A Tale of Bonsall the Spitting Cat

Some years ago after our last cat Ollie had died, we had an offer of a replacement cat 3 years old, who had belonged to an elderly lady, who had sadly died.

The cat had been left in the home, fed but isolated for 1 month and now a new caring home was sought, were we interested, the cat was named Bonsall by the previous owner.

We went to meet the cat, and found it to be the largest female black cat we had ever seen, plus it was also not the caring loving type as we had come to know, its favourite response appeared to be spit very loudly at anything it did not like, which always included us when we tried to make it do anything other than lie on its favourite chair in our lounge.

Well how could we not take on the challenge & surely in not to long a time it would grow to love us and be lots of fun.

Sadly for most of the time Bonny as she came to be known as did her own thing, perched on the chair she had adopted as her own in the lounge, she did not mix with us or the other pets, apart from when I went out to take the dog Katie for her daily walks.

She would then come out with us but was unwilling to actually walk with us rather she would creep along behind the hedges until they finished then quickly rush out to the next hedge.

If any other animal or person came across her she would give a long loud spit that usually worked with all of us, and she would be left alone.

There were times that she came out of hiding & walked along the middle of the road which was not a problem until she was faced by an oncoming car, usually the sensible thing for her to do would have been to come to our side onto the pavement.

That would have been far to easy so she would stop, stare at the car, which generally would slow down & swerve to avoid her, which was the time for her to decide to move to the other side of the road & give the car a passing nasty spit as she went.

She never wanted picking up or fussing & the only time I saw her playful was one new year when she decided to play with some paper streamers she had found and I realised somewhere in there was a lovely playful cat, the saddest thing was we never saw that again.

Eventually she grew older & became ill, although she had become quite a character both at home and to the local neighbours, sadly she died, but we always talked about her chair and the pleasure she had given to us all, she is still missed

Oliver The Cat

I will never forget Oliver, one of the nicest cats I have ever met, who was a real bundle of fun but sadly had a short life



I will start at the beginning, a friend who rescued cats contacted us to say would we take a young male Burmese cat, that needed re homing because the owner had to choose between the cat and her soon to be married partner.

This was because the cat had a nasal condition that meant it frequently sneezed and when this happened the contents of his nose marked anything it hit. The owner had been back to the breeder but they accepted no responsibility for this.

The owner who loved the cat wanted him to go to a good home where he could continue to be spoilt as she always had.

We went and visited and straight away took to him, he was a beautiful brown colour, the owner seemed happy with what we said so sadly for her passed him his basket & all his favourite toys & saw us off with tears in her eyes.

We could not initially decide what to call him because we did not like the name he already had, but quickly found he was constantly eating, so inspiration struck & we called him Oliver “The Boy Who Wanted More”

Because our last cat had disappeared, we were very protective of Ollie as he became known & he was kept in the home, apart from when I took him out for a walk on a lead, now some may say they do not believe this but I have found oriental cats very like dogs, so he used to enjoy these times but we did attract a lot of attention from others.

When out unlike a dog he would insist on climbing onto walls and other objects to check them out. In the home he always liked to be where it was warm & often damaged his paws going on the hotplates, but his favourite spot was on top of the boiler where he would stay for hours.

One day we had been upstairs on a task & we had left some sausages under the grill, when we came down all but 2 had disappeared & we could not work out how or why, we later discovered when he did it again he was scooping them out & Katie our dog (who you will hear of again) was quite happy to eat the evidence before Ollie could get down.

The other interesting expensive habit that Ollie had was to suck woollen garments as a child does a soother, which gave him a lot of pleasure but caused a lot of upset when favourite cardigans & tops where rendered un wearable in his search for a fix.

Sadly we only had Ollie for a few months because one day he managed to get out, we searched the streets in vain, contacting all the rescue agencies, Police & refuse collectors, sadly we eventually received a phone call to say that he had been found run over a short distance away. We went and collected him and buried him in the back garden, he was sadly missed, but eventually replaced by Bonnie & Emma who I will tell you more of another day