The Bogeyes

After moving Conor and Bess into Rose Lawn in 2007, the next thing to come were the cats.  They were to be stable cats as David (then, how I laugh) didn't like cats.  Very easily done, you look at the back of any horse magazine and there is always a charity looking for outside homes for Feral cats.  So I phoned and the woman said she had just had a call from a lady who was looking for a home for 3 feral cats that had been living under the decking in her garden.  She was moving and had managed to catch them and get them to a vet to be neutered.  I took delivery the next day!
I am still in contact with 'Cat Lady' as she is on my phone.  She is completely mental and hilarious and from the minute we met I liked her.  She loved me, as I was giving a home to the Bogeyes! She told me this a lot...  So she turned up in the pitch black in the middle of December 2007 with 3 jet black inter-related cats with the generic name of The Bogeyes, 2 litter trays and a bar of chocolate.
I put them in the 1m sq toilet in the barn and this is where they stayed for about a week.  Bless them they always pee'd in the trays, always hid at the back of the toilet cistern so they looked like one large ball of fluff with 6 eyes glaring at me and they always ate their food.  After 1 week I managed to secure them in the barn and I used to go in twice a day and they would be glaring at me from various peculiar places around the barn including on the top, god know how they got up there!  I went in on New Years day 2008 and they had all gone and escaped.....
I probably didn't really see any of them for about 6 months, but I religiously put the food in the barn twice a day, everyday and it would disappear.  I assumed it was them.  Then slowly but surely I started seeing glimpses of 2 of them for about another year.  I assumed one had just disappeared off somewhere else (this turned out to be little bogs). 
Then all of a sudden there were 3 again!  Eventually to be called Little Bogs, Sticky Out Tongue (SOT) Bogs and Daddy Bogs (had no idea if he was even male)

As time passed they got braver and braver till eventually they would all be hanging around in the barn at feeding time.  Especially SOT who used to really try and interact with me, almost come over when called and look at me reasonably intelligently when I used to chat away to her.  Both her and Little Bogs would follow me.  Eventually they would be waiting at the back door for me each morning and would come in the house.  Both would come in if you left the back door open and investigate.  Quite happily sit in the kitchen whilst I was cooking, especially for a roast dinner.  Daddy bogs though if I'm honest until very recently stayed firmly in the barn and wouldn't really have an awful lot to do with the other two.  For about the last 4/5 years you couldn't really look out of the window and not see the two cats head butting each other or sunbathing somewhere.  They were absolutely inseparable

Little Bogs (the most Bogeyed of the Bogeyes).  I would say ever so slightly brain damaged.  Bless her.  We have even seen her practising to pounce on a bird and jump 45 degrees in the wrong direction.  Absolutely hilarious.

Sticky Out Tongue Bogs (My Mate)  Poor SOT only had a few teeth, so eventually would dribble and I would have to chop food up small.  But would quite happily polish off a curry or a chili.the hotter the better I think!

Cats and Ducks.... Obviously

Its a strange things when you make friends with a feral cat.  Quite humbling.  They literally would sit out with us all day and night if we were in the garden and it wasn't about the food.  They just liked being with us.  But... you couldn't touch them.  They just didn't get it.

It is at this point I started to see a change in David about the Bogeyes (who claimed to dislike and be allergic).  I often heard him chatting away to them in the morning at the back door and I would wryly laugh to myself and could even be relied upon to feed them!  This was a real breakthrough as the animals are very much my domain.  Even to the point that if I went away and David was at home I would have to pay someone to do horses and cats.

By about 2010 SOT Bogs used to look quite poor by the winter, so I purchased a heated bed for the barn that used to be on a timer overnight.  They all used to snuggle in and every winter I would nurse SOT through it with vitamins and Tuna.  Every year she pull through and all would be fine.

It is tricky with the feral if they get ill, there is pretty much nothing you can do.  I did speak to a few people about catching them if they looked poorly but the general consensus is that you only get them once as they don't trust you again.  So it needs to be worth it!  So I decided at some point to feed them the best I could, to hopefully alleviate any illness in the first place and give them the occasional wormer/flea tables in a bit of pate that they would like off my finger.  How many feral cats do you know that get Iams and Felix as Good as It Gets food!!!

2 weeks ago, SOT started sleeping in the stables . By now I think the ear mites had done about as much damage as they could (can only be got rid of by spot-on treatment which was a complete no go) and was completely deaf.  But bless her she used to appear and look at me with her intelligent little face.  Someone once said she looked a bit like a monkey.  There was defo something there that made her look different.  I put a bed in there for her and after a day or two she stopped coming for dinner, so used to take it to her.  Funnily enough, Daddy bogs was normally with her keeping her warm.  By the Friday she stopped eating the food and drinking.  I managed to entice her with a tin of sardines, which she ate and I saw her on Saturday in the garden.  So again not overely concerned as we had been here before.  On Sunday she wasnt really having any of it and had moved to the heated bed in the barn.  Not to be enticed with Sardines. Monday again, she wouldnt eat and was starting to look terrible.  More importantly she wouldnt drink, I tried rubbing her mouth with milk (which she adored).  The fact that I say I rubbed her mouth with water/milk says it all.  This is the first time I had touched her. Not looking good.  On Tuesday morning at 5.30am as I sat there stroking her and trying to do some Reiki I made the decision to phone the vet and have her put down.  I knew in my heart, her time had come. They say you always know.  So phoned the vet at work, they did suggest I bring her to the surgery but I wasn't going to do that to her.  Back home I went.  By the time I got on the Park and Ride bus, I was in floods of tears (looking good) and was immensly touched that David had too come home.  Catherine the vet from Blaircourt was fabulous and really sweet.  It was definately her time to go and to be honest would probably have died very shortly anyway. 

Little Bogs seems ok at the moment but meows at me a lot.  Daddy Bogs is always about and hope he looks after her.

Sticky Out Tongue Bogs, I miss you and still look for you everynight x  Paw Prints on my heart