Yesterday, while I was hunting down the hedgerows, Celia went off to her local Cats Protection fete - details of the charity on www.cats.org.uk. Never buy a kitten, get a Cats Protection kitten. They will grow into splendid cats like me and in some ways, I suppose, William. At the fete she met her namesake, a tiny (not very well) kitten called Celia. This Celia (named after Shakespeare's Celia in As You Like It) had been picked up on the streets of the nearby market town. She was confused, frightened, lonely but not yet starving. She had been weaned on to solid food. Either she had got separated from her mother or her human family, having sold the others, had chucked her out to live and die.
My Celia once picked a small shivering kitten out of a hedge in a Somerset layby on Christmas Eve. A similar story. A human had sold most of the kittens as Christmas presents, and had decided that the surplus could be thrown away. Or even out of sheer low life ignorance had thought a small kitten might survive in the wild, despite the winter weather.
There are moments when I find humans sickening....
PS. Steffi and Paul Next Door have barred the doors and the cat flap in a very unfriendly way. A strange smell, ever so faintly oriental, has been wafting out from under the front door.