Say hello to the one and only Mojo

THIS furry feline came into our lives just before Christmas 2009, one of only two kittens that survived out of a litter of five found with their mum inside a bag on a skip.

Rescued and given to the DSPCA, my niece Dani became their temporary foster carer until mum fully recovered and her kittens were old enough to be homed. One visit and we were all hooked on this little ball of grey and white fur as our previous cat Molly had died a few months beforehand and was missed terribly.

My hubby wasn’t too keen about getting another cat at first and while Mojo had the rest of us in the palm of his paw, he must have sensed this slight resistance because on his very first day, he climbed up to him on the couch and fell asleep in the crook of his neck. Job done. Mojo has grown up to be a very affectionate feisty character, who point blank refuses to wear a collar, loves high perches in the kitchen where he can keep an eye on his food bowl and has occasional bouts of ferocious giddiness that involve chasing our gang, claws out, down the hallway and up the stairs.

Insatiably curious and a bit of a wanderer, his survival skills were tested more than once as a young cat when he overcame a rare bacterial disease, a run-in with a car, another cat’s tooth embedded in his head, attacks by foxes, magpies and other perils too numerous to mention here. His name became instantly recognisable to the local vet team and my pet insurance permanently doubled.

Maturity has calmed him down somewhat and he now spends a good portion of the day snoozing on beds or wherever he pleases while his vet visits are now mainly routine checkups.

His curiosity is undiminished and he’s never met an open window, door, catflap or deep dark box he didn’t like. He has more than once landed in neighbours’ bedrooms in the middle of the night, frequently scaring the bejasus out of the occupants. He’s become a local legend and conversations are often begun with… “do you by any chance own a biggish grey and white cat?” or “do you know what your cat was up to recently?” and then the tale unfolds.

For all his bravado, he’s still a wimp when it comes to the vet. He remains an incorrigible robber of other cats’ food and is either the worst hunter in the world or too lazy to be bothered, so we can still maintain bird feeders in the garden, albeit on some unreachable tree branches (for him).

A true original. Barbara Elliott, Stillorgan, Dublin

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