Sweet Sixteen

This is Athena, also known as "The Bean". She's sixteen years old today, so in cat terms is a pretty old lady. She's the only one of our cats whose age we actually know - we've had to estimate ages and birthdays for the others.

She's had a pretty eventful life for a small white cat. She was born in Chicago and taken straight to the animal pound from where she was adopted by a young academic. She then lived with him for 11 years, moving to San Francisco, then Maine, then Oxford. At this point, her human got married and had a baby which turned out to be seriously allergic to cats.

So we rehomed her. She was very overweight, diabetic, and extremely traumatized at first, but with a lot of hard work and love she has become a beautiful pet who now trusts us, copes with other cats, and is healthy and happy. She also has her own twitter account, @AthenaBeanCat, although she doesn't tweet often because she considers sleeping and eating to be more important activities!

She certainly isn't worried about being sixteen, and loves sleeping on her fleece and favourite blanket, strategically placed on a warm spot of the underfloor heating!

Happy Birthday Bean!