A Christmas cat-and-dog love story ....
28 November 2015
An allotments cat – used to living life on the wild side – has turned tail on his communal moggie-mates and found himself a hearth, a home, and a half-share of a comfy sofa alongside Penny the pooch in good time for Christmas.
And it’s thanks to wandering Otto having a chip and a kind ‘purr’ of patrons on his case that he’s landed so firmly on his pampered paws.
But for aspirational Otto, it’s been quite a journey. Betty Farruggia, who runs Walsall Road allotments, takes up the story.
“For the past few years we’ve been caring for a group of feral cats on the allotments. We feed them twice a day and have had them all neutered. Earlier this year another cat turned up. He was the eighth to join us so we called him 'Otto'. We managed to catch him in a cat trap and had him chipped and neutered. He had a collar but it was so tight the vet had to cut it off. The poor boy was nervous and ran away whenever we went near him. So when he ran off ‘for good’ a few weeks later, we thought we’d never see him again.
Time went by then – out of the blue - I had a phone call from a vet to say Otto had been taken into the practice by a local resident, Jenny. She’d had a stray turn-up on her doorstep, and was worried about some injuries he had. The vet scanned him and, of course, the microchip check confirmed he was the wayward allotment cat, Otto.
I spoke with Jenny and was amazed when she told me ‘how tame he was and loved to be stroked and picked up’. Wow! Could this be the Otto we knew? He’d never let anyone near him at the allotments. But it now seemed he’d turned his back on his old life and wanted a real home.
And after putting out feelers and getting support from Cats Protection volunteers, we came up with the purr-fect solution. One of our plot holders, Derek, whose cat Toby had not long died, offered to take him home to live with him and his dog Penny. We did wonder if it would work – but a picture is worth a thousand words – as you can see!”
Derek, who lives on the Beeches estate in Great Barr, confirms that ‘so far, so good’. “Otto started off in a dog cage loaned by CP in the middle of the living room, but he and Penny touched noses in a friendly fashion, so I decided to let the cat out and they get on like a house on fire.
"I’m 70 on Christmas day, and my old dog and my new cat rubbing along together is the best Christmas-cum-birthday present I could have wished for!”
** At Cats Protection we all say 'Happy Birthday and Christmas to Derek, Penny and Otto. Thanks to Betty too for all she does for the allotment cats and the super produce donated that goes into making jams and chutneys to raise funds for all our feline friends. Come and support us at the Christmas Fayre at St Barnabas church in Erdington on Saturday, 5th December’.