In all fairness to my mother - she was never a 'CAT' personality category - she always acted as a DOG.

In relation to keeping REAL CATS...she used to tell us 'if they aren't a good 'mouser' what good are they?'

She chose her kittens carefully...always careful to make sure that they were of 'farm mongrel breed' as well as silver tabby...apart from the 'siamese twins'....a pity she got rid of them...and finally FANNY who was a tortoiseshell but unable to defend herself from the 'hostile lobby' of cats, that had grown up, within the neighbouring gardens...

...and after FANNY...my mother gave up on cats.

DALDRY told me that FANI was another name for SIS/SOE for some reason....

My mother was terribly emotionally upset for some reason - 1997...when she realised that FANI was going crazy in her house...and that she would have to give her up to a 'safer environment'...such as an old lady who wanted a 'cat to sleep on her lap' without a 'vicious number of tomcats lined up along the garden wall, waiting to pounce on little FANI'....

My mother told me that she had never ever cared for a cat so much as Fani...i couldn't see why...she had never been any more affectionate to FANI than any of the other cats that she had owned...it was all a 'bit weird'. My mother told me about FANI - with tears in her eyes - once she had got rid of her.

Anyway, WILLIS was her second 'farm cat/silver tabby' and WILLIS was a superb 'mouser'..to the extent that she used to kill the squirrels up the back garden oak tree....and bring them in via the catflap...it wasn't unknown, to come down the breakfast (whilst I was still at school)...sit at the old oak table...pour out your breakfast cereal...your foot then 'touched something'...you looked under the table to see a HEADLESS SQUIRREL...I can remember being outraged in horror...and HUMPHREY wobbling with laughter, across the table - and then shouting at me to get it out of the kitchen..."pick it up! pick it up!..." etc etc...but i wouldn't....