Update on Puss

Puss the Princess Cat (see alert issued here) is well and truly back, and has moved in with us.

She appeared on our doorstep a couple of weeks ago, and stayed for a few days.

Then one day I went downstairs and found a tiny kitten huddling on the doorstep of a flat on the floor below, where Puss's 'main' owner used to live. Said owner fled the country at the start of the revolution and is yet to return.

(On a side note, he is American, and the US State Department is still warning against unessential travel to Egypt, which is bizarre. The UK Consul General, however, says "our analysis is that you are as safe in Alexandria as you would be in any other Western European city, such as London or Paris." On the one hand, strange advice from the Americans which bears no relation to what it's actually like here; on the other hand, we get to keep Puss for the time being, which is nice.)

Anyway...the kitten. I brought him back up to our flat. He immediately ran up to Puss and suckled furiously. She washed him a lot. She seemed quite genuinely concerned about him, despite having been in our flat for 3 days, without any indication that she had a kitten elsewhere.

Kitten stayed for a couple of days then disappeared again. Eventually Patrick found out the full story: Puss had her kittens in a flat a couple of floors up from us, and they have all been found good homes. (The one I found downstairs had managed to escape one day.) When the kittens were about 6 weeks old, Puss decided she'd had enough of motherhood, and miaowed to get out. That's when she reappeared at our door.

She is now pretty much a permanent fixture.

As much as I love cats, I really didn't want to adopt one while we're here. I'm already sad about saying goodbye to her at the end of August. In the meantime, however, I'm loving the constant miaowing, scratching at furniture, demanding food, wanting to play at 3 in the morning, sharpening of claws on my leg, and suddenly purring loudly in my ear while I'm asleep...

It's a good thing she's cute!