An Old Lady And Two Kittens.

The best medicine against monotony.

My neighbour's neighbours suddenly got two kittens. Almost sounds like a riddle, doesn't it? Anyway, said first neighbour is a lovely lady, a spinster in the good old sense of the word and in her late 70's. Now and again I go and visit her to catch up on her world.

If she isn't in her house, she is in her other favourite place, her garden. She still stacks her own wood for the winter, grows a variety of vegetables and only grudgingly lets her cousin mow her big lawn. Ringing the doorbell got no results, so I ventured into her backyard to look for her. She was busy cutting down an over zealous hedge and when she saw me, she mentioned that she'd been wondering when I would come for a visit. Code for I've got news!

We moved over into a shady spot and shot the breeze, but the whole time she looked over my shoulder and sometimes hers and eventually said:

" My neighbour has got two kittens and they often spend the day with me in the garden. "

" Oh, fantastic, maybe you can adopt one of them? "

" Oh no, I couldn't. I live alone and what if something were to happen to me? "

...a bit of a poser for me, but fair enough. The whole time I was there she told me how her day has changed in routine, as she now has those two little shadows. When they are around her, she doesn't go near the front yard lest they run out into the road, if her cousin comes to fetch her by car, she sensors him to drive slowly just in case the little dears are in the road.

Her whole face lit up as she recalled the various cute manoeuvres and antics these kittens had done around her. She knows their routine, is scared for them when she hears a dog come by and told me, that she thought of me and my little Mausi. Oh yes, I had regaled her endlessly about our little mischief's antics. How could one not?

Cats and dogs are the best medicine for loneliness, are the best medicine for happiness and give a long endless day a lot of stops along the way. Somehow, we need to perhaps steer the lonely older people towards those abandoned cats and dogs in pounds, which, unless they were adopted would be sent to meet their maker far too early.

Biggi