Here's Alison: Patches And The Catnapper
Alison Ross tells the wonderful rhyming tale of a beloved cat, Patches.
For lots more of Alison's warm-hearted words please click on Here's Alison in the menu on this page.
Patches was a Tortoiseshell, as pretty as can be
Her owners went to Canada, so they gave their cat to me.
She settled down so quickly, filled our hearts with such delight
Charmed people with her looks, slept on my bed at night.
But one day she simply vanished---we searched---I nearly died
When I heard this awful story, a catnapper had been spied.
He’d seen her on the footpath and I’m sad to say
He simply picked her up and stole her clean away.
It seems he was a truckie, and he’d thought that she was lost
It was a big mistake as he found out to his cost.
For finally we tracked him down, and he confessed his sin
He’d taken lovely Patches, but she’d run away from him.
Weeks were passing by, and flyers by the score
Were dropped around his area---delivered door to door.
The phone was always ringing, all work would stop at that
While I dashed across the city, to check out this latest cat.
But never did I find her, and hope was all but lost
When another phone call came, and once again my fingers crossed.
It was the Bluebird Cafe (did they sell bluebirds there?)
Was my little darling hungry? It was more than I could bear.
When from the truckies home, Patches ran away
We don’t know what she found to eat, its difficult to say.
She’d crossed a mile of no-mans land, to where the factories lay
The smell of food she followed, till she found this small café.
She walked into the place, demanded to be fed
The very best of everything, or so the ladies said.
They thought they might adopt her, to keep the mice away
But she was so confident and pretty,‘she couldn’t be a stray.
One lassie then remembered, a flyer she had spied
That night she checked it out and next day our number tried.
I’ll pay a king's ransom, and many times at that
If only this is Patches, my precious little cat.
Of course it was my darling, or this story wouldn’t jell
Happily I took her home where she settled in so well.
Fun and laughter filled the years with Patches and the kids
The years sped by so quickly, as if they were on skids.
Until one day I knew her time was coming to an end
I sat with her and waited, my Patches, my old friend.
The years passed by and we now have only memories of the fun
And the day she crossed the Rainbow Bridge at the age of twenty-one.
