AWOL
Dad, around 16, shortly before his voyage to Australia Our cat turned 11 this year. When me and my husband bought our first house, my clichéd idea that a cat would make the house a home would not shift. I grew up in a cat household. In the 13 years we spent in my family terrace, we went through roughly 900 cats, give or take. Most of them enjoyed bog-standard feline names: Jess, Jess II, Jess (the first Jess had lasted such a short spell, we felt we could safely recycle her name several times over- or was it a he?). Anyway, shortly after another Jess went under a double-decker on the busy main road, we adopted Mottle and her son Timmy. Maybe my mum felt a radical change in name choice would bring better luck. We also took in a few strays, and had a brief spell with a kitten my sister bought with one of her YTS cheques, Bubbles. Mottle was the stalwart, however, and despite sending my mother mad by sleeping on piles of important papers and pawing at the bedroom door, we loved