Bye Bye Malmesley. 4 May 1990 to 13 March 2006

It's very sad here.

Malmesley has not been well this past week. We thought it was his disgusting teeth playing him up again. He was due for a 'dental' on Wednesday. He never had anything wrong with him, only the worst teeth the vet had ever seen. Yesterday he might have had a stroke. He was weak, had lost most of his weight and was a very sorry sight. He was still purring for England but that was about it. Last night I fed him from my fingertip. He prefered to purr rather than to eat.

As I suspected, the vet said that there was not much hope; it wasn't a stroke but several thromboses and a weak heart so we left him there and said our goodbyes. He was still purring. The end of an era which started when he was born under the chair in my bedroom in a heatwave. I did not want to see him afterwards, I want to remember how he was.

Malmesley was the last link with Ratbag my first cat. He was her big boy son. The biggest of the litter who always lay at the bottom of the pile and all the others walked all over him. He broke the first joint in his tail at a week old and to this day had a tail with a right angle bend at the end.

Since the day he was neutered over 15 years ago he shared my bed. I woke up each morning with his huge paw aroung my finger, until last week that is. It seemed like an omen. We will remember him chasing leaves, swinging on his mother's tail, riding shotgun on Ratbag's back through the cat flap and knocking himself out in the process, his love of snow, his dopey moments when he would fall off the window ledge , jumping in the hedge and missing, sliding down Garfield-like and landing in a heap, the time he brought a redwing in at 11pm on a freezing night and let it fly aroung the room, the time he stalked a tame rook for 3 weeks then left a heap of inky feathers on my doorstep. I could have killed him.

All those memories. Happy times we will never forget.

You had a good innings Malmesley. We loved you.