Cat photos: Lady, Zoey and Streak

Their story

Eileen, a friend from when I was in the WRNS, had three young pedigree Persian cats, two females and one male. She was hoping to breed from them, so they weren't neutered. In the run up to Xmas 1979, she decided that they were getting too old to stay together without the risk of them mating (and that was something she didn't want as they were the wrong colours to produce desirable pedigree cats), so she arranged for her parents on the Isle of Man to look after the male cat. She put the two females into a cattery over Xmas, and headed home with the young male. When she got back, however, she discovered that they had beaten her to it, and instead of collecting two cats from the cattery, she found that two had become six! Crystal, one of the young females, a beautiful sealpoint Persian (a coat colour similar to the typical Siamese colouring), must have been pregnant when Eileen left her at the cattery, and just a couple of days before Eileen came back to collect the cats from the cattery, Crystal gave birth to four kittens - 3 female and 1 male.

Two of the female kittens were a somewhat muddled tortoiseshell colour (a mixture of cream, red and dark brown), and the other a lovely blue-cream (although with rusty patches which would have barred her from pedigree shows). The little male kitten was also a blue-cream colour. And that was a problem.

The blue-cream colour is, genetically, essentially the same as tortoiseshell, but with the addition of a gene which "dilutes" the colour strength, turning the dark colours of tortoiseshell into the pale colours of blue-cream. But this genetic colour scheme is sex-linked and generally only appears in female cats. For it to turn up in a male cat is rare, and very few of those live for more than a few days - the tiny number who do are invariably sterile.

Well, we wouldn't have minded if little Dillon had been sterile, since Eileen had no intention of breeding from these kittens - their parentage simply wasn't appropriate for them to be genuinely pedigree cats, and so her intention was to have them neutered when they reached the appropriate age, and either sell them or give them away to friends, as pets. But sadly, little Dillon clearly had serious genetic problems, and never really managed to get going. Eileen nursed him for over a week, trying to hand feed him since he clearly had difficulty nursing from his mother. But it wasn't meant to be, and he died when he was two weeks old. We buried him in her back yard, in a shoe box.

The other three kittens, however, were thriving. I was due to leave the WRNS that summer, and it occurred to me that I'd love to take one of these kittens home with me. I spoke to my mother about this (since I was going to be moving back into the family home, for a few years at least), and she eventually agreed that I could bring a cat with me. My two younger sisters, Beth and Lynn, however, decided they'd love to have a cat each too, with the end result that, at the Easter break that year, I headed home to Clydebank complete with a basket containing three very fluffy little kittens! They attracted a great deal of attention on the train, with children trekking the length of the train several times during the journey from London to Glasgow to come and "visit the kittens". Since these children were generally very well behaved (e.g. most of them talked in whispers if the kittens were asleep, so as not to wake them up!), this was actually quite fun.

The kittens all had names by this time - the blue-cream (mine) was called Lady, Lynn's tortoiseshell was officially named Amber, but in fact was always called Streak because of the orange streak running down the front of her nose, and Beth's tortoiseshell was called Zoey.

Lady died in 1992, when she was 13. That's the average lifespan of a pedigree persian. The other two lived a few years longer, reaching the ripe old age of 16.

Donna

The photographs

1. Lady and Streak about to dive off the armchair.

2. Streak with the armchair all to herself.

3. All three kittens curled up together on the sofa.

4. Another view of the kittens curled up on the sofa.

5. Zoey facing the camera, with Lady in the background.

6. Lady.

7. Streak sitting in the "snake" - actually a draft stopper, but when placed in a circle on the floor, became their favourite "curling up for a snooze" place.