At the start of 2009 stuart and I decided it'd be a good thing to have a dog. Without going into the details it didn't work out. Instead we got ourselves into being parents to two kittens. I was out at pets at home buying gerbil stuff probably. Having floated the idea of cats instead of dogs I looked at the notice board in there and saw an advert for kittens - tiger tabby and black ones. So call stuart/call ad number/go to cash machine/work out address and all of a sudden I had two tiny tabby kitkats in a giant cardboard box seatbelted into the back of the c2 and was driving along London road wondering how it all happened so fast.
These two little blobs of fluff with heads that looked 2x too big for their miniscule stripey and spotty bodies came to be called Molly and Maisie and I fell in love. Not only that but it was, and is, the kind of love where you know you are so dependent on it that if anything bad was to happen you would crumble, again.
As they grew up they became completley unique, two opposites that complement eachother in a way no less than perfect. Molly appeared the more brash one, from the start not afraid to claw up onto your knee and stare into your eyes with an inquisitive, yet adorable, glare. Molly is shorter in both height and length than maisie, a "cobby" cat as the cat books say, with little eyes and a wee bit of a belly. She still looks like a kitten, and still acts like a kitten. She is the epitome of a domesticated mog, lazing around the house, playing with toys casually or with the sweet ecstacy of a pre-adult being. Molly has bullseyes on her flanks, one of which is now a bit deformed having grown back in from the operation she had being spayed. Molly will walk over to you and gently headbutt you when she wants to be patted. She is always stretching, and always sleeping. She reaches her head up and sniffs your face when she hasn't seen you for a while. She is innocent.
Maisie is different in all ways. At first she seemed to be shy and retiring but it was more likely that she was quietly emersing herself in the new environment and making a plan of domination that would be rolled out in the proceeding weeks and months. And that she did. She is the queen. Long, tall and thin with an oriental figure and head, giant almond eyes and oversized pointy ears, a long elegant nose and hundred different moods. Maisie is feral, but at the same time extremley domesticated on her own terms. Any toy that squeaks, anything that moves sporadically, anything that in anyway resembles anything that could be caught, and Maisie has devoured it. Maisie knows exactly what your doing, and thinking, and how to exploit that. She is of superior intellegence, she knows when she will get the attention she wants and how to persuade you to give it. Rolling on the floor in the sunshine, showing off her spotted belly and creamy chin, making prrew noises and periodically looking at you through big black eyes. Everyone goes to her. And then she will probably play fight you. She even knows how to play fetch.
Basically I love these two little beings more than nearly anything else in the world. Their life is so calm. It is intensley satisfying to be able to provide for them, with little effort, the environment that makes them so completley happy. Whatever your mood they can provide the silent, unimposing companionship that you don't completley notice, but without which your current location seems like the lonliest place on earth.
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