Reanna read it

Cats part 3  - Sid                  

Sid was a big amiable tabby boy who started hanging around. With my old neighbours and Tibbles I understood the decisions cats can make about where they liked to visit if not live and never mind where you  think they live. He came from several houses up the road, and it turned out they missed him and wanted him, but he was having none of it. I gave him snacks but stopped short of poaching him not least because Susie was wary. But my next door neighbours had no such scruples and he moved in given the minimum of encouragement. He still visited us so I guess I’d done something right. In fact I came home one day to find he had been shut in my house, there they were like matching bookends, one on each armchair fast asleep.They got on enough to tolerate each other. In fact on the quiet I think they had a deal, anyone picks on one of us the other one wades in, ok? But anything you can do, I can do better, see – not just play dead but play run over.       

I should add that the neighbours who had "poached" Sid went on to sell their house and buy another. At which point, they asked me if I would like him as they proposed, rather bizarrely, to start again with a cat of their own at the new house! However as is the way of things, the guy the other side of them was also a regular alternative for Stripey Sid, and thus it was that Mark adopted him, not me. He (Sid) graciously accepted Mark's girlfriend a while later and lived happily with them  - and they took him with them when they moved, and I continued to be first reserve at both houses when they were away, until they went to Australia. Whereupon he went to his grandparents (as it were) who had stepped in as I'd already gone to Spain by then. He very thoughtfully sent me a photo too as I recall and as far as I know continues his retirement in comfort in Nottingham. He's doing better than a lot of mine.                                           

            Sid playing dead on the drive.                                       Susie goes one further and pretends I've run                                                                                                                            her over. Did someone tell her about Whiskers??

When my neighbours sold the house, they wanted to leave him behind for reasons I couldn’t fathom so the guy the other side inherited Sid. He’d been visiting there as well for some time. They know, you know. And so he got another new home and I got to do cat sitting when they were away, and then they moved, and he went too this time as they loved him very much, and I got to do the visiting instead at their new house.

Now he lives with his “grandparents” since my friends went to live in Australia, and I got photos to remember him “from Sid to Aunty Janet”.

I should think so too, I brought him cat toys last visit.