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| These two sisters came to us via friends of friends, and upset Smudge's quiet life for a while, until he decided they were beneath his contempt and just ignored them. |
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These were the wayward two, both getting pregnant in their teens and within a couple of months of one another. (You wouldn't think so to look at their innocent faces would you?) We knew Sam was in a "delicate" condition, but Bagpuss must have had an immaculate conception! We had known that she was coming into heat when we went away on holiday, leaving her in charge of a friend who was house and cat sitting whilst we were away. |
| To this day he swears that he never let her out, but when it became obvious that she was pregnant, it all tied in with the week we were away. We refer to it as 'the time Graham got Bagpuss pregnant'. |
| Sam was the first to produce, in a drawer in our bedroom. She had four kittens, but one was stillborn. The other three, Prudence, Podge and Nana, stayed with us. Sam was a brilliant mother and they thrived - despite the fact that she decided to move them all up to the top shelf of my wardrobe, so whenever I opened the door they all fell out! As a last resort, I had to remove all the clothes and the shelves from the wardrobe. |
| Baggie was a different matter - she was so determined she wasn't going to be a mum that she hid behind the television when her labour pains began! | I persuaded her up to the drawer where Sam had had her kittens, but I literally had to hold her paw throughout the entire labour. | Luckily for the reluctant mum (and me, because my arm was going to sleep), she only had two babies, who we called He-Man and She-ra. |
| Unlike Sam, Bagpuss was a terrible mum, and had to be taken to the kittens to feed them and then she developed mastitis. | This in turn gave the kittens gastroenteritis and despite visits from the vet and my trying to hand rear them, they didn't survive |
| Poor Sam met an untimely demise when she crept unnoticed into the tumble dryer (though the guilt will live on forever) | Bagpuss, now nearly fifteen, is still with us but doesn't venture further than the garden in her golden years. However life is less peaceful for her and her niece Prudence since the arrival of Cassie the Barbarian! |
