Amanda is a very special girl, her name actually means 'deserving of love'... and love is exactly what she needed. The poor girl had been so badly treated that it was four months before I could even touch her.
I am not going to go into details of what Amanda has suffered, there are two main reasons for this. 1) Thinking about it, even after the years that have passed, still makes me extremely angry. 2) There is no need to go over it again and again now that Amanda is happy. So, instead of writing about the deliberate cruelty Amanda was subjected to, I'll write about the horrible fright she caused me one day.... :)
Mandy is a hunter, and a very good hunter at that - I've never known any other cat who has caught one magpie, let alone two. She used to bring me 'presents' every night, either dropping them on my face (often half eaten) in the night, or leaving them next to the bed so I stepped on them when getting out of bed. I think it was her way of making sure I knew they were there.
It was a normal summer evening, roughly two years ago. My husband was at work so it was just myself and our son in the house. I went upstairs to get something out of my bedroom, opened the door and screamed, slamming the door shut again and ordering my son downstairs. Have you ever seen one of those scenes in a horror film where a room is totally alive with huge black flies buzzing around? Well that was my bedroom!
I ran downstairs to get the can of fly spray from the kitchen before bravely venturing back upstairs... no way was I going into that room until those things were all dead, so I opened the door just enough to put my arm in and sprayed enough fly killer to wipe out a small island. After about twenty minutes I went in and quickly opened the windows to let the remaining fly spray out. Once the room had cleared, I went in and started cleaning all the flies up, it was horrible. I used a vacuum cleaner to suck them up, one by one. By the time I'd finished the bug count had reached almost 200.
I called my husband at work and told him what had happened, he took a short while off work to help me lift the bed out of the way. There was no way of knowing what we'd find under the bed, but knew it had to be investigated. We lifted the bed, almost to scared to look at what was under there.... only to find... loads of shells the flies had hatched from... and, a mouse skin! That's all it was, a totally hollow but perfectly formed mouse. No doubt Amanda had left it there some time previously and forgotten about it.
Another very valid reason for keeping the cats all shut in at night, apart from keeping them safely away from night time drivers, it chiefly reduces the amount of flies that get into the house! :)
