Josephina's story

Hello everybody!

My name is Josephina and I am a Greek Stray Cat. Well, actually I was until I won the lottery - and won Martina! She belongs to me now, opens my cans, takes care of me when I'm ill and does everything I want. Well, almost!

To start from the beginning - it was a cold and rainy day one February evening in 1999 and I was sitting on a wall by the road feeling terrible, when I spotted two women coming down the street. One was pushing her bicycle.

Luckily, I meowed at the one with the bike who turned out to be Martina. At first, she didn't even believe I was a cat and insulted me, saying I was a skeleton and looked and smelled like hell. Of course I could tell that she felt sorry for me, too. But then she left and went her way, and I felt really sad, because she seemed quite nice.

Since I had nothing else to do anyway, and my mom was too busy with her new babies to take any notice of me, I thought I'd wait for somebody else to pass by and maybe, just luckily, have some food for me. You never know, sometimes somebody just opens a door and comes out with loads of good food - like fried fish! - and dumps it on the road for us.

Anyway, what happened a little while later? The woman with the bicycle came back! She stopped again, looked at me seriously - insulted me again! -, said "what the heck!" and plonked me into the basket of her bicycle and drove me home.

First she gave me some food, and while I was eating (and I was very hungry!) she fixed me a nice and warm, dry bed outside her doorstep. She mumbled something to herself sounding like "what is Sakis going to say!" but it didn't make any sense to me then. Later a guy came, looked at me with a surprised expression as if to say, "what is this?" (is it so difficult to recognise a cat?) and went inside to Martina.

Well, I found out afterwards that this was Sakis and that he lived there, too. He turned out to be a really nice guy, and all he said to her that night was "Do we have another guest?"

Martina said I was really lucky that the vet was there at the time she found me, because I was very ill. I had a flu, worms, ringworm -and ear mites. Can you imagine? Disgusting! Then, since we didn't have a permanent vet on the island, a vet came to visit the island every once in a while to take care of everybody, but I didn't feel very lucky then! For a few days he gave me an injection every day and Martina stuffed all those horrible pills down my throat, but since the food was good and the bed was dry, I decided to stay. Plus, there was nice company there, too: a few other cats who became my friends: Tiger, Dracula, Tommy and "Mother-Cat".

They told me some horror-story about going to the vet for an operation, but I didn't believe them, and anyhow, they all said it wasn't nice at the time, but that they have felt better ever since. And so it happened: I was sterilised!!! That means I can't have kittens, but I think it's better, because I can still have a boyfriend (at the moment it's Max!) but don't have all that trouble!

Besides, I know another female cat who isn't spayed, and she gives birth about three times a year, plus she says she keeps on "losing" her babies and is always very sad. She says somebody takes them away from her while she is not looking, but I don't know whether to believe that.Martina says it's true, and that not everybody thinks that it is best to spay us.

The guys are neutered, by the way, and it makes them much nicer. Somehow, they are calmer and more civilised; they don't get into those macho fights! Some people think they don't enjoy their life any more after being neutered, but I don't believe that! All my male friends are fine.

Unfortunately Tommy disappeared one day 2 Septembers ago, although he loved Martina and insisted on shaking hands with her every morning. We hope he just found another home, but we also heard that a few of our spayed and neutered friends were poisoned by somebody who wanted to get rid of a dog. Dear Tommy, we really hope you're okay! We miss you.

I was also incredibly lucky because I live inside, now, too, which happened because I was really nice to Martina. She just loved all the attention I gave her, and of course I must admit that I like being cuddled once in a while, too, and although I play cool sometimes, I can't really live without her anymore ;-). (She just can't resist me. And *he* can't either, although he pretends to be strict sometimes.)

So slowly I ventured inside her house more and more often and behaved like a very good cat. Now I go to my own bed inside every night and don't even need a toilet until the morning, and I am very proud to say that I learned quickly how to make her open the door for me. I wake her up every morning by jumping on the bed and purring. And every lunchtime I play goalkeeper with Martina, it gives her exercise and she loves throwing stones in the air and watching me catch them. And I enjoy it, too - the higher I have to jump the better!

But I know many of my fellow cats aren't that lucky. And I really wish that somehow, someday, things will change...

If you are interested in what Martina and her fellow animal lovers think and what the do to help us, and what *you* could do, just read the following pages!

Thanks for reading my story,
yours sincerely
Josephina

PS This story was originally written in 1999. Unfortunately since then many more of my cats have died, mostly through poisoning. They were all fed and taken care of and spayed and neutered... Tiger, Silver, Skinny, Thommy, Tigerlily and Mother-Cat and you who came to eat but didn't yet have a name: We miss you and will never forget you! We promise we won't give up fighting for your rights.
Martina

PPS Unfortunately Josephina lost her fight against her illness and passed away on the 30th of July 2004. We will never forget her.

^ back to top

The current weather: