Do you remember your first cat? ?

We got a cat when we moved out of London to the country. I was 4 years old. He was a ginger tom called Sandy. He had a nick in his ear as he enjoyed a good fight.

He would chase rabbits and hares in the fields behind our house and drag them back - some were twice as long as he was.

Our mother would cook them for him. He also loved chocolate.

We moved into the nearest town when I was 17 (parents got fed up with driving us into town all the time) and the cat came with us. He didn't really ever settle in and eventually they had him put down.

Our first cat was called Susie. I was about 9 when she arrived as a kitten. She was white with black spots and moved several house moves over the years. She had 6 kittens on my mum's best counterpane - remember those! Rejected all the boxes with towels in them. We had several other cats over the years which either disappeared or died. Susie is buried in mum's current garden. She was about 20 when she died. Our first family cat was Lucy - black with white tummy. She lived till 18. Our current cat is a tabby called Kiara, now elderly and very noisy.

My first cat when I was seven or so was Orlando, a ginger male, named after Orlando the Marmalade Cat books. He disappeared after we lent him, while on holiday, to a man who was troubled by mice. The man’s name was Mr Phibbs, so naturally I though he was telling fibs about the disappearance of Orlando. Many years later, when I was grown up, I had another ginger Orlando who lived to a great age.

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I'm afraid that I'm going to have to report your post SusAngela

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They are so beautiful these cats. They all have different personalities, every single one of them.

I love cats, the first one wasn't really mine, my brother's, produced from a duffle bag one afternoon, having been to a friends house after school, friend handed him one of a litter. Parents ummed and ahhed but eventually agreed to letting us keep it and the lovely black kitten who we were told was a girl we named Mitzi, later we were informed by vet that Mitzi was in fact a he, so he was born again as Sooty, a name shared by a high percentage of other black cats I imagine! The cat that followed him after he died was all mine, a tabby I named Billy, he was definitely a he!

Maywalk what a lovely story, and so wonderful Blue saved your Father and Sister.Such so sad ending to a lovely cat! What a horrible neighbour.

You must be a similar age to my Mum who was born in 1930. She lived in the Midlands, and she remembers having an evacuee to stay from London.

My first cat arrived when I was two years old. Apparently I named him Ginger, because he was. He was an entire tom as it was the 50s and people tended to not get their cats neutered back then. When I was about 8 he got the mange and was put to sleep. I remember sitting on my mum’s lap and sobbing for hours. Writing this I’ve only just realised what a short life he had. Six years. ?

My first cat was called Tiny, I used to dress her and push her in my dolls pram to the NAAFI in Catterick. She'd lay there quite happily.
If I tried that with my cat Paddy now I wouldn't live to tell the tale.

We got our first cat a few months after we got married, a beautiful bluey grey kitten with blue eyes, we called him Smokey. Unfortunately he was vicious and I was covered in bites and scratches up both legs and both arms, even though I was the cat lover and I adored him. The first Christmas he broke every single bauble on the tree by batting them till they flew off, and they always landed on the stone surround around the carpet. Sorry, not every one, one survived, and I still have it, nearly 58 years later.
After our first daughter was born, he used to sit there watching her, and my husband thought he`d one day do to her what he did to me, so he took Smokey to the RSPCA and asked them to rehome him. I hope they managed to do so.

“BLUE”

My father used to be a stevedore and he came home one night in May of 1940 during WW2 with a beautiful blue Persian kitten that he had found abandoned in the hold the ship. My father said the mother of the kitten must have been killed during a bombing raid.
My mother had an instant bond with that kitten and “Blue” as we named him was my mother’s shadow. He grew into a beautiful blue Persian and was extremely proud of his tail and thick coat. He spent many hours cleaning himself.
When the blitz started and well before the siren wailed out its warning he used to stand clawing at the side of the door. It was his way of warning us that he could hear enemy war planes in the distance. Uncanny but perfectly true. It gave us time to get our belongings together and get down the Anderson shelter.
“Blue” had been hit by shrapnel about three times but my mother nursed him back to life each time and she always shared her food with him although we were rationed.
As time went on after being bombed out twice during the London Blitz, me with my brother and mother were evacuated to a town in the Midlands. “Blue” had to stay behind with my father and sister until we got a place of our own in this new town that we had gone to live in for safety. My sister was over 17 so she was too old to be evacuated under the government scheme.
When we did finally get a house my dad and sister brought “Blue” to live with us. It was then that my father told us that “Blue” had saved his and my sister's life because a direct hit bombed what was left of the house and it buried my father and sister alive.
They were trapped for many hours but “Blue” wriggled away from them and somehow found a way through all the bricks and mortar that lay on top of the Anderson shelter and his continuous meowing and clawing at the debris finally brought the firemen to the spot where dad and my sister were still trapped.
We never knew anything about this until “Blue” was in my mothers arms. We were SO proud of him and he was over the moon to be back with his beloved mistress, my mother. His purring was so loud it sounded as though he was singing to himself.
Our joy at “Blue” being with us once again lasted for two weeks because the neighbour that we lived against was anti cat and he put poison down which tempted “Blue.”
My mother tried everything to help save him but he died in agony in my mother's arms. It was just two weeks after surviving all the horrors of the blitz and saving two lives. I can still see the devastation on my mothers face as she had her rosary in her hand saying a prayer for “Blue.”
The tears that were shed over our beloved “Blue” could have filled a lake. Unfortunately my mother could not prove who had done this awful thing.

To think “Blue” had gone all through the London Blitz to die the way he did.
I must add here that many animals were put to sleep when the war started in case they ran amok if anything happened to their owners. My mother would not let “Blue” be put to sleep.

We had a very dignified black long haired called Puss. Really should have been Sir Puss. He wasn't very cuddly but had very good manners, and loved my mother almost exclusively. He would sit behind her on her kitchen chair.

Later we had a tortoiseshell called Minette. She was pretty and loveable but a bit ditzy!

Our first cat was a black and white moggie called Sooty. She was actually our neighbours cat when we were in Army quarters. My DD was very young then and adored her. She was always “borrowing” her and bringing her into the house. One day I could hear the cat crying and found her shut in DD’s wardrobe! Some months later, our neighbours were being posted abroad and couldn’t take the cat, and were going to have her put down, it seemed natural for us to take her. She eventually went to stay with my sister when we were posted abroad, and when we returned, she had her feet well and truly under the table so it seemed a shame to uproot her, but at least we had visiting rights! She lived until she was seventeen. We’ve had three cats since then.

We had a grey Persian from when I was a toddler called Smokey, he died when I was 17.

At work in my early '20s I was asked if I would take on a rescue cat. I was living at home still, and amazed that my mother didn't veto it. Little Cilla (she was black and white!) was a devoted little thing, she came with me when I got married. However bringing me a present of a dead mouse, carefully placed on my chest whilst I was lying in bed ill, didn't go down too well and I let out a shriek, she never did it again.

When DS1 arrived she would come and rub her face against the top of his head. One day she came in and started yelling for food when I was trying to get him to feed. I told her to go away, and she went out and got run over, I was heartbroken and have felt guilty ever since.

I didn’t have cats until I was married and living overseas. We had two - Moggy who was black and Spot who was white. Another cat used to visit and we called her Flossy. She had been left behind by her expat owners when they went back to UK. We now have Milo and Ripley who are 11 in July.

Our first cat was three cats!

We went to a cat sanctuary and fell for a big tabby boy. He had to be rehomed with his companion, a most beautiful tortoiseshell, so we took her too. We couldn’t stop thinking about another cat we’d seen, he’d been there the longest and was a tatty, balding old black cat. We went back the next weekend and got him too.

All were special in their different ways. ? We had the tabby the longest, he was a tiger outdoors, regularly fighting neighbourhood dogs, but a total softie indoors. For years after he died I used to ‘see’ him around our house out of the corner of my eye, even though I don’t believe in ghosts and stuff like that.

I have always had a cat since I was born but the first one I had after I left home was called Ardath after Ardath Bey, an Egyptian mummy in a horror film who disliked to be touched. He used to come for walks with us like a little dog. Black and white. We emigrated and left him behind with my husband’s mother but he pined and died in 6 months. We felt terrible.

Our first cat was a beautiful furry ginger kitten named scamp.
I remember my uncle coming in our living room with Scamp tucked inside his jacket. Uncle charlie worked at a tannery and there was feral cats living there so that's where Scamp came from.
He used to jump up and open doors and he used to have a mad few minutes running around the walls.
He wasn't a fussy cat but we loved him.
He got knocked down in the main road at the back of us at 2 years old.
He didn't come home so my brothers went searching for him and found him at the side of the road on a freezing cold January evening in 1964.
He was buried in our back garden and I remember putting flowers on his grave.
I cried so much that I couldn't go to school the next day.

I suppose the first cat that I remember was really my Mother’s as I was very young.It was black and white, huge, and called Verdi ( after her favourite composer.)It had a habit of sitting atop both our and neighbours gate posts and waiting for the milkman to call.