Sleep tight Welly

One summer, five years ago, a cardboard box was dumped at the farm. It contained a dead cat, and two ropey looking live ones, who shot off as soon as the box was opened. After a few days, one of the cats, a tiny black and white one, started showing her face, and over a period of months, she became tame enough to visit Pawel, the wonderful Polish cow man. Pawel named her Pella (which he says is a Polish word for flowers), and she would call into see him most evenings to be fed. With the best will in the world, I've got to tell you that Polish people eat weird stuff. Most of it is grey, and contains bits of pig, that even the pig had no need for, but little Pella thrived, and spent most of her first winter wandering the farm, and sleeping in the warm computer room. By the following February it was very obvious that she was not only struggling with the cold, but was completely deaf. The farm was very unsafe for her, with all the cows and large machinery, so Pella came to live with me. I took her off to the vets, where she was reckoned to be the wrong side of sixteen, but apart from her deafness she was pretty healthy. She also had moss growing on her back, but grooming her was a huge no no, as this fiesty old bag turned into Edward Scissorhands, so the vets sedated, and clipped her, and she was sent home with a shampoo and set any old lady would have been pleased with. Pella took up residence for the next four years, in her blue igloo in the bathroom, where she was warm, dry, fed, and loved, strictly on her own terms. She'd wander downstairs, and part rowdy spins with just one of her special looks, on her way out into the garden, where she'd snooze under the lilac tree, warming her old bones.
Pella, had been very tired for the past week, and went to sleep for the last time today. I wanted to thank her for being an important part of our lives for five years, and for teaching Ted, and Dooza before him, that cats aren't to be messed with, in a way I never could have.
We buried Pella under her lilac tree, and I have to say the funeral party was very subdued, except for Ted, who was digging her up as fast as I filled the hole in. She would have been furious, and that's how I will always remember her. A fiesty old bag, who'd been badly let down by people, and was never quite ready to forgive.
Sleep tight Welly xxx x