HARRY

Every now and then there comes into your life a kitten that you simply can't bear to part with. In my case it was Harry. Having said that, I did find that I couldn't part with Kosta and it was extremely difficult to part with Lijang - the problem being that these three kittens were all singletons and thereby lies the problem. In my experience, I have always found it is easier to part with our kittens if I try to remain slightly detached from them. For that reason Barry and I never actually give them names, they remain No. 1, No. 2, No 3 etc. (the order in which they were born) or "the usual female" or "the little sorrel" as they grow up, until they are named by their prospective new owners. In that way we feel they are not becoming members of our family and it is easier to accept that they will eventually leave us. When there is more than one kitten in a litter we often find that they tend to play more with each other and their mother than us and when it is time to sleep they will usually form a pile somewhere, all together. When you have a singleton, apart from their mother, there is only you to socialise with and it is very much more difficult in these circumstances to remain detached and accept that they will have to leave one day.

Parting with Kosta was so difficult because she was the sole survivor of a catalogue of disasters that started out with 2 pregnant queens carrying 9 kittens between them! How do you part with a kitten under those circumstances? Keeping Kosta was so easy because at that time we only had 5 cats and had decided that, ultimately, 7 would be our final figure - no more! When Harry arrived and I found myself in the dilemma of whether I was going to be able to part with him he was No. 9!!!

Harry was different. On the day he was born, I looked at him and thought, "oh boy, another singleton and a male (I just love male neuters!!!) and for the first time in 8 litters of kittens I broke my cardinal rule and I gave him a name. I just felt compelled to call him something other than "the kitten". I looked at him and wondered what was the most incongruous name one could call such a beautiful cat as the Somali and I came up with "Harry"! Mind, even Barry looked at me with an extremely puzzled expression on his face as he asked "Eileen - why Harry?" He knows I am extremely particular when I am selecting names for my cats, nothing normal or boring for me! I like unusual and special names, names that have meanings, like Sorcha which is gaelic for bright eyes, Briagha, which is gaelic for beautiful (it took me almost two weeks to come up with that one) and Snicklefritz which is a German endearment for a young, energetic child and really I couldn't answer him, I just thought it was such an absurd name for such a tiny kitten that it suited him. So Harry he became and Harry he stayed. Of course that, in itself creates quite a problem. Having a Harry and a Barry in the house causes considerable confusion. Every time I call Barry, Harry comes running expecting a treat and every time I call Harry, I hear Barry somewhere in the distance saying "Yes, what do you want?"

Harry didn't quite thrive like all our other kittens. For some reason it appeared that Sorcha didn't have enough milk for him - who would have ever thought that one would end up supplementing a single kitten - usually you expect that when you have large litters. He never actually lost weight, but his weight gain was much slower than all our previous kittens and throughout his early life he was always the smallest kitten we had ever bred. I hasten to add that, at the time of writing this, he is 7 months old and by no means small - he outgrew his mother about 2 months ago! It is possible that, as a single kitten, he simply didn't make enough demands on Sorcha and she just didn't produce enough milk, so when he was 2 weeks old I began to supplement. What a rare excuse to bottle feed - all the maternal instincts rushed to the surface again (my children are both adults now) as I bottle fed and winded - they say you never forget!!! Every time I walked into the bedroom and shouted "Harry" his little head appeared in the hole in the kittening box as he yelled at me to hurry up. Once he could climb out of the box, he would rush towards me on his little legs - Linda Keeler and I used to laugh at him when he got to about 4 weeks old because he looked like an Oxo cube on legs!

Strangely, I think Sorcha found a singleton kitten a little disappointing, most certainly not as rewarding as a full litter of kittens, because for the first time in her life she decided that he and she should sleep with us. Not for her the satisfaction of herself and all her babies tucked up at night in the kittening box as in the past. Every night when we went to bed and turned out the light, she would pick him up and jump on the bed, forcing her way under the covers. This was, in fact, history repeating itself because only 6 weeks earlier we had been through the same thing with Snickles, our Oriental Black, who insisted on dragging her singleton, Lijang, into bed each night. For 3 weeks Barry and I walked around like zombies, black bags under our eyes as we constantly kept putting Snickles and her kitten back into the kittening box and she kept bringing her back and here we were 6 weeks later going through the same thing with Sorcha! The problem was not so much getting up and trying to put mother and baby back into their own bed, it was constantly being aware of the fact that there may be something very small and fragile in the bed that could be squashed if we rolled onto it, that meant never really going into a deep sleep. However, we survived the lack of sleep - even Harry survived, which is no mean feat the way Barry sleeps!

However, once we started supplementing him and weaning him, he began to put on weight and catch up and turned out to be the most outgoing, delightful, clownish, almost lunatic kitten we had ever produced. The weeks went by and each day I found myself thinking "I can't part with this kitten, but I can't really keep him." Finally I made my decision - he was staying - I just couldn't bear to let him go.

When it came to registering him, I thought of all the unusual, special names I had picked out and listed over the years to register my kittens, but he had just become Harry! I decided that Harry had to be in the registered name somewhere and I thought about Feorag Harry Hotspur, (Harry Hotspur being a well known historical character in Northumberland where we live), I thought about Feorag Handsome Harry, because he was certainly turning into a handsome chap and I thought about Feorag Dirty Harry after the Clint Eastwood character. However, one evening, when he was about 8 weeks old, as I lay in bed trying desperately to read a very good book I was totally engrossed in, whilst he was running around on the bed, jumping on the book, over the book, on me, over me, chewing the book, chewing me, I stopped to watch him and he was so typically a Somali, an irrepressible, delightful, unrestrained happy chappy with such an air of joie de vivre about him he just had to be named Feorag Happy Harry.