Vipse's story
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Vibeke
born about 6th May 1995 I wrote this introduction about her after we first saw her at the rescue centre. "A restplads (secluded parking area) by a main road some way out of Odense. A motorist stops to relieve himself in the bushes and sees a cardboard box, lying at the side but thinks nothing of it until he thinks he hears something. It is a very, very hot day in July. He opens the box and is horrified to find two kittens in it, stinking, thin and flea covered. Being a caring man, he takes the kittens out, holding his breath, and finds something in his car to put them in to take them to Kattens Værn about fifteen miles away. All the food vanishes overnight and within a few days they are so much better that it is obvious they can survive and so we ourselves named them, Peder and Vipse. Peder, after the vet, and Vibeke (Vipse for a nickname) after his wife. Peder (the kitten!), went to a new home so Vibeke was by herself and took a great shine to us while we were doing the cleaning on the next Friday - a great help everywhere. Vipse in the end won us over and so we brought her home with us straight away." We decided that her official birthday should be the 6th of May 1995, and she came to live with us on the 1st of September 1995. At that time our oldest cat Twinkle had only just died, on the 2nd of July, so Vips never met him, but Sashkin astonished her with a series of Siamese shouts and spits She settled in well with the other cats and soon got used to coming and going to the garden through the cat door. Over time Vipse liked to roam around much more than the others but we did not realise that she was going so far as she did. We think that she must have got into the habit of crossing the main road, even though it is about 300m from us and through some wild land, to go to a field on the other side. She often did not come quickly when called after she was fully grown and occasionally did not come in at night until an hour or so after the others, so she must have been roaming that far for quite a while. on Tuesday 27th May 1997 we got an evening phone call that her rather wild nature had gone very wrong. It was a motorist on his mobile phone saying that he had got our number from a dead cats collar on the main road a couple of streets away from us. It was our beautiful Vipse and I cry again while typing this. She was still warm though obviously instantly dead. The man had been very thoughtful and parked his car in front of her so that she could not be run over until I got to him. He had also put her collar back on after reading the medallion. I thanked him but now wish that I could have got his telephone number to thank him properly. I carried her home and let the others see her and they were all very worried. Rusty especially laid on the floor near to her for a long time. They were still worried wednesday before we buried her and Rusty was still moping most of the rest of the week. Sadly she was not a cat prepared to sit still while we took pictures of her, so we only have the one of her. A longer story is yet to be written in a later Chapter of our History (link under menu, Text). She was 2 when she died on 27th May 1997. |
