Leaving the kitchen door open

Efforts to rehome Mimi continued this week.

We "inherited" her with the house ("we're moving so far away, she wouldn't enjoy the journey, she wouldn't settle in the new place, is there any chance you could keep her?" which translates as "we already have two other cats that we're much more fond of, and we've even palmed one of those off onto a neighbour. This one's a bit stand-offish and we can't be arsed.") and although she's very pretty, and has grown more confident and (almost) affectionate as we've given her a bit of attention, being shut in the kitchen and the only cat in the house is a bit of a lonely life, we don't get a lot out of it either, and it makes going away awkward.

So I've been phoning shelters, trying to find a place for her, but they're all full up. I really wasn't comfortable with the alternative. Having an animal killed for any reason other than they're in pain or have a terminal illness doesn't sit well with my philosophy, so the weeks dragged by as the shelters continued to have no free places, or I forgot to phone them because I didn't want to consider the consequences of them being full.

Are you one of those people that think things happen for a reason? I am. In this case my procrastination paid off. Yesterday, in the office, making another round of calls to the shelters, I was overheard by the colleague who sits opposite me. To cut a long story short, one of their cats had recently died, and he thought his wife might be keen to replace her. A couple of quick text messages later, the deal was set and I agreed to take Mimi over in the evening provided she was home when I got in and I could wrangle her into a carrying case.

We dropped her off in Mossley at 6.30 yesterday evening, and reaction from the family was very positive. Apparently Mimi has almost identical markings to their other cat, another lucky coincidence that proves this is what was meant to happen.

And on returning home, for almost the first time in two years, we could leave the kitchen door open.