UNEXPECTED GUESTS

 KIKA                                   

A few days before our first Tenerife Christmas, in 2000, we woke up to find a cat and her four kittens on our terrace. We hosted an al fresco breakfast that day for a dozen guests, and she stayed put throughout. Once Christmas was over we re-homed the kittens but Kika stayed. Don, who professed to hate cats, spoiled her rotten, saying it was because her eyes were blue like his – they also turned red at night!

She used to wait on the swimming-pool wall when we went out and welcome us home with a spectacular display of somersaults. As she got older she would sometimes misjudge a leap through the railing and bang her head - she actually knocked a tooth out doing it. Sparrows would come to the garden for the combings of her hair with which to line their nests, and she'd watch them unmoving - they soon learned to ignore her.

She became fully domesticated, but there remained hints of her former wildness. She'd panic if the door was shut with her inside the apartment, she still had mad moments when she'd race from one end of the terrace to the other after a bougainvillea flower, and she refused to drink clean water, preferring the mucky brown stuff in the bottom of the plant pots.

We delayed our return to England until she reached the end of her life, and I have never found a cat to replace her - she was unique.