Claire

My cat Poppy is like a baby to me, I treat her like a princess and she has free reign of the house, much to my boyfriends dismay… as she frequently likes to jump up on the bed in the middle of the night while we’re sleeping, and as he’s such a light sleeper, he always wakes up in a bad mood with her.

She came to live with me in a funny way, it’s kind of like a fairytale. About two years ago there was some very heavy snow around Christmas time, and my ex boyfriend and I went out to play in it late at night and we heard little meows coming from a hedge. We had a look and saw this little (but very fat and fluffy!) cat wandering around the place trying to get away from the snow, so I picked her up and she stood on my head, which made both my ex and I laugh. I live very far out in the countryside and only have a couple of neighbours whom I know very well, and to my knowledge none of my neighbours had got a new cat, so it was a mystery as to where this little fellow came from.

We left her outside that night because we assumed that she belonged to someone, and would find her way home, but in the morning she was still out there in the snow, looking cold and sad and meowing just as much as before, so we put some turkey out for her and she ate it hungrily. Then we decided that we couldn’t just leave her out in the snow to freeze, so we brought her inside and kept her warm in the utility room (she couldn’t come in the main section of the house as we had another elderly and very ill cat living with us at the time and couldn’t risk upsetting her).

Eventually we managed to socialise this new cat with our old one, and we called her Poppy. By this point I was incredibly attached to her and she was attached to us. We took her to the vets and they had to scan her to see if she had a tag, but she didn’t… so we became rightful owners of her. According to the vet she was only 2 years old and very healthy, so we could see no reason why anyone would have wanted to get rid of her.

She’s since become my pride and joy and I love her to bits and I can’t imagine life without my little Poppy. She’s such a funny little thing, always curious and always trying to boss us around!, she really is the most adorable cat you could ever meet.