Rusty's story



Skimbleshanks



Skimbleshanks
born 31st March 1989

This is his individual story. You can read the whole story about him and his brother from the link Animal Aid and Advice logo.

The brothers from the same litter were rescued by that North London charity, Animal Aid & Advice. That charity does not have any rescue centre as such, but instead relies on volunteers who foster homeless animals until new homes can be found for them.

They were born on the 31st March 1989, and were then fostered by a helper. Of course, he was out all day at work, so Skimble and Gus did not get much human contact. we first saw them in July at a hobby cat show marquee. We, of course, had to say that if by the end of the Carnival they were still unhomed, we would give them a home. At the end, we were informed that they were ours! We could not take them then as we had the get-out to attend to. A few days later we arranged to collect them from their foster home, and transported two very timid cats back home with us where they hid in the basket, with Gus, the biggest at the start, desperately trying to stay behind Skimble! Skimble never became so confident as Gus, as you can see from his pose, but was still a happy cat.

When Skim and his brother were five years old (in 1994), we moved from Finchley to Skt. Klemens. With all the others, we loaded them into their shared cat basket, and took them on the ferry, which is another story, and how!

For the first few years all the cats were able to go around in the garden, but after a few years we discovered that in the free living cat population there were various bad infections that our cats had not been vaccinated against and thus had no resistance to them. Sadly, although Gus was the first of the brothers to die,from other causes, Skimble was the second cat to succumb to Feline Leukemia and without having been vaccinated, he also got so sick that Peder had to euthanise him. We then decided to confine all our cats to a cat run connected to the kitchen and conservatory.

Their full story is yet to be written in a later Chapter of our History (link under menu, Text).

He was 9½ when he died on 9th July 1998 in Denmark.


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