''Oh Poor Little Smokey, Who Wouldn't Want You?''

  This was the song that our seven year old was singing to 17 year old Smokey as she hugged him at the cat shelter today. We home educate, and a few months ago I had the inspired idea of combining a visit to Feline Care, the wonderful Norfolk cat shelter, with Maths! So, every couple of weeks, we pack up a load of maths books and head over to Feline Care, near Thetford.
  Feline Care is a model cat shelter: the cats are beautifully looked after, and instead of living in individual runs, they are in groups in separate rooms, many of which have access to their own large outdoor enclosure with furniture, climbing frames and scratching posts. The cats even have underfloor heating, and since we live in a very cold house, we are REALLY looking forward to spending time at Feline Care this winter!!
  We offered to donate homeopathic advice and remedies for one of the cats at Feline Care who has had a bad skin condition, so one of the reasons that we go to Feline Care is to see how she is doing (off steroids and MUCH happier!), and also check on Harry the Turkey whose severe limp has improved dramatically since we gave him some homeopathic first aid.

  We always spend a lot of time in the rooms that Molly, the lovely vegan manager, keeps for the older cats. She has a lovely big room for the older cats, with access to a large sheltered outdoor space. The room has a bookcase full of books solely devoted to cats to encourage cat lovers visiting the shelter to sit down for a few minutes with a book and spend some time with the lovely older cats- brilliant! There is also a shelf of cat related bric-a-brac to buy; every time we visit, our four year old spends his pocket money on another cat ornament! He now has a white china cat ornament, a cat vase with a slightly chipped ear (into which he puts a new flower from the garden every day!), a wooden cat, an ornamental pair of china tabby cats and today, when the shelf was a little low on cats he bought a pottery dog!
  The room is so calm and peaceful and that's where we often do maths and spend time with Smokey. I may have mentioned Smokey once or twice before in this blog, but it's because we are all very anxious for lovely Smokey to find a home as soon as possible. It's just a sad fact of life that older cats do tend to be a bit overlooked in shelters, and they really shouldn't be as they really are an asset to any home.
  Smokey is 17 or 18 years, and although he is very fit and well, and perfectly active it just seems sad to us that a cat of that age should be without a home and having to compete for a home of his own with younger, perhaps more playful cats. Smokey would probably fit well into almost any home: he is gentle and laid back, affectionate and kind and when any other cats have shown any aggression towards him (yes, Meg and Tabitha, we are looking at you!) he just turned and walked off, which obviously bodes well for any future introductions!

   There are some lovely cats at Feline Care (www.felinecare.org.uk ): lovely, gentle white Harry; beautiful black Angel, shy pretty, black Marmite and their friends all need loving permanent homes, but if you have a corner of your house, and your heart, into which you could squeeze a lovely kind 17 year old cat (now very well educated!), please consider offering a home and a lap to beautiful Smokey.