Impact's Story |
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European Star's Impact
When Curly-Sue died we were all shocked, including her breeder Kordula who had been looking forward to seeing how one of her best German Rex kittens would turn out as a show cat and a mother. Kordula promised us, of her own volition, that when she got some more kittens she would bring us one as a replacement, although she couldn't promise another female. She had a new litter and their names all had to begin with 'I'. Impy was the last out and looked different from the others, so he became what he made, an "Impact"! Kordula and her family had some bad luck when their flat got flooded and it took a long time to get it repaired and thoroughly dried out. The humans and all the cats and kittens suffered from the disruption and the noise from the driers. We wonder if Impy's shyness stemmed from that time. He was the only kitten that Kordula had available for us when she decided it was time to keep her promise of another GRX for us. At first we arranged that I would go to Hamburg railway station and she would drive to there and hand over Impy. I went there by train but she was not! After some hours waiting I eventually managed to get her on the phone and she told me that they were stuck in so much heavy traffic that their car was overheating and they had to turn back! So that was the first attempt in August. The second attempt was held up as she broke her left hand in an accident. After that healed she arranged another attempt that succeeded in October 2007, just a few days before we moved to Vormark! She managed to arrive very late with no sign of any cat in the car - I asked her (through her open window) where he was and she showed him hiding under the driver's seat! She was staying overnight with us so we got her and the cat in to our guest room where he promptly disappeared under the bed where he stayed all night. By the time she left next day we had still only caught a glimpse of him but eventually I managed to get him out to be introduced. He soon got over his initial shock and after being "shown" around his new home by his new friends-to-be, he settled in as you can see in these photos taken after Kordula had left. |
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His next shock came a couple of weeks later when we all moved
to our new house in Vormark. He proved how worried he could
still get when I attempted to get him in to a cat carrier to
put in the car with the others! We had to corner him in the
conservatory where he demonstrated an amazing ability to
climb straight up a glazed tile wall. In the end I just had
to grab and hang on while I dropped him tail first into the
carrier. Then it was a quick wash and some sticking plasters
(for me) before we were all ready to go. Once we got to
Vormark and everything was moved in, we let them all explore.
Impy once again distinguished himself by falling down the
back of the highest kitchen cupboard with no way of climbing
back up again. The only solution was to hack out the bottom
of the cupboard so I could reach in and haul him out. All was
OK for a couple of years until he got a fright one night
(don't know why) and lived for a long while on the top of
the kitchen cupboards - to such an extent that I had to put a
litter tray up there! He still tends to panic but lives a
more normal life now. His full story is yet to be written in a later Chapter of our History (link under menu, Text). He is now 12½ as I write this on 14th December 2019. |
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