R I P Domingo

It's now three weeks since our oldest cat Domingo died and I can finally face recording the fact here. 

When we moved to Orkney in 2005 we brought three cats with us and Domingo was the last survivor. We never knew how old he was, because like all our cats he  just rocked up and moved in, but we reckon about 17. He was young, but fully grown when he came to live with us and we had two/three years in Leeds after that plus thirteen years here, so he had, as they say, a good innings.

Of all our cats he was the most 'human' in some ways. He would lie on your chest, pat your cheek with his paw and look urgently into your eyes as though he was trying to tell you something; I used to say he was a human enchanted into cat form and he was begging us to find the spell that would turn him back.

I remember the trip up when we moved her; we bought one of those big dog cage affairs and put it in the back of our then estate car; plenty of room for all the cats who, despite our fears, seemed to really enjoy the journey. Domingo in particular, spent a lot of time on his hind legs looking out of the window! 

And he loved Orkney! He would have loved anywhere rural I think as he had so much space to roam in. In the early days he used to scare us to death by staying away for three or four days at a time, but he always came home. I'm convinced he used to wander so far that he was too tired to get back and would kip away form the house, and slowly make his way back to us. 

Despite his name, given to him because he was the most placid cat we had ever met, he proved to be  a demon bunny killer. The only time we were ever worried about his temper was the day he caught and ate four rabbits in a row, and then dragged himself into the house and snapped at anyone who came near him, while intermittently giving out the most heart rending wails...

Over the last couple of years he had had several on-going health issues and was on several sets of medication which he sometimes took easily and sometimes not. We were fortunate in that, although he was getting visibly frailer practically by the week, our vets were very supportive of our decision not to put him to sleep while he was pain free and obviously still getting some enjoyment from life. When the day came recently that he had passed that point one of the vets came out to the house to put him to sleep, and it was all very gentle and he was in familiar surroundings with people who loved him around him - not that I think by that stage he had any idea that we were there. The best end, if end there had to be.

The little girl in me who still believes in magic, waited for the spell to lift and the cat to turn back into the Prince who fell foul of a sorcerer, but it appears alas, that magic really doesn't exist, and our beautiful Domingo really was 'just a cat' all along. But one of the best.  We miss him.