Tracey Nicholls got the news she desperately needed to hear when a Wakefield vet clinic phoned to say her lost Burmese cat had been found at the top of Spooners, about 30km from home.
It had been a “downhill spiral” in the past eight months for her cats, which she treats as her own kids. She had to have one euthanised, while another was hit by a car and had a leg amputated.
The third had been missing for three weeks, until Monday, when she got the call that her three-year-old white lilac Burmese named Tiny had been found safe and well.
“I just felt overjoyed. I didn’t know whether to cry or not. I just couldn’t believe it.”
On Monday morning, Tiny was delivered to the vet clinic by someone who had found him and looked after him for a couple of days. After Tracey’s sister picked him up from the vet clinic because she was at work, he was “purring and giving her lots of cuddles”.
Tracey says Tiny was in good condition when found which suggests he has been with someone who had been looking after him.
“He probably threw a tantrum with them. He can really throw his toys out of the cot. He’ll knock things over and bite to get a reaction.”
Tiny’s younger brother Casper has also been missing his sibling. The chocolate Burmese crawled home five months ago with one leg shredded and already he is leaping up the fence with just three legs.
“The cats are my babies because I don’t have kids and I treat them like my babies. I cuddle Tiny in my arms and he puts his paws around me.”
Tracey grew up in a home that had up to eight Siamese, Tonkinese and domestic cats which her mother showed around the country. Her sister went on to breed Burmese cats and gave Tracey Tiny and then Casper as gifts for helping out at the cattery. Both cats have the same parents but are a year apart in age.
They joined her older cat Dreamer, who succumbed to a virus eight months ago and had to be euthanised.
Tiny has always been determined to escape outside, even when the cat flap is locked on one side by pushing a paw under it and lifting it up. Tracey says he can even get past the flyscreens on the windows by flipping them up with his paw, in a bid to get outside.
Since Casper was hit by a car, the cat flap has been firmly locked both sides so neither could get out at night. Now, her father Kevin is building a cattery beside the house so the cats can go outside in safety.
“He won’t be getting out again.”
