Me and the Cats in My Life
Cats were not always the object of my admiration. I would even go so far as to say that there was a time when I regarded them as somehow "lesser" creatures — certainly not as animals with whom one could form a truly profound bond. I do not know whether it was an act of feline revenge or simply the result of some mysterious form of magic, but cats changed my life completely. They made me exchange a relatively secure and predictable way of life for one that allowed me to care properly for kittens, stay at home during births and remain flexible enough to adapt to whatever circumstances arose — although without the reassuring stability enjoyed by those in conventional employment.
I simply could not see any other way. Breeding, which marked the beginning of what has now become my inseparable bond with cats, involves an enormous amount of work. It means being constantly prepared for the unexpected. It means always being ready to stay beside a cat who may need me — whether large, tiny or not yet born and still inside its mother's womb. Today, that chapter of my life has come to an end. My former breeding cats still live with me, but now as retired ladies warming human laps.
I begin every day by giving each of my feline companions a proper dose of affection. It is simply impossible to leave the house without scratching the chins of everyone who volunteers, asking what they dreamt about and whether they are feeling well today :) The sound of hurried little paws and noses being pushed into every bag, carefully investigating what I have brought home from today's "hunt", can make tiredness disappear in an instant. My first cats are no longer physically here with me, but emotionally, they still look in on me from beyond the Rainbow Bridge.
Clara
It all began with one blue female cat, whom I travelled a very long way to collect — all the way to Szczecin. Naturally, my first cat had to be blue, because when people first discover British Shorthairs, blue ones tend to be the only ones they notice. Besides, in 2003–2004, when I was looking for my first female, there were relatively few British Shorthair breeders in Poland, and colours such as cream, chocolate or bicolour were hardly ever mentioned. And so, after a long search, in 2004 we brought home a tiny blue ball of fluff.
At the time, I knew virtually nothing about cats. I relied primarily on commonly repeated beliefs and on what I heard from other breeders. Looking back, I can see the enormous number of mistakes I made while raising Clara. She was a cat with a difficult temperament and certainly should not have ended up with someone as inexperienced as I was. Above all, I should never have listened to the endless stream of "good advice" I was given at the time.
Back then, very little was really known about cats in Poland. Feline behaviour was only beginning to emerge as an area of professional interest, and specialist education or training in the subject was virtually unavailable. For the first two years, I learnt largely through my own mistakes. In fact, I am grateful to fate that I began my journey with a cat like Clara. She never allowed me to become complacent. She forced me to search, investigate, try to understand and question commonly accepted beliefs — even those repeated by veterinary professionals or by some behaviourists who transferred canine behavioural principles and models of social relationships directly onto cats. I am therefore deeply grateful to Clara. She taught me how to begin finding my way into the sensitive and complex nature of the cat.
Clara shared our lives for 14 years, and that was all the time fate allowed us to have together. We said goodbye to her on 28 August 2018. :( With every passing year, she showed us more and more affection, gradually exchanging some of her independence for human laps and hands. In her final years, she would even climb onto the laps of complete strangers — something my daughter and I regarded as an outrageous betrayal... Although Clara did not exactly allow us to indulge our ambitions in the show ring, as a breeding female she became an excellent foundation for Agilis. She passed on large, broad heads, round eyes and the wide, "puffy" noses I love so much in British Shorthairs.
It was Clara who, despite her independent and difficult temperament and her profound fearfulness towards everything new and unfamiliar — or perhaps precisely because of it? — awakened my love for cats. Until then, I had considered them decidedly below the category of animals deserving my particular attention. And so it is Clara who deserves my greatest thanks :)
Borgia
Borgia, Clara's daughter, stayed with us because of her colour. She was supposed to become the mother of the cream girl I dreamt of — a girl I never actually got from her. Instead, she made me fall in love with torties :) In truth, it was Borgia who taught me an entirely different kind of relationship with a cat. She was the cat on whom I learnt how to give tablets. She also allowed me, for the first time, to experience the taste of success at cat shows, and it was through her that I learnt which characteristics are considered the greatest strengths in a British Shorthair and which the most significant faults.
Borgia, unlike her mother, was exceptionally sociable and talkative. She had absolutely no hesitation in demanding whatever she wanted. She could wake me very effectively by nudging my hands with her nose — because, after all, hands are what do the stroking :) Borgia shared our lives for 16 years. Although we managed to recognise the signs of cancer earlier than we had with Clara, giving her two additional years of life, the same "stranger" eventually took her from us in 2021.
It was extraordinary how much Borgia loved being brushed :) Getting ready for work or school in the morning was extremely difficult for my daughter and me, because, of course, we had to brush our own hair. At the very sound of a brush, Borgia would come running from the furthest corner of the home, abandoning even the deepest sleep. She would jump onto the cat tree in the bathroom and arch her back expectantly. There was simply no alternative — she had to be brushed.
Neither Agnieszka nor I ever managed to reach the point at which Borgia had had enough :) Visitors who wanted to stroke her quickly learnt to use this to their advantage. Borgia did not permit that degree of intimacy on a first date — unless I placed her favourite grooming brush in the visitor's hand. The moment she saw it, she would immediately come running, cooing and presenting one part of her body after another for attention. At moments like that, she really was a little traitor :)
It still hurts so much that she is no longer here with me...
Arabica
Arabica is a true queen. And to think that I was once foolish enough to believe she did not like heights. She only began exploring the upper levels of our home when the number of elevated resting sites exceeded five. Today, she very much enjoys spending time either on the mezzanine or on one of the shelves. Arabica is currently the oldest of my cats. She is 19 years old, and during my years as a breeder, it was on her beauty and wonderful temperament that I built the female line of Agilis. All my girls are her closer or more distant relatives :)
Arabica is quite simply an extraordinary cat. She appeared in my life like a gift from fate, a winning lottery ticket arriving at a moment when I least expected it. I first noticed her when she was still a tiny kitten and even contacted her breeder to ask whether she might be available. I was told that the little girl was staying with the breeder, which, to be honest, did not surprise me at all.
Later, I travelled to Kathrin with Borgia for matings and had the opportunity to watch the little tricolour ball of fluff grow and gradually transform into a dignified adult cat. Quietly, I kept thinking: why couldn't she be mine...? Eventually, I wrote to Kathrin asking about a cream female. Instead, I received an offer to take an eighteen-month-old female into my breeding programme — Arabica, the very cat I had noticed from the beginning. I considered the proposal for perhaps five seconds :)
I remember driving to collect her and worrying about how I would manage the introduction of an already mature female into my group. How could I help her settle into a new home where even the melody of the language sounded unfamiliar? On the journey home, I kept glancing at her on the passenger seat and could hardly believe that she was MY cat :)
Today, Arabica is my husband's favourite and my only genuine rival. Everyone loves her for her beautifully balanced temperament, her calmness and composure. It was precisely because of these characteristics that I decided to build the female side of my breeding programme around her. Breeding females need to be able to live within a group, and they require the appropriate behavioural predispositions to do so.
Fado
Then someone appeared in my home whom I had never planned for at all. Technically, he was born more than a year after Arabica, but he was already living with us when she arrived. His name was Fado. He was born under extremely difficult circumstances and was the only surviving kitten from Borgia's second — and, as it later turned out, penultimate — litter.
He was supposed to be a cream girl, the long-awaited daughter I had dreamt of having from Borgia. Instead, he was a boy. On the day after his birth, it became clear that we had to fight for Borgia's life and that doing so meant I would have to hand-rear her tiny newborn kitten. I decided to keep him because, in my arrogance, I concluded that no other home could possibly be good enough for him...
And so my little boy stayed with me for entirely selfish reasons. Initially, he was supposed to be neutered, as at that time I had no plans whatsoever to keep a male for breeding. Eventually, however, it became clear that it would be a shame not to pass on that enormous head and those substantial paws.
Throughout his life, Fado was exceptionally demanding of human affection. He would settle down to sleep directly on top of a person, squeeze himself onto laps and knead with his enormous toes. It was lovely, of course, but sometimes it became genuinely impossible to get anything done. He would simply sit beside me and gently tap me with one paw, like a polite child asking to be noticed and attended to.
Sadly, I have to write all of this in the past tense. On 17 April 2026, my Fado crossed the Rainbow Bridge, joining his mother Borgia and his grandmother Clara.
Gatta
Gatta... The bond between us is something very special. I had probably better not say too much, otherwise all my secrets will come out... She is a little cat who DEFINITELY loves me — and not merely because of the food bowls :) She is extraordinarily responsive to my voice, to words and simply to being spoken to. She clearly needs this form of interaction.
She trots beside my leg like a little dog, checking what interesting thing I might be carrying, whether perhaps it is something for her, whether I might play with her or whether something else exciting is about to happen. Our most closely guarded secrets involve my milk-based meals. Gattula sits opposite me on the back of the armchair and waits patiently until I have finished eating, because she knows I will leave a little something for her at the bottom. Just our little secret... Gatta turns 17 this year.
To be honest, I do not really know why she melts my heart quite so completely. In many ways, she is actually a bit of a rascal. She grumbles when I trim her claws, dislikes being carried and is the reason I had to become interested in BARF feeding. In short, nothing but trouble. But she is the most wonderful mother: endlessly patient, always there for all her children whenever they need comfort — and for me as well :) Her kittens have wonderful temperaments and, surprisingly, usually do not inherit their mother's grumbling, although they are all extremely talkative :)
The most fascinating thing is Gatta's approach to being stroked. She has a profound need for contact but, unlike some of my other cats, she is never intrusive. She simply gives me a meaningful look and waits until I say, "I'm coming, Gattula." Then she runs happily to the nearest bed, settles herself beneath my hands, purrs and coos, and every part of her body communicates just how happy she is. My love at first sight :)
Negra
Negra... Taking a photograph of her is an absolute ordeal. I am not even going to argue about it — I am simply posting what I have... In real life, she really is beautiful. She is a peculiar little cat: gentle but strong-minded, perfectly aware of what she wants and remarkably capable of achieving her goals. Assertive and gentle at the same time. Yet another of my favourites :) Negra is already 14 years old.
Negra is one of the most affectionate of my girls. During the first year of her life, it seemed that she would always remain somewhere near us — close, but without any particularly intense need for our attention. Everything changed when she turned two. I think she may now be even more persistent than her mother, Arabica.
She is extraordinarily talkative and converses with us almost constantly. She is probably the most vocal cat in our entire household :) What is more, I sometimes genuinely have the impression that she is simply shouting at me. At the very least, she expresses her complaints with remarkable clarity. Why am I home so late? Why have I not yet served her favourite portion of BARF? Why, exactly, are my knees not ready for her to sit on? What is this laptop doing here anyway? And where, may I ask, is MY place...?
Ori
I only have a mobile phone photograph of Ori. I really must tie a knot in my handkerchief and finally remember to take an up-to-date picture of her :) She is the daughter of my Inuszka, whom I lost far too early. Ori was intended to help me produce a male carrying the chocolate gene, and she fulfilled that task perfectly, so she retired from breeding earlier than my other females.
Until relatively recently, she lived with my parents. Sadly, they too are getting older, and so Ori returned to live with me a year and a half ago. She is calm and loving — although I suppose everything depends on your point of view, or perhaps your sleeping position, because she is perfectly capable of demanding play at three o'clock in the morning. Orisia is already 14 years old.
Although Ori is very small for a British Shorthair female, she inherited the head of her grandmother and great-grandmother — broad, strong and substantial.
Perla
Perla was not supposed to stay with us. I told myself no. I would not allow myself to be persuaded by yet another pair of amber eyes. I would let her go to the home where she was already loved, and that would be the best thing for her.
Unfortunately — or perhaps fortunately for me — that family had to postpone their plans to have a cat. And then I surrendered to a pair of blue eyes instead, because my daughter, with a determination I had never seen before, insisted that little Perla absolutely had to stay with us. I stopped looking for another home, and that is how "Clone", as my son still calls her, remained part of our family.
Perla turned out to be a wonderful mother, despite the trauma she inflicted on me with her first birth and the first two weeks that followed. She is my cardiologist's favourite :) She turned 14 this year. She is exceptionally active and energetic and can climb literally anywhere. She particularly enjoys giving me a heart attack by walking along the curtain rails :)
Perla is one of those cats who genuinely and unquestionably enjoys having her belly stroked. She stretches out to her full length, exposes her armpits and spreads her legs with absolutely no sense of modesty. She comes to me, sits in the bed beside my armchair and, just like her mother, kneads and stares at me meaningfully, clearly requesting to be stroked. So I stroke her — what else am I supposed to do? Then Clone settles contentedly in her bed and sleeps beside me :)
Raya
Raya is the strangest of all our girls. Sometimes I wonder whether she needs us at all. And then, suddenly, the moment comes when she appears and demands affection with genuine indignation. My beloved little Ugly Duckling. Apparently, I am the only person capable of seeing how beautiful she is — but love is blind!
Raya is the same age as Perla, which means she turned 14 this year, and, like Perla, she seems to possess inexhaustible reserves of energy. Her "low suspension" means that when she chases feathers, she moves as though she were glued to the floor. She is agile and requires A GREAT DEAL of attention. We need to play with her constantly, otherwise she would spend all her time chasing the younger cats :)
Raya has a wonderful temperament. She is calm and well behaved and is my vet's favourite. Even in the most difficult situations, she does not react dramatically or panic. Of course, this simply means that she requires even more careful support and assistance when circumstances are difficult.
As a mother, she was almost as exemplary as Clara. Given the opportunity, she would happily have claimed every kitten for herself. During her breeding years, I genuinely had to watch her closely. A moment's inattention was all it took for kittens to begin disappearing from her sisters' pens. And these were not random choices. Raya invariably selected the prettiest kittens — preferably in colours she could never have produced herself :)
Vesper
Vesper is one of my greatest weaknesses, another clone of her mother, Gatta. Vesper is... well, Vesper is the source of every possible kind of emotion, good and bad, including the simple joy that she is exactly who she is.
She has a wonderful temperament, although she is exceptionally opinionated. Like her mother, she grumbles when her claws are trimmed, and from her father she appears to have inherited all his worst qualities as well :) She torments us every day by shamelessly forcing her way onto our laps, into bed, under the duvet, onto my head, into my arms and beneath my hands. She licks my nose, my eye and every other location most likely to irritate me. When I pretend not to notice her — because, after all, one does occasionally need to sleep — she climbs onto my head and demonstrates the remarkable skill of inserting her whiskers directly into my nostrils. I genuinely cannot understand how she does it so precisely. Ignoring her is simply impossible...
She also appears to have broken the Agilis rule that tricolour females should be small and delicate. She is compact and stocky, with thick, substantial legs, and she is one of my greatest rewards :) Sadly, I never managed to produce from her my much-dreamt-of bicolour male combining the Borgia and Arabica lines. This has never diminished my love for her in the slightest.
Like Gatta, she runs after me like a little dog. And because her eyes are round and permanently wide open in apparent astonishment, she looks genuinely comical :) I cannot believe she is already 13 years old!
Ina
Ina is one of my younger girls and Negra's daughter. When she was born, I was devastated. Red kittens are most often male, so I assumed that my dream of having a daughter from Negra had come to nothing. But she turned out to be a girl, and so, naturally, she stayed with us.
I think she may be the most intelligent member of my entire feline family, although by saying this I am probably insulting all the others :) She is extremely active and remarkably effective at demanding attention and play. It was Ina who demonstrated to me just how quickly cats can learn different tricks — all you need is a cat with the right motivation :)
Ina is extremely sensitive and emotionally delicate. She is easily startled and just as easily fascinated by almost anything. She certainly does not sleep through the supposedly allocated two-thirds of a cat's life. Everything is simply far too interesting! At present, she is the only one of my cats who does not live with me. My son took her when he moved out. After all, how could anyone possibly live without a cat?
Queenie
Queenie was not supposed to stay with me. Only her sister Bunia was meant to remain. Bunia was going to be the last cat in my home. My heart had always belonged to tricolours, and I already had a two-coloured creature in the form of Ina, and yet...
For the first time, an almost completely white kitten had been born in my home, and the magic of colour worked its spell. The bigger Queenie grew, the more beautiful she became. And because I already knew that these would be my final breeding females, somehow I simply could not give her up.
Queenie is unlike any of my other cats, just as her colouring is unlike theirs. She is dignified, elegant and cautious, yet also confident. She is an extraordinary and almost perfect balance of apparent opposites. Her kittens were much the same, adapting wonderfully to almost every type of household and family arrangement. My Queen :)
Queenie and her sister Bunia were my final breeding females. In 2021, that chapter of my life came definitively to an end. Queenie is now nine years old, which means she is still one of the youngsters!
Bunia
Bunia is Queenie's sister and yet another cat with whom I fell in love "at first sight". Her name was chosen by my daughter and immediately seemed to fit, because from the very beginning she was simply... Bunia.
She has a wonderful temperament. She purrs at the slightest touch and seeks intense physical affection so frequently that sometimes I genuinely feel I have no strength left for her. But how could anyone say no to Bunia...? Together with Queenie, she forms the youth club in my home — the club for nine-year-olds 😄.
Django
Django is the same age as Vesper and evokes very similar emotions in me. He is not as large as his father, Fado, but, much to my delight, he passed on to his kittens the most valuable characteristics of his father, particularly his heavy, substantial bone structure. I wish Django himself were larger, but I forgive him everything. With a temperament like his, a cat is automatically forgiven absolutely anything. Django is only three weeks younger than Vesper, which means he is already 13 years old.
Everyone calls him all sorts of dreadful nicknames, while Django simply trots around happily and cannot remain still for even a moment. If, for example, I open the beloved tins of food, his great-grandmother Borgia would have sat politely beside her plate and waited with perfect manners. I can, of course, put a plate down for Django as well. This will not prevent him from trotting after me to make absolutely certain that I really am going to reach that plate. Perhaps, after all, I need someone to show me the way :)
He reminds me enormously of his grandmother Ino, which melts my heart completely. Sadly, he never learnt her technique of "head-butting the hand" or standing on tiptoe to reach a stroking hand... He is exceptionally communicative, fixes those enormous eyes on me and, when food is involved, is undoubtedly the most spoilt little glutton in my entire household...
Kokido
Until recently, the youngest member of the group was the little rascal Kokido. When he was young, he absolutely loved playing with Fado's tail...
Kokido is like a soothing balm. We come home, look at him, and immediately feel warmth spreading through our hearts. He stayed with us almost by accident. He is a cat with a serious congenital condition, and I simply could not imagine who might be willing and able to care for him in the way he requires.
I have told Kokido's story in his own section of the website, so I will not repeat it here. I can only hope that he will remain with us for many more years. This year, the kitten who was not expected to survive turned 11 :)
Junior
Strictly speaking, Junior was not really my cat. He was supposed to fulfil my breeding ambitions as a stud male. Unfortunately, he forgot that having two testicles would be rather useful for that particular career...
He was therefore supposed to leave us, but this time my son was struck by Cupid's arrow and protested very firmly. And so Junior became his personal cat. He was very much like his mother, Vesper — constantly in motion, yet at the same time remarkably cautious. This did not prevent him from being the first to inspect every renovation or DIY project taking place in the house, and we genuinely had to watch him extremely carefully at such times. That was Junior :)
Sadly, I have to write all of this in the past tense. Like his aunt Ino, Junior crossed the Rainbow Bridge far, far too early. These are the hardest goodbyes.
Ino
There is one more girl whose image I guard very carefully within myself. As I once wrote somewhere, the most frightening thing about losing someone is forgetting.
We forget what someone really looked like. How they laughed. What jokes they enjoyed. Even if remembering has to hurt, I do not want to forget, because there were so many happy moments. I am happy and grateful for every little feline face that reminds me of Her. My Inuszka would have turned 16 this year.
