Chez Natasha

When I was a little girl we had two cats, Ti-Noir (‘Blackie’) and Ti-Gris (‘Little grey one’). T-Noir was a big tabby that just got too old (16 or so) and Ti-Gris had decided to take off into the woods and never come back one summer. My dad had the nasty task of bringing Ti-Noir to the vet to have it put to sleep. When he came back, he told me something like, “don’t get a cat unless you’re ready to do this, too.”

When I got my first apartment in 1987, the first thing I wanted to have that I couldn’t before was cats. At my favourite restaurant, one of the waitresses had kittens she was giving away. I said yes without knowing what the kittens looked like, all I knew is that I wanted a female cat. I got a whiny pitch black siamese cat called Gala (Dali’s wife’s name) and renamed it Pussyminou, roughly French Canadian for catcat. A bilingual joke on my part.

After a few months of whiny Pussyminou, the black stealth cat that sneaked around corners, I met some classical guitarists that had some kittens to give away. I said yes again, without a picture and ended up with the female Moonster.

Both Pussyminou and Moonster came to the Netherlands with me in 1999. Pussyminou got very ill and was put to sleep – how could I forget – on September 10, 2001. She was 14.

Moonster was put to sleep today and was 21, which is a helluvalot for any cat. After some years of kidney pills and recent heart problems, she had a stroke and was paralysed, so it was time to check out.

Long live Moonster.