” when we needed to find him, and he’d meow.

Although she spent her first week with us in a self-imposed very rigid routine of nap, food, poop, repeat while she put on a bit of weight and got used to us, she very quickly built up the confidence to be her true weird self!

Rhys and I learned a few things within 3 weeks of having her:

she purrs like a generator
she hates anything fluffy
she naps like a weirdo
she will sleep on your head
she’s a farty baby

As with most pets, she’s really only called by her actual name when she’s in trouble. The rest of the time, she’s referred to as Bug, Ducky, Flopsy baby, Loonloons, Loony, Lunatic, Lunabell, Smooshy, Poopy, or even Fluffybutt. Funny enough, she responds to 90% of them with “mrow?”. She’s not the biggest fan of being called Poopy.

Now that she’s in our lives, I can’t imagine life without her. Her cute little crazy presence in the house has enriched my life and makes me laugh! She always comes for cuddles when our alarm goes off and she loves keeping me company in the garden!

I’m a little ashamed to admit that we have turned her into an IPad kid, because watching her watch catTV is so amusing!

Furry Friends

As much as I love my little crazy baby, I still love all other animals and along with many of my talented human friends, come some adorable fur-babies! You can see a few of their cute little faces here!