Bacardi Girl

Sue was an aspiring PA, in a London Advertising Agency, and would travel to the office at least twice a week. Since COVID, her firm had decided to keep the ‘work from home’ policy, and sub-let the two upper floors of their building to another company.

It felt strange at first, not having you own desk, but a communal one, but with Zoom, WhatsApp, things could get done easier at home. She found herself less tired as she could fit in her house chores with her work.

Things were working for her, she had a great social life, a well-paid job, and Tibs.

Tibs, a beautiful black and white cat she found as a stray. It arrived at her works, pre-COVID, in a sorry state. Half-starved, flea-ridden and with an eye infection. Sue, knew what she had to do. Firstly, she took the cat to a near-by vet, who she went to university with called Daniel, to see if it was chipped. But no, it wasn’t. The vet offered to send the cat to a local re-homing shelter after treatment. Sue was thankful, this poor wee animal was going to be cared for at last… and as she headed out of the vet’s door, she paused and said, ‘Hold on Daniel how much is his treatment going to be? And can I adopt him?’

She thought to herself, my what have I just let myself in for? But she didn’t care, she knew what she had to do, and was going to move heaven and earth to adopt this poor fragile cat.

Daniel was in full agreement, having known Sue since University.

A few month’s later as she sat there petting Tibs, after a long hot soak wrapped in her fluffy dressing gown, her apartment intercom started to ring, it was Daniel.

‘Hi Sue.’ he said, ‘I’ve just come to check on how the cat is doing, as I was in the area.’

‘Come on up.’

She raced to the bedroom, threw on some half-decent clothes and waited for Daniel to knock, thinking thank the Lord that lift takes it time to get to her floor.

She was just brushing her hair when Daniel knocked, carrying a small pet-cage. Normally, Tibs would scurry behind the sofa and not come out until visitors were gone… Even her own mother and father never had the privilege of Tibs’s company. But he didn’t this time,he just stood there looking at this cage, when Sue heard the most faintest of meow’s coming from the cage.

Tibs gingerly crept up to this tiny little kitten, in its cage and let out such a welcoming purrr and immediately laid down in front of the cage purring at this little kitchen, as if to tell it everything was going to be OK.

Daniel explained the tragic story about this little kitten, of how she was left abandoned by her previous owners and how he was called out by their neighbours who had found her sleeping and unresponsive by the wheelie-bin that night. They had taken her home, but she wasn’t eating or drinking, she just laid there. So they called him out, they wished they could keep this little kitten, but their eldest cat, was too territorial and they knew their cat wouldn’t take to this kitten.

‘For a minute I thought I might have to put her down.’ said Daniel, ‘That meow is her first responsive moment since they found her’

Sue then placed a small bowl of kitten-milk, the only milk Tibs would drink and would mug you for, down by the cage. She then carefully unlatched the cage and tiptoed away to the kitchen to make Daniel a drink. It wasn’t long before Tibs was encouraging this sweet little kitten to drink the milk.

‘Look at that.’ he said. ‘She drinking that milk.’

A few minutes later, and a clean bowl, Tibs carried the little kitten gently in his mouth and placed him at Sue’s feet for her to pick up.

Sue smiled and said ‘Sue PA, Cat lover and healer of heart-broken cats.’

Daniel laughed, then looked at Sue as she cradled this frail kitten her in arms, with Tibs curled up beside,and said, ‘On seeing how well Tibs is, you don’t have to ask, the answer is yes, you can adopt her, on one condition though.’

‘What’s that?’, she replied, with a smile

‘You have dinner with me tomorrow night.’