I first became aware of Somalis in 1994 at age seventeen. I bought a cat breed picture book called 1001 cats and fell in love with one picture in the book, it was of a beautiful Usual Somali. I desperately wanted to own a Somali but at the time I was still living at home with Mum and we already had a cat, a Grey Tabby called Button. She didn't get on well with other cats so Mum said I’d have to wait until I had a place of my own. A year later I decided to share a flat with two of my school friends. We were busy flat hunting and at the time getting a kitten could not have been further from my mind. Then one day I was in the newsagents flicking through a cat magazine and an advert caught my eye. I remember it said, 'Manot Somalis, Sired by Grand Champion Manot Raistlin'. I noticed it was a Gloucester phone number, which is not far from where I live so I bought the magazine! After lots of persuasion Mum agreed to let me buy a Somali Kitten before I moved out. Knowing it would only be at her house for a couple of weeks, or so she thought!

The next day we went to see the kittens and I picked out an adorable little Usual Boy, I was allowed to choose his name so I called him Zardie. A few weeks later we went back to pick him up. The breeder, Sid Ottey, asked me if I wanted to show him. I hadn’t really thought about it, but decided it would be fun to try showing. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing so Sid helped me with the entry form. Zardie’s first (and as it turned out, only) show was the Wyvern Cat Club’s last Sanction Show in 1995. He came Open 2nd in a class of two and I was so proud of him, my first cat ever to win a Rosette! He then came second in two side classes as well. I was over the moon! Unfortunately I didn’t get to show him again because I had to start working on Saturdays.

When Zardie was a kitten I used to take him everywhere with me. He used to travel loose in my car and sit happily on the back seat. I took him to all my friends’ houses, to sleepovers and parties. Even if I just went to the shop I would carry him with me in my coat. He also took quite naturally to walking on a lead; I can’t imagine what the neighbours thought when they saw me trotting up the street with Zardie on a lead! At home, he was renowned for finding the strangest places to curl up and go to sleep; in draws, cupboards, hats, even the tea cosy!

Now Mum was managing to get him quite well trained and moulding him into a well-behaved little lad, but all of her hard work was to be undone. It wasn’t long before I moved into the flat with my friends as planned. Can you imagine how spoilt he was and how naughty he became living in a flat with three insane, giggly, teenage girls! His party trick was to climb right to the top of the curtains in our living room. We lived in an old building with tall windows so the curtains were extremely high! After our lease on the flat ran out I decided to go back home so Zardie went with me. After his spell in the flat Zardie was completely bonkers, and rather naughty to say the least. His favourite pastime (much to Mum’s dismay) was to climb her walls, literally! He used to climb up the anaglypta wallpaper. Soon after that I met Ian, who is now my husband. Six months later we bought a house together and moved into it with Zardie.

In 1998 the worst thing I could imagine happened, Zardie went missing. I think this has to be the worst way to lose a cat, because you just don’t know what has happened. As you can imagine I was going crazy with worry. I never gave up hope that Zardie would come home but nearly three months later I got the news I had been dreading. One of my neighbours phoned having found him dead in the woods and he had obviously been there for some time. I will never know what he died from. Even though he had been missing for three months I was still not prepared for this and knowing he wasn’t coming back came as a devastating shock. I couldn’t believe that my little Somali boy was really gone. I still miss him now, all these years later. There is definitely something very special about your first Somali.