When my mother died in 1999, I found in her handbag a small, battered photo
                        album.  When I opened it, I found photos she had cherished for many years.
                        Not of her children and grandchildren (although we were there,too), but of some of
                        the cats she had loved over the past seventy years.

                        So I have decided to share these photos with you, in memory of my mother,
                        who always said, "If there are no cats in heaven, then I'm not going" and of the
                        cats who were lucky enough to live with her over the years.

                        Some of these photos are not of brilliant quality - they date from the 1930s through
                        to the 1970s.  Mum's 1980s and 1990s cat, Tiamat, now lives with me and has her
                        own page.
 

                       SKIPPER - born May, 1938

                       Skipper was the beginning of the legend in our family that all black and white
                        cats are insane (Tiamat has continued and confirmed this legend).  He liked to
                        kill newspapers, unroll toilet paper and generally create mayhem.  Sadly, this
                        was in the days before vaccinations for cats were available, and Skipper died
                        of feline enteritis before he was two years old.

                                                                                                I love the light in this photo

                        DUSTY MILLER - born early 1944

                        Dusty Miller was named after the cat in one of the Anne of Green Gables
                        books (Anne of Windy Willows?) and was, naturally, a dusty grey and
                        white cat.

                        LEO - born 1954, died 1964

                        Leo was different.  Leo was the only pedigree cat my mother ever owned.
                        He was Persian with some Chinchilla and was a beautiful smokey grey colour.
                        I can just remember him and how much I loved to feel his fur.  I'm the baby
                        in the photo, and you can tell from the look on Leo's face just how much he
                        liked me!!

                        Baby Leo - about eight weeks                           Wasn't he beautiful?
 

                        BLUEY - born March 1967, died March 1978

                        This is the cat I remember growing up with.  Independent, strong willed,
                        a hunter, but never a fighter.  He could sit in the middle of the drive with
                        the gates open and his back to the street, and not one dog was brave
                        enough to approach him.

                        Skipper, Dusty Miller, Leo and Bluey (and Misty and all the others, who
                        didn't have a photo I could find) have now left the Rainbow Bridge and joined
                        their mother in their new life together.