Molly

Cats seem to enjoy messing with us humans so much that I'm sure they'd be delighted to learn that they sometimes do it without even trying. Recently - and rather famously - Marianne's beloved girl Shayla was revealed by a trip the vet for dental work to be Marianne's beloved boy Shayla... I think we're all still recovering from the shock.

On Monday evening in the doublewide I looked up to see a striking tabby peering down at me from one of the catwalks. I asked Brigid, who was there with me, if she knew who it was. She didn't, but between us we got as far as deciding it wasn't Duke but was surely a boy.

Imagine my surprise when Leslie responded to an email saying she thought her name was Molly. More of an "oops" moment than a surprise of Shayla magnitude, but still...

Molly is apparently one of the brown tabbies who came from the same place on No. 4 Road where Clooney was trapped. The man who'd been feeding a number of cats had to move when a developer bought out a block of houses including his. RAPS was asked to come and trap more than a dozen cats.

That was about six years ago. Molly is still shy about being touched, but when Brigid passed me a morsel of chicken to tempt her with, this definitely caught her attention. And while she wasn't quite up to taking it from my hand, she was quite content to take it from a spot next to my hand and then to give my fingers a good sniff afterward to find out if there might be anymore treats where that came from.