There were a lot of cats on the farm in Skyros. Seventeen, to be exact. I never learned all their names but we had nicknames for a lot of them. Above is Mary (pictured left), Ben (centre...) and Hunter. Mary was our special favourite.
Look how pretty she is! And she was so smart too. Whenever we went near the kitchen she'd run over and try to climb into the fridge when we opened it. What for, who knows. The milk was very odd (I supposed she would have appreciated it anyway) but it wasn't fresh, something I've never had before. We also kept plenty of bottles of water in there and some leftovers from meals to snack on. Coleen also had a supply of oranges. She loves oranges. Anyway, Mary was the cat who joined us on our first morning, and from then on she would climb through our window in the middle of the night to join us in bed.
Let's talk some more about Hunter. We got to know this guy because every time we'd come into our room during the day we'd find him asleep on our bed. We took to calling him 'Sleepy McSleeperson'. Then, surprise of all surprises, we were driving along in the white van one day when Amanda saw him sitting at the side of the road and said, 'there's my Hunter'. 'Hunter?' I repeated, incredulous. 'Oh yes, he's my best little hunter...' Amanda replied. Apparently this sleepy, laid-back guy is a killing machine by night. Who knew?
Then we have the kittens: Max (orange) and Sisi. These two would not stop playing all day long, wrestling each other from dawn till dusk. They were so freaking adorable even I couldn't resist picking them up and cooing over them. Unfortunately they weren't at that stage of cat development where they start to appreciate human contact... they just wanted to get back to playing. The only way I could sustain their attention was to wiggle a piece of hay on the ground for them to chase.
I brought Max into the room once but he wasn't too keen to be there. He had to get back outside and play with Sisi. Big surprise.
This here's Hyena. We were calling her One-Eye until we learned her name - as you can see, she only had one working eye at the time. An infection was going round the cats that comes and goes every year. It closes up one or both of their eyes but eventually the gunk clears away and they can see again. Unfortunately for one little darling, its eyes were permanently crossed as a result of the infection. One-Eye above had just about regained her sight by the time we left thanks to some attention from Amanda and Coleen.
There was another cat with one eye closed - Other One-Eye, whose name we never learned. This cat was very sweet but was so affectionate that it actually started to bug me. I wish I'd got a picture of her. Whenever she clambered off me (or I pushed her away) there'd be dirty paw prints all over my clothes. I don't know how the other cats didn't manage to have dirty paws but they never got me so mucky so I got pretty annoyed at Other One-Eye about it. She was also just so hairy. But I appreciate that she was just very full of love...
And this is the time the rooster kept trying to eat the cats' food. It was pretty amusing to watch Dimos chasing him away!
And that concludes this episode. Oh, how I miss Mary... :'(
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