Sugarlump was born in Australia, and had gone to live with Ingrid Nuyten in the Netherlands in 1993. He flew to the UK in 2001, followed by one of his ex-wives in 2003.

Tiju d'Affranchi had been born in 1994 in the Netherlands and lived with Sugarlump, producing lovely kittens, both Blue and White. So, we decided that they would again be together in retirement.

In October 2003, when all necessary documents and vaccinations were complete, Ingrid travelled to Calais and then over to Dover with Tiju. We exchanged cat carriers and I came home with a beautiful Russian Blue.

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Shortly after, Sugarlump and Tiju met again for the first time for two years - they kissed, sniffed bottoms and curled up together. They slept together, ate together and played together again for 5 years. Sadly, she misses him as much as I do.

However, fate took a hand, or rather four paws, as on 2 March 2008 a Russian White kitten, Catwo Sashar joined me! He was from the first litter of Russian White, Russian Black and Russian Blue born in the UK to a Russian White queen Yentle, who was a great grand-daughter of my Sugarlump!

Before he left his first home, they were visited by the Russian born photographers, Anatoli Krassavine and Valentina Koulagina of PhotoCat who took some wonderful pictures as you can see from these.

Catwo Sashar is gentle, quietly talkative and is a real pleasure to live with.

And that really was only water in the glass with the Vodka bottle!

Sashar is now the boss of the household, with just one rather over-weight elderly lady to control. As she spends most of her life asleep or eating, he does like to hurtle through the catflap into my fenced garden.

I did replace the old fencing overhang with a special electric MiniGard fence comprising two cables near the top of the existing wooden fencing, which I hope will keep him inside. I would have preferred to have replaced all the existing fencing with a special fence, but he rarely climbs and seems content to stay inside.

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