THE STORY OF BILLY-WIZZ;

One night, almost a year ago now, I was rudely awoken by what sounded like the cries of a bannshee coming from outside our house. I looked at the clock, which said 2.15am, so pulled the covers over my ears and tried to sleep. Some hopes! The sound began again, seemingly even louder than before. Of course my dear husband was fast asleep so heard nothing. Whatever could it be? So I put on my track suit and crept downstairs and out of the front door.

In view of the volume of sound, I thought I was looking for an alien from space or at least a large animal so, at first, I couldn’t see anything. But as I focussed in on the source of the noise, I saw a small object on the pavement about ten yards away. I crept forwards expecting this fearsome thing to launch itself at my throat at any moment but as I got closer I realised it was, you’ve guessed it, a tiny ginger kitten. I couldn’t believe that so much noise was coming from such a small animal. I crept up to it, expecting it to run off as I got near but it stayed put and as soon as I tentatively stroked it, it immediately stopped howling.

I ran indoors, found a cat carrying basket, carefully put the kitten inside and took it into the house. The problem was that as long as I held it and stroked it, the kitten stayed quiet, but as soon as I tried to put it back into the basket it started yelling. We normally look after stray cats overnight by leaving them in a carrier in our downstairs shower-room, but every time I tried to walk away from this tiny scrap of fur it set up wailing like an air-raid siren. So, of course, I sat on the loo seat for another hour, with the kitten tucked in my top, trying to get him off to sleep.

Having nodded off a couple of times and banged my forehead on the wash-hand basin, I steeled myself, left the creature to cry and went to bed exhausted. To cut a long story short this little fellow went to our, then, cat shelter next day and nearly drove everyone mad for the following week constantly howling to be picked up. He was only about four weeks old and obviously wanted his Mum. We think he was dumped outside our house as none of our neighbours had a cat with kittens. The next week as I was at a workshop, organised by our Animal Rescue Group, on how to trap and handle feral cats on the TNR scheme. I started to tell another woman there all about this rowdy kitten. She was fascinated, as she’d not long before lost a ginger cat that sounded just like him.

She asked for our number, but I didn’t build up too many hopes of her following up. However, the next week she came back with her husband to see the kitten, fell in love with him and took him home to Secret Valley with her. I dreaded her bringing him back after a few days, saying that she couldn’t stand the noise he made, but we had an e-mail, with picture, a week or so later saying that he’d walked into their kitchen, gone straight to their golden labrador, climbed up on his back and fell asleep. So now he’d found a new ‘mum’ he was fine and settled down really well.

I visited ‘Billy-Wizz’ in his new home a few months later and hardly recognised him as he’d grown so much and he didn’t recognise me at all! The follow up to this story is that Billy-wizz is about to become an international, jet-setting cat as his owners have moved back to the UK. Unfortunately he’s got to be in quarantine here for six months before he can join them and his beloved ‘mum’, so he’s not too happy about the current arrangements and is letting everybody know, very loudly! I wish all our cat stories had happy endings!