A sad little email from Larissa today:

Our lovely cat Stanley went into renal failure over the weekend and was put to sleep yesterday at the age of 18 years and one month.

Stanley, or the OAP (old aged pensioner) as we’d taken to calling him, had had failing kidneys for the last year, but carried on in typical manly Stanley fashion as if nothing would ever slow him down – stalking the fences of Rozelle, sitting on the dining room table helping himself to whatever Peggy and Colin were having for dinner and staring down every dog he came across.

Stanley was named for a jazz musician – Stan Getz – which also gave rise to his last name, but he acquired his middle name from a wild kitten habit of swinging on the curtains. He and Ted used to play a macabre game of let’s-freak-out-the-visitors, where Ted would swallow the head of a thrashing Stan and pretend to bite down – always bound to get a reaction from those not in the know…

He had a good life and a happily disgraceful old age – not only dipping his paw into the soup whenever the fancy took him, but taking one last swipe at nature last year in the form of a wild dove that was a bit too confident about landing in the backyard.

We miss him already.

Love to you all
Larissa