Gandalf & Wiz
Pictures: The black and white short-haired cat is Wiz as she was after she had been with us for a week. The other picture is Gandalf at Eight years old.
Gandalf, a tomcat, has been with me from the age of 12 weeks. He is a wonderful companion cat and we all love him dearly. When he was eight years old he had us all very worried. Gandalf usually goes out for a few hours each evening, always coming home around 9pm, no later than 10pm. This one evening he did not show! We stayed up and left the back door open up until 1am in the morning. We then decided to try again later in the morning and took the chance of leaving a kitchen window slightly open for the night.
Next morning was full of surprises! Gandalf had arrived back home during the night and was well and happy. Although, a new arrival had arrived through the open kitchen window, a young cat, who turned out to be female, she was in our kitchen hiding underneath the kitchen table backed right up against the wall. She was terrified. We could see from the state of her that she was a stray and needed help. Skinny and dirty, the first job was to get her to our Vet for a check-up. Everything was okay, not even a flea found on her! And was she hungry! Our Vet advised us not to leave food out and to allow her small meals often, so her stomach could cope with the shock of so much food.
After a good clean and scrub, then a thorough drying she looked even more thinner. She did have a bout of diarrhoea that lasted for four days, probably due to all the rich food she was eating, this soon cleared up.
She had been neutered already, so we decided to advertise her in the Lost & Found section of our local paper (after two weeks no one came forward to claim her).
Within a few months Wiz had soon put on weight and became a family pet. So now we had two very active and trouble making cats! Favourite games are chasing each other especially at night and hiding then jumping out at each other. We can only guess at Wiz's age, she looks to be one or two years old and certainly acts like it!
We have moved house since the arrival of Wiz and have a wonderfully large plush garden, both cats love it and never stray too far anymore.
We feel very fortunate to not only have Gandalf, but to have Wiz who is a wonderful family pet and companion for Gandalf. Gandalf is now ten years old and we can only guess that Wiz is roughly four years old.
