We lost our cat Herbert last October, he was 13 years old and finally had a stroke from which he couldn't recover, so we did the responsible thing. This left us catless for the first time in five years, and the house was too quiet. So we decided to get another cat. The original plan was to get a rescue adult moggy (about five years old), but we couldn't find anything suitable at the rescue centre. I persuaded other half that we should get a kitten, but then my dad said it wouldn't be fair to get a kitten on its own, as it would be lonely when we were at work. So one possible moggy kitten turned into two possible moggy kittens, and then turned into two possible pedigree kittens, as I've always wanted a pedigree cat. Other half completely put his foot down about having a cat that looked normal, he didn't want a hairless cat, or a cat with no tail, or a cat that looked like it had been chasing parked cars. So I had a look round at the different breeds available, and decided on the Bengal, mainly because they are supposed to be loyal and loving to their owners. Then I surfed the web.

The guys I work with know more about the Internet than I do, and they pretty much know most of what you can buy over the web. But they were quite surprised when I said I'd found my new kittens over the web. Even more surprised when they discovered that the breeder would deliver (at extra cost) the kittens. I'd done a search for Bengal kittens, and tried to find a breeder that had kittens available for homing pretty soon. Other half was still a bit nervous at this point, because he'd just realised how much pedigree cats cost (and we wanted two), also he wanted cats that we could let outdoors. But I managed to relieve both of these fears, when I found a breeder who had a litter of half-pedigree Bengal cats. Their mum had escaped when being taken to see the stud tom, and had instead had a wonderful time with next door's ginger tom. The breeder was selling them for a token price, and being only half pedigree, there is less worry about letting them go outside. I ring up immediately and discover that there are 5 kittens in the litter, two girls and three boys, one girl and one boy are already spoken for, so I can either half a boy and a girl, or two boy kittens. We decide to go for two boys and arrange to drive 120 miles to meet the kittens and their mum, to see if we like them, but the difficult bit is we have to wait two weeks to see them as the breeder is going away on holiday. I think it was the longest two weeks of my life, and other half won't let me get excited or buy anything for the kittens until we've met them.

We finally go to meet them, and they are in the conservatory with their mum. As we walk towards the conservatory door, a very brave kitten comes boldly round the corner of a sofa - "I'm so brave", he then sees three humans walking towards him and all of a sudden "I'm so brave" turns into "No, I'm not" and he scampers off to find the rest of the litter. The breeder introduces us to our two boy kittens, who are seven weeks old and are no longer than your hand. We spend a wonderful hour playing and fussing them, and then agree a date to collect them, when they will be twelve weeks old and will have been vaccinated.

A few weeks later, we make the 120 mile drive again to collect our kittens, who are to be called Falstaff and Shylock - I'm a believer that cats should have dignified names, and I don't want to stand at my back door calling for "Slap" and "Tickle" like one of my friends suggested. Falstaff lives up to his namesake on the way home, and proceeds to serenade us with meows all the way. Whenever the car stops, he stops singing and goes to sleep, when the car restarts he starts up again. I recieve a phone call half way home (I wasn't driving so it was okay to answer it), and the person on the other end wanted to know what the awful screeching noise was.

Eventually we get home, and let the kittens out into their room (prepared specially so that they can get used to the house gradually), give them some food and water, show them the amenities - TV, on-suite litter tray, food, water, etc. and then leave them to settle in.

It's now six months later, and I can quite honestly say getting Shylock and Falstaff has been one of the best things I've ever done. They've grown up into beautiful cats, full of character and affection. Falstaff remains the noisy one, with a large vocabulary of different meows, although Shylock finds his meow at times when Falstaff needs backing up.

Copyright © Rachel Craddock
July 19, 2004