Well, you can call me a convert of thought manifestation! After hours and hours of searching, I have struck gold – 2 beautiful, charming Devon Rex kittens! I had tried every possible cattery I could locate in this area and the closest I had come was Madame Picard, a lady of dubious sanity (if her emails are anything to go by), based near Toulouse – a mere 330km away. Even if she hadn’t for some reason taken objection to me, her kittens weren’t available till August, and I am far too impatient to sit and wait 5 months. I kept searching, contacting any Devon Rex breeder I came across… and it has paid off!
A very lovely lady by the name of Veronique Demailly responded to my email late yesterday afternoon to confirm that she had 2 kittens available, born on 09 February, and was I interested? Hell yes! I had originally contacted her cattery on the grounds that she was based in “Southern France” – perfect, I thought: so am I, more or less… Unfortunately, “south” in this case means right down on the south coast, a stone’s throw from Marseilles, in a town called Toulon. So, that would be roughly 800(!) km from here. Doh.
The reality of the distance setting in, I forced myself to calm down again and face the fact that it was looking like I was back to square one. For the hell of it, I dropped Veronique another email to find out a bit more about the cats, and also to explain to her the issue of the distance. She confirmed it that there would be no problem taking the cats on a car journey that long – they would even come complete with travel cases – but that, as they were so young, the earliest they could be collected was mid-May. All of a sudden, things started to work out: some time back, Matt & I had made tentative plans to take a trip to northern Italy for a week or two in late May/early June, taking in the French Riviera on the way – so, what’s to stop us swinging by Toulon on the way back to collect our wee babies?! I emailed Veronique to let her know I was still interested, and she promised to send a few pictures the following morning so I could see them before officially reserving them. As promised, I got the photos this morning – and that was that: I was sold. As you can see, they are just about the cutest things ever. I immediately wrote back and confirmed I would take them. Now, I just have to somehow be patient for the next 3 months! We are occupying ourselves in the meantime coming up with potential names. I will maybe post our top 10 or so later on. Suggestions gratefully received!
In other news, we have been getting along fine with our dog-watching – although Oscar is still forsaking our company during the day, in favour of hanging around at home. We have been taking him out once or twice a day for walkies, and he does occasionally come knocking on our door to come say hello for a few minutes. I have never known a dog do that before Oscar, and it’s very sweet. Often, we will hear a pounding on the door and do a double take when instead of a person, we see him there, waiting to come in and say hi.
Last Friday, his first night without Sharon, we had decided to order pizza from Brantôme as a treat, so off we went to collect it. We got back and I had no sooner closed the front door behind me when there was a frantic knocking. I opened it and was virtually knocked over by a frenzied Oscar. He was in such a heightened state that I was sure something was wrong – and it occurred to me that something really could be up, as he should either have been in the house, or in the back garden, which is fenced off – so how and why had he made it to our front door? As it turned out, his intense agitation was entirely due to the enticing pizza smells he had obviously picked up on from the moment we got out of the car. He was so intent on getting in on the pizza that he had managed to break free of the garden gate! As he still needs to shift a few pounds, we didn’t indulge him – but it was hard going under the weight of that stare!