Parkin

12 Mar

Parkin's hooman here. I'm sorry to say that Parkin died yesterday evening. After being off his food for a few days I took him to the vet, where a barrage of tests revealed he had advanced cancer. The kindest thing to do was let him go.

20 Sept

May 2017: dignity. Always dignity. I think this is the end of the 'new' photos I'll post of Parkin. This account will remain here (and so will his account on Twitter/X, same username, which goes back to about 2018). But I have a finite amount of unseen photos and it's time to let him rest.

20 Sept

Thank you all so much for your love for the little doofus. He would have thought it entirely right and proper that he was widely adored.

16 Sept

Happy would-have-been 10th birthday, pudding.

12 Sept

May 2017: sometimes Donkey wasn't just for ATTAK, he was a good nap partner. Friends, yesterday it was 6 months since Parkin died and next Wednesday would have been his 10th birthday. That feels like a good point to start wrapping up his story and I'll stop posting here in a week or two.

6 Sept

Dec 2016: anywhere could be COMFYS when he was that small.

31 Aug

Dec 2016: and this is why I haven't left a bin on the floor in 9 and a half years.

22 Aug

Dec 2016: was airing off a throw over a door, and he must have climbed up it. He did love heights as a kitten.

8 Aug

Nov 2016: little baby Parkin going mountaineering on my dressing gown. And given what he was like later in life, it's funny to look back and remember how he came to me with a neck wound he'd got from wrestling with one of his sisters.

2 Aug

Dec 2017: when attacking your toy from the ground just isn't enough.

26 July

July 2017: when you really want to play with the straw but you also don't want to get up. (Of course I gave him the straw.)

18 July

May 2017: a rare moment of calm, during a very important paw washing. Don't know what was going on with his nose, looks like he scraped it on something.

@rmholdsworth.bsky.social

18 July

[Video alt text: a ginger and white cat lies on a sofa covered in a brown throw. The upper half of his body leans against the back of the sofa as he concentrates on licking a front paw clean.]

Parkin reposted

Rachel Holdsworth

16 July

Look what @scousepie.bsky.social had made for me ❤️

11 July

Feb 2018: a quick game of fetch with a little paper ball.

11 July

[Video alt text: in the hallway of a house, a ginger and white cat chases a little ball that is thrown the length of the hall. He picks it up in his mouth and carries it most of the way back before dropping it on the floor.]

5 July

October 2017: continuing the play theme, these blue fishies continued to entice throughout his life (anything dangly, really). RAWR

5 July

[Video alt text: a ginger and white cat rolls around on his back, grabbing at three blue fishes dangling from a stick. The cat is shot from above, in a corner of a kitchen.]

28 June

April 2017: when he first got this toy he used to prise the blue tunnel bits off and chase the ball under the sofa. Don't think he ever forgave me for making it more secure.

28 June

[Video alt text: a ginger and white cat plays with a track-and-ball game built in a circle. He pounces on it and shoves his paws into the tracks to push the ball round and round.]

20 June

Feb 2018: the previous summer, my Dad balled up a Tunnocks wafer wrapper and threw it for Parkin. And hooo boy, did he love that game. For the rest of his life, we played THROW BALL around the sofa, so he could fling himself around in pursuit of the ball.

20 June

[Video alt text: a ginger and white cat plays around a sofa covered in a brown throw. He jumps for and swipes at a little paper ball, rolls around on his back trying to grab it and carries it in his mouth.]

20 June

FYI, cupcake cases balled up do the exact same job as a Tunnocks wrapper. Very skittery.

14 June

July 2017: Parkin using the full force of his little ginger brain to work out the butterfly toy. I think he trashed the butterfly in a couple of weeks and then graduated to real insects outside.

14 June

[Video alt text: a ginger and white cat studies and then repeatedly swipes at a toy which is a plastic butterfly on a wire, going round in circles. This happens in a room with a wooden floor and a grey rug, littered with other cat toys.]

7 June

Sep 2019: Parkin didn't believe in closed doors. This door was to an understairs cupboard with gardening tools and, let's face it, probably mice.

7 June

[Video alt text: a ginger and white cat rolls around on his back, poking his front paws into the gap between a wooden floor and the bottom of a white door.]

30 May

July 2017: just because Parkin liked his ginger buddy, did not mean he got to test out the cat flap. The house is only Parkin's house! (I also love his little bounces across the lawn.)

30 May

[Video alt text: a long garden along the side return of house. A ginger cat walks up a concrete patio and explores a cat flap we can't see. A ginger and white cat emerges from some pot plants, looking mildly startled, and gently thwaps the ginger cat. They both run off down the lawn.]

23 May

August 2017: in my old house, Parkin made a little ginger friend. No idea where it lived but he'd trot round and they'd play together and hang out - sometimes one would nap and the other would keep watch, like this.

16 May

April 2017: where's Donkey when you need him? This was a relatively tame attack, most kitten owners will be familiar with the shredded hands of enthusiasm monching.

16 May

[Video description: a young ginger and white cat lies on its back chewing on a human hand and raking the arm with its back paws. The cat occasionally gets distracted; it's only a half-hearted attack.]

9 May

May 2017: I bought Donkey as a means to divert Parkin when he started attacking my hands (didn't always work). Here we see an boi in full zoomies mode, and with sound on you can hear two genuine RAWRs in the wild. (The third one is me.)

9 May

(Video alt: a young ginger and white cat races between a wooden-floored hallway with a few steps, a kitchen and another hallway near an external door. Sometimes the human filming waggles a stuffed grey donkey at the cat, which he wants to pounce on.)

2 May

May 2017: I remember this very clearly because he was driving me nuts. There was nothing up where he was looking. He was wailing at air. He was always a noisy boi.

26 Apr

April 2017: Parkin in full MITEY HUNTER mode, while also being gloriously ludicrous.

19 Apr

February 2017: as a kitten, Parkin loved getting as high up as he could. I never witnessed these climbs - I'd just come in and he'd be on top of the tallest bookshelf, or on the fridge. Evidence - fallen books, dislodged fridge magnets - was everywhere, though.

February 2017: Parkin fell through the floorboards and into the foundations of my flat. There had been a loose plank for years, it was under a doormat and I never thought anything of it. One morning I heard a clatter and a yowl, went into the hallway and OH MY GOD PARKIN WHAT HAVE YOU DONE

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If I wedged my arm right up to the shoulder into the hole, I couldn't see but I could feel him on the pipe, and could reach just far enough to grab him under his front legs and haul him out. The thanks I got was he bit me when I tried to clean him up.

Joiner bloke fished the floorboard out later and screwed it into place. Took me hours to calm down. He was merely peeved his adventure was over.

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Meanwhile, Parkin is off exploring (which, also, my flat was the middle of an Edwardian terrace with about 10 houses either side, I had no idea if there were walls stopping him going all the way through). He kept popping back, increasingly filthy and covered in spider webs. I'm just freaking out.

I got hold of someone who could come over in a couple of hours but that didn't solve the problem of the wandering kitten. Luckily there was a pipe about halfway between the hall floor and the foundation ground, which he kept standing on and reaching up with his front paws.

I think he'd stepped on one end, it had flipped, somehow, underneath him and both him and it ended up in the foundations? And what do you do in this situation? If you have a leak you call a plumber, who do you call to rip up your floor?

6 Apr

August 2017: Parkin always loved the laser pointer. He developed a routine that, last thing at night, he would sit in front of the sofa until I pointed the red dot at the sofa back cushions and he'd race up, across and over. And repeat until tired.

4 Apr

April 2017: I have to tell you about Parkin sleeping. Like everything else in his life, he committed to it hard. He seemed to have such vivid dreams - often twitching paws or his mouth. Sometimes he growled in his sleep. And often snored so loud I could hear him across the room.

30 Mar

Febr 2017: 5 months old and developing a deep love of being comfys.

28 Mar

January 2017: 4 months old and the start of an obsession with emery boards that lasted his whole life. If I was using one, he'd come and steal it right out of my hand.

28 Mar

[Description: a young ginger and white cat plays with an emery board, flipping it up with his paws and catching it in his mouth, on a doormat next to a white uPVC door.]

25 Mar

Dec 2016: I hadn't planned on getting a kitten that November and already had flights away for Christmas. Parkin was too little to go into a cattery and clearly couldn't be left to a catsitter, so Bill took care of him over yuletide.

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23 Mar

December 2016: 3 months old. He genuinely fell asleep like this.