18th September 2004

Valerie

I have been reminded that we met a lovely lady in the 60`s/70`s who had a plot up the crematorium drive.  

She came down from London at weekends and I remember she and her husband created a wonderful vegetable garden and a greenhouse type structure made of bent canes covered with polythene which looked something like a miniature dome from the Eden Project. She used to bring her cat down with her - a beautiful silver grey short haired creature called Tanya and it was through the cat that we met.

One weekend when it was time to go home the cat went missing.  The lady called on us to look for her in our woods and out buildings but there was no sign of the cat.

The next weekend she came with a trap borrowed from the RSPCA and asked to sight it in our barn as it was a likely place for the cat to take shelter.

We checked the trap regularly but all we caught was a hedgehog which was immediately released. 

Time went by and we had given up all hope of finding the cat when suddenly one day - there it was in the trap!  There was great excitement but the cat was strangely unfriendly to its owner.  We did not think anything of this as it had been living wild for so long.  However the lady told us that at home while listening to the Proms on TV it had pricked up its ears and responded to "Rule Brittania" - the `tania` bit !! A happy ending or so we thought.

A short while afterwards a neighbour up the lane mentioned while passing the gate one morning that he had lost his cat - an unusual cat - silver grey in colour and had we by any chance seen it.

Well I had to tell all.  It turned out it was his cat we had caught and what happened to poor Tanya I do not know !

Pam.

Pam Stepney, Findon Village, West Sussex.

19th March 2005

Tanya

Well, reading the piece on your site which told the story of a lost cat was
a real suprise for me!

The lovely lady mentioned was my dear old mum, and the cat Tanya my beloved pet!  I would have been around 8 or 10yrs old at the time.

The whole episode with our lost cat was very strange.  It's true we ended up with the wrong cat, which was caught in the trap a week or so after losing ours.

Tanya was a Russian Blue, which was quite a rareity at the time. The cat which we caught was a Russian blue too, it seemed reasonable to assume it was Tanya!  Tanya in 'shock', after being lost, which explained her odd behaviour. She settled down very quickly though, back at our home in London, soon displaying her normal traits, including responding to the word fish.

True, mum wasn't convinced it was 'her Tanya' at first, but eventually came round to accepting it was.

Then some time later, I would guess at least six months, 'Tanya' needed the services of a vet.  I forget why.  But he announced that 'Tanya was a BOY!  Ooopps!  It was a bit of a shock.

Not long after this revelation, we were on our plot in the woods for a weekend.  I
heard a cat mewing in the bushes, and to my surprise saw another grey/blue
cat!

Of course the immediate thought was it was Tanya, but no it couldn't be as this was a kitten.  Even so, how strange  to see yet another Russian Blue type cat, which as I said were quite rare at the time.

The kitten was obviously lost, so we decided to take it home with us.

We put a note in the village shop 'Cat found..' Two days later we had a call from a man who thought it could be his kitten.

He drove up to London, and confirmed it was his cat. He lived in one of the cottages on the road that goes to Heath farm, so the little kitten was lost.  He was very gratefull. (I think his name was Mr Williams).  As we were sitting in our lounge, he told us he had
lost a cat some time before, on cue 'Tanya' wandered in from the garden,and ..... yes that's right it was his cat Tom! 

He said he could see 'Tomya' was happy where he was, and didn't want to take him back.
        
Well there you are, hope that was of some interest. And thank you, for referring to mum as a 'lovely lady', even if she was part of a cat kidnapping gang!

 Mark

p.s Have you heard much about the 'big cat' rumours?

Mark Sawyer