Marmaduke our Beloved Friend

Here is our Marmaduke. He was a cat who could carry on a conversation with you in complete sentences because he understood that this is what humans did. He was the most intelligent cat either of us have ever experienced. His beautiful mane would constantly get him into trouble in the neighbourhood, so we taught him to walk with a leash and used to love to have it on for his evening quality time.

Marmaduke was the life of the party, and he knew it. He was always a playful scamp who tolerated whatever was delivered by his house mates without retaliating. His prop, (above), was a Christmas light box and his behavior was in keeping with the festive spirit he felt was happening around his home.

Marmaduke was probably the best friend Hamlet will ever have in his lifetime. They shared everything, except when Marmaduke went up on the neighbour's roof to show all the other cats where the rats were climbing up the drainpipes, as poor Hamlet had never been a climber, and still isn't. In this picture, they are watching cat TV. In winter, we attach bird feeders to the windows with suction cups to stimulate interest, and also desensitize our boys so that they don't connect the birds with 'play' when they are outdoors. The more exposure they have when they are only going to bruise their faces on the windows, the less they hunt when having short exercise sessions outdoors.

The watch tower. With three cats, there were always two ready to play at any given time, so activity levels increased to a great extent, and outdoors, they were inseperable. It was fun to take them for 'walks' as they would all come with us as long as we made time for the odd sniff in the plants we passed. The third cat on the lower level is Maxamillion who, at the time of the picture was a recent edition to our household. He had been sitting up on the wall outside that corner window, peering in to see what was happening, and when we discovered he had been abandonned by owners who had left due to forclosure of their home, we started feeding him, and gradually he moved in. Max taught the other cats how to share and be gentle with each other.