Trying a TILED GALLERY this time … still haven’t got the caption thing. Story follows.

In my lifetime so far I have had the care of five cats. I don’t say I owned them. They’re into tough love that way. However, this cat, by name of Maggy, was a greater ‘character’ than any other. She came to me due to her people going overseas, so had her kitten-hood with her previous carers.

Part floppy, she rarely trusted herself to climb trees. Fortunately. Her one and only attempt at a fence ended in tears and having a toe amputated. See above. After that no more fences either. That’s not to say that she didn’t get around. There were plenty of hiding places around the backyard to sit and study any wildlife living at ground level.

Which in my backyard consisted of snakes, water dragons, bandicoots, frogs and cane toads: and all those were off limits. Two due to venom. Two due to their vulnerable species status. The reason I kept Maggy indoors from sunset to morning.

In the daytime she unsuccessfully hunted garden skinks. Paling fences are prime territory for these little critters, 10 centimeters long including their tails, and too fast for a stocky cat. She did get a rat occasionally, bringing it headless to the back step.

Her greatest difference to any other cat I have met, was her love of water. She often shared my shower, walking in and out of the water fall until she was sneezing and sodden. After I towel-dried her, she’d sit on a little kindergarten chair I have by the windows, to lick and groom herself dry in the sun. She enjoyed fishing. Regularly caught goldfish with a hooky claw patiently hanging in the water.

She sat on the edge of the pond in mist or rain, tail hanging and getting wetter and wetter, reminding me of those macaque monkeys in Japan, sitting in the snow and steam from the hot pools. We’d know we could expect a thunder storm well ahead of time. Maggy would hide in the bookshelves, as you can see in the second picture. She loved napping in my knitting.

The day she went AWOL overnight, I suspected foul play. I searched everywhere. During the second night heard a weird noise. Thought it was territorial frogs bleating at each other. Next morning found her at the bottom of the patio steps to where she must have dragged herself. She died of a tick bite.