Gone to the dogs
I can remember it very well indeed. It was a gleaming lovely summer day. I was busy in the garden hanging up the washing. A car stopped just in front of the house. Our daughter alighted. At that time she had almost finished her studies in Liege. But she was not unaccompanied. With head held high he approached me. For the first I was speechless. Well, whom have you brought home? It was a large deer-brown dog which my daughter had saved from the animal home in Liege. There he was, standing there somewhat shy and gazing at me with faithful eyes. Formerly I had nothing to do with dogs but with this one, it was love at first sight.
My husband’s love for animals was until then very underdeveloped – even inexistent, so to speak. His motto was: No animal shall enter my home! It remained in force until the day when a cat with long hair and blue eyes strayed to us and decided to stay. It became our dear pussy for cuddling.
And then there was suddenly this dog, a Belgian Alsatian mixture whose name was Bobby. My husband was head over heels. In his youth he had owned an Alsatian too. Now he had Bobby. And Bobby had him. It did not, however, seem to be the cat’s cup of tea. Out of protest she moved out and stayed in the garage until her end. In the meantime our daughter had finished school, found a job and soon left home after that. The dog stayed with us. But Lydie always remained his saviour. When she came Bobby always staged an admirable and lasting dance of joy.
My husband taught Bobby everything a dog had to learn. The latter obeyed him in everything and followed him wherever he went, both becoming inseparable. Together they undertook long walks. Very often Bobby brought back a big stick from the woods with which he could play with my husband for hours on end. Bobby developed into a watchdog which safeguarded the premises and never ran off even without a fence. Only when the lady from the village came by with her white poodle would Bobby accompany both of them for a part of their way and then return home. Bobby was my husband’s hiking companion for many years until the walking tours became shorter owing to the fact that the dog became less agile and got problems with his hind legs.
Bobby never ran away but he was unable to be stopped when Love called. (He was of male gender). A little, black she-dog from the village had taken his fancy and although he was old and somewhat ill he was nevertheless attracted to her. Shortly afterwards Bobby died. This caused us all a lot of grief – especially my husband.
He had lost a faithful companion over many years.
Annemarie (Luxembourg)

She-cat Milli, He-cat Maxi

People in our family are almost all cat-fans. For 17 years, I owned a grey cat, Bella. When she died, I did not want any other cat; I had grown so accustomed to her, never to imagine being able to replace her by another one. But you should never say NEVER...

In autumn 2005, my daughter’s mother in law found two tiny little cats on her terrace, starved, sick and more dead than alive. With the help of the veterinary, she took care of the two and after 2 weeks, they were in a state of health, where she coud start looking for a new home for them. Giving in to my daughter’s urging, we went to visit them one day. I should not have done this! The very moment, when that tiny tigercat looked into my eyes, I was lost! More so even, when her little pitchblack brother-cat came running towards us, miaouwing loudly for our attention.

Ever since that day, those two cats form part of our family. From that handfull of nearly living furr, they have grown to beautiful, healthy cats. Milli is a little beige-black tigered furrball, with grassgreen eyes. She is catching everything with wings in our garden, from bees to butterflies, to dragonflies and birds. Maxi, the tall and high-legged black cat with yellow eyes, is the appointed mouser. He loves to bring them inside underneath the dining table. Of course I take away living prey and put them into liberty, but sometimes I have to dispose of dead animals, too.

As both cats are only little over a year old, they love to play. Milli likes to run after knitting wool, but her favorite play is with “Wires”, i.e. little remains of colored, coiled wires used in modelbuilding. You throw those at her and off she goes, chasing after and finally burrying them under the carpets. Each time I am supposed to vacum-clean, I have to dig for the wires first, sometimes I find more than 10, 12!

Maxi likes to play football and catchball with little rubberballs. He also brings them back to us in his mouth.

While I am writing this, Milli sits on my lap and enjoys the heating of the computer. She also likes to chase the cursor on the screen.

But our greatest pleasure is, when we retire into our livingroom chairs, we do not stay alone for very long. And so, most of our reading- or TVwatching-evenings end up with each one of us having a purring cat on our lap.

LOLO (Luxembourg)