Anise, Atrice and Twitchy

I'm much more of a dog person that a cat person, but this has slowly been changing, after my bonding experience with Mangy in the Philippines, and now in Lebanon. We'd seen a fluffy cat wandering around the work compound and eventually we discovered that she'd had three kittens. It took a while to discover this as she'd been hiding out on the roof of one of the prefab containers our offices are in, but finally she brought them down. And promptly disappeared. We started giving them powdered milk (for babies) and named them Anise (meaning the friendly one), Atrice (the chubby one) and Twitchy (the scared one) once their personalities became clearer.

Atrice and Twitchy (pictured in front) would have nothing to do with us, other than hang around in the mornings waiting to be fed. Anise (pictured behind) on the other hand, was very sociable, and would spend hours sleeping on people's laps, or giving cuddles. It was winter time and quite chilly, so they would all pile on top of each other, or wrap their tails around each other to share warmth, like in the picture above. If you tried to approach Anise at this time, the others would bolt off, hissing as they ran.

One tragic morning, we were told that Anise was dead. It took a long time to confirm this, with different guards giving different stories, but in the end it was discovered that she was found outside, and appeared unharmed. We guessed it must have been a snake bite, or the cold. It was a very sad day for those of us who knew and loved Anise.

A couple of days later, an incredible thing happened. Twitchy stepped up and let himself be patted. We were shocked. But even more so, when a couple of hours later he was found curled up on a colleague's lap, sleeping soundly. We summised that he knew his sister had been the family breadwinner, encouraging us to feed them with her cuddly charms, and now that she was gone, someone else would need to fill her shoes. Twitchy remains as cuddly as ever, but some three months on, Atrice still won't come near us.