Al Capone
He came to live with me in 1984. I was living in South Croydon and was a member of the Croydon Cats Protection League. I was invited to a summer evening at the house of one of the other members where I met Al for the first time. He was devoted to one of the other cats there - Gemma was a little black and white female and she seemed to have adopted him. He was probably about 8 or 9 months old then and had been rescued from a couple who had two dobermans that were terrorising him.
I fell in love with him, but we already had two cats and my partner at the time did not want any more cats. Just a couple of weeks later though, he disappeared off with his brother one Saturday morning and they brought Al home. I was thrilled and very happy with this wonderful gesture. And Al has been my faithful companiion through good and bad times, never asking anything of me and always there when I need him.
One day he came home through the cat flap and I could see that he had been injured. I rushed him to the vet where they discovered that he had lost one of his toes on his front paw and badly broken his back leg. We will never know what happened to him, but to get back home he had had to climb over a six foot fence and get through the cat flap How he did it with the leg badly broken I will never know.
His recovery was very slow and in the end we had to have the bone in his leg pinned. The pin is still there and will never be removed. It does cause him a lot of discomfort. He hasn't been able to sit on anyone's lap since the accident unless you put a cushion on your lap first to support the back leg. And nowadays he is getting very thin and gradually his kidneys are failing..
I call him my old man now. He is going grey in places and sometimes I wonder how much longer I have with him. It is so hard to think about loosing another companion that has been with me for almost half of my life.