Whatever happened to...?

Some of you have asked me whatever happened to Tamba's four kittens who were born at the end of February this year. (Click here to read the story.) Well, we ended up having all four kittens - Teddi and Tobi, Timmy and Pickles - at our house for a whole three months. We discovered that the Spanish can be quite superstitious, and we began to despair of finding homes for the babies. People would phone to ask about adopting a kitten, and then they would change their minds when they discovered that the kittens were black.

Finally, when they were twelve weeks old, the two short haired kittens, Timmy and Pickles (on the left above), went to a new home with a nice Spanish family that lives out in the countryside on a farm-type property. When no owners were forthcoming for the two long haired kittens, Tobi and Teddi (pictured on the right above), it was finally decided that they would be adopted by my parents, who live in Scotland and who'd been thinking about getting a couple of kittens there. We decided that I'd keep them short term and then they would travel to the UK once they'd had their rabies vaccinations and got their passports.

Following in Tamba's footsteps (see here), Tobi was spayed today and Teddi was neutered by our vet who volunteers time with a local animal charity. (No more black kittens will be born in this household!!) They're recovering from their operations even as I write this. The vet took their rabies blood samples while they were under the anaesthetic, and now it's just a case of waiting six months for their passports to come through. So we'll be a three-cat-family here in Alhaurín until the end of this year. As I'm looking for a new home at the moment, I'm hoping it will be a place where the cats can easily go outdoors.

When a friend heard I'd kept two of the kittens, she commented that I had given them very "spiritual" names. Well, the truth of the matter is that I'd originally just given all of them names beginning with T - so that we had Tamba, Teddi, Timmy, Tobi and..... Sue gave Pickles a name change along the way! I had not at all been aware of giving the cats "spiritual" names, and so it was kind of a surprise when I checked out what their names actually mean.

Teddi is the short form of Theodore or Theodora. Of Greek origin, this name means "a gift from God." Tobi is the short form of Tobias or Tobia. This name comes originally from Hebrew and means "God is good." At this time of making a new home in Spain, having a pet (I never planned to have five of them) is a reminder to me of God's goodness and, like my car and my tomatoes, is a stake in the ground to say that this nation is becoming my home.