I hadn’t been to Raasay to visit my beautiful, if slightly deranged and certainly dangerous, big sister for over 18 months.
At Christmas and New Year when Sue was being held hostage on Raasay by her cantankerous cat, Mrs. Pussykinookins we had promised to make visiting her in the coming New Year a priority.
Mrs Pussikinoookins otherwise known by her family and friends as “That Bloody Cat” or “The Cat Who Wouldnt Die” has been holding Sue hostage on Raasay ever since the vet diagnosed her with a terminal illness and only a few weeks left to live………. 3 years ago.
The poor animal is also suffering from a type of dementia which includes screaming, vocal anxiety whenever she isn’t safely ensconced on her owners lap and a form of extreme, revenge bowel evacuation. Consequently, Sue feels unable to visit her friends and close family in Gateshead and Yorkshire even though she has had diverse offers by friends on Raasay to feed the cat so she could escape its tyranny.
Expecting kind friends to not only visit and feed the cat twice a day but also play hunt the cat poo game and then assiduously clean it up seemed above and beyond the call of duty.
Mrs Pussikins was a stray when she kindly decided to adopt Sue over 15 years ago. In the intervening years she has lived with Sue in 4 different houses and locations. Without a doubt a very strong and loyal bond has been forged between them. She appears to be very distressed when Sue is not around and equally Sue would be devastated if she died whilst Sue was away. So as far as Sue was concerned she couldn’t leave Raasay as she couldn’t abandon “That Bloody Cat”.
Now, Sue has made many good and wonderful friends on Raasay who all enjoy her company and support her, but she still misses her family and friends from south of the border. And we most definitely miss her and all her eccentricities!!!
So our promise that we would visit was quite important to both her and us. Initially, we hoped to go up in January but it is a long way….about 450 miles….and it takes us 2 or 3 days of travelling in our van so we needed to put a good chunk of time aside to be able to make the journey and spend a fair bit of time with Sue.
January came and went. We identified 10 days in February but on chatting to Sue it seemed possible that she and her youngest daughter were hoping to meet up then.
Finally, we agreed a date in early March and arranged such things as the Van’s MOT around the proposed date. Everything was set for a trip to Scotland and Raasay! And boy were we ready for it!
To be continued……..
