Hello, Mo!
Are you ready for kitten cuteness overload?
Those of you that follow my blog will know I love cats. Not that I don’t like dogs, but cats suit my lifestyle better and recently I helped Kelly rescue a kitten from France. He’s only been with us for 3 months, but he settled in so quickly, it seems like a lot longer.
His first night with us. He crashed out after a very busy couple of days.
Due to a successful policy of kittens being spayed and neutered, there are very few available in Jersey. On the other hand, there are a huge number of feral cats in France and some very sad stories of what often happens to them, so we decided to rescue one. Mind you, the lockdown stopped all neutering which probably means there will be a few kittens born this Autumn - the RSPCA expect approximately 80,000 to be born in the UK alone!
Mo’s mother and litter of siblings were found in a barn near Limoges, in western France. Thankfully, the barn owners are cat lovers and fostered them all until permanent homes could be found. It must be difficult to look after these gorgeous bundles of fluff and love, watch them grow and then hand them over to their forever families.
This was the first photo we were sent of him. He was about eight weeks old.
We’re extremely grateful to the foster family and Jersey’s Cat Community (Channel Islands) Facebook page administrators who put us in touch with them. In the space of three weeks, they went from having no kittens for adoption to approximately a hundred and fifty. Knowing how many needed homes, it was extremely tough just rescuing one.
French kittens can’t travel until they’ve had a rabies jab at 16 weeks, and Covid border restrictions complicated things further. We didn’t know when he’d be able to leave France, so decided to go and collect him.
All the essentials packed.
We arranged to meet the foster family on the outskirts of Limoges which is a 5.5 hour drive from St Malo. Our plan was to leave our mobile home in Dinan at 7am, pick him up at lunchtime and be back by around 7pm. As it happened, the day before our road trip, we were asked if we would mind bringing three more kittens to Jersey. We were more than happy to help, and they were all driven up to St Malo by a lovely man called Jim.
Our first sight of Mo with his two siblings - Branston on the left and Gherkin in the middle. He was so much bigger than them.
We met Jim at 6:45am in the ferry terminal car park at 6:45am - he had driven through the night to make sure he got there in time. Then we saw Mo and two of his siblings for the first time, along with a little white and ginger boy called Nutty. Transferring them from his car to ours was a little nerve-racking, but one by one we completed it without losing any.
Our car was packed to the roof, so our four new passengers were squeezed into the front with Kelly.
Checking in was a noisy experience. Although they were pretty chilled, the meowing was quite intense which made hearing the official a little difficult. Each kitten had its’ own pet passport and health documents which had to be checked.
We had to leave them in the car for the crossing to Jersey, but thankfully, it was calm and when we returned to them two hours later, they were delighted to see us but surprisingly relaxed. Passing through Customs at St Helier’s ferry terminal was slow, as new Covid testing had been implemented for all arriving passengers into the island. The upside was seeing all the Customs officers smiling as they came to see who was making all the noise in our car - every one of them became a big softy at the sight of four bundles of meowing cuteness.
Once through Customs, we met Chris from the Jersey Cat Community to handover three of our precious packages. I can’t deny that I wasn’t tempted to drive straight home with them all! We’ve since found out that Mo’s mum also came to a family in Jersey.
Kelly and I came up with the name ‘Mo’ as he came from LiMOges, but as I mentioned in my post about Toto, it’s almost impossible not to give our pets nicknames too. Mo’s already accumulated a few - Little Mo, MoJo and Kelly fondly refers to him as ‘My Son’.
Too cute
It’s been nine years since our last kitten, Tifa, also a ginger was sadly killed by a car. I’ve had seven kittens throughout my adult life, and it seems that ginger ones have something in common - they’re utterly mad! It’s almost as though Tifa has been reborn in Mo. He does everything at 100 mph, be it running from one side of the house to the other, around the garden or up and down the stairs, especially when playing fetch. We didn’t teach him it; he just loves playing it. I sometimes put videos of it on my Instagram.
No word of a lie, I’ve never seen a cat jump so high - he easily reaches 5 feet. If there’s a smudge on the window, he bounces up and down like Tigger, in a hilarious but vain attempt to capture it. Like every cat, curiosity rules his world. He’s into and on everything - the larder, the dishwasher, the bath, the coal bunker and my laptop. The simplest task becomes a ‘remove Mo before proceeding’ mission.
Can you find him?
Water fascinates him. He loves running around in puddles and watching the bath run - sometimes getting a little close!
His first (and not last) slip into the bath.
Turn your back on the open fridge and he’s in it.
He’s constantly hungry. I’ve never known a cat wolf down their food as Mo does. It must be the feral instinct in him. He licks the bowl clean, almost literally. If you didn’t know better, you could think his bowl had just come out of the cupboard.
Anything left on the kitchen counter is at risk - big mistake. No matter how many times we get him down, he’s back up there five minutes later. We’ve tried all types of deterrents but nothing works.
Now Autumn is here, he’s found a nice warm place to curl up by the fire. It’s one of the few times he stays still.
Needless to say my ten year old lady, Suki, is not at all impressed with all the noise, energy and chaos that he has brought into her world. She wasn’t really a fan of Toto, but think she’d swap Mo for Toto in a flash.
Not sure when I’m going to tell her that a little playmate will be joining Mo in a few weeks. I’ll be answering to ‘Crazy Cat Lady’ from now on.
Believe it or not, this is her happy face.