[lily.]

Your dream must have really freaked you out Caitlin. Sometimes it's so real and you wake up and it really disorientates you.. I hate that..

Bailey had a best pal. He started turning up at my door every day. I thought he was a stray. I started giving him food and cuddles. He is jet black, so I named him Sooty. He was the only cat in the neighbourhood (and there are a LOT of cats where I live) that Bailey would actually tolerate. Bailey was a scrapper. If another cat so much as looked in our garden, he would go after them.

Sooty was only the second cat (outside of our own cats) I had ever seen him being nice to. The first one was a female called Toots who lived in the next street. She used to hang out on the back fence waiting for him to come outside. He did the same with her, then they would go roaming around the neighbourhood. One time she ingested something poisonous and took seriously ill. Her owner came straight round to me to tell me to check Bailey cos she knew they were always together. Soon after, Bailey started acting weird, so we took him to the vet. He hadn't ingested much of it, so after some meds and fluids, and a few hours rest he was fine. Toots had to spend 3 days in the vets, but she was eventually okay as well. It was quite scary for her owner.

Toots (and her owner) moved to another town a few years ago, and Bailey went back to hating all of the cats. Until Sooty.

Anyway, I was waiting for the bus to college one day last year, and I saw a guy out at his car and Sooty was wandering round his legs. I called over to him and asked if that was his cat. He told me that his name was Tom, and they had moved house recently and that he just goes back and forth to the old place. My house is right in the middle between their old house and their new one. I told him he had been visiting me daily and I had thought he was a stray. He said that he likes to roam around visiting people. So that mystery was solved. He wasn't a stray. His name wasn't Sooty. But, I still call him that and he still visits every day. Although, once I found out he had a home, I stopped feeding him in case he decided to move in with me. He usually sleeps on top of my rabbit hutch as the sun shines right over there.

He was with Bailey when he took ill and he saw Bailey struggling to breathe. He came around yesterday morning again, and sat on the rabbit hutch meowing. I guess he knows. But he was back around again this morning, so I guess he likes us as much as he liked Bailey. I hope our next cat likes him too.

Anyway, I just thought I would share that story..