Sølvfaks came to us on a day just after christmas of 1987. He was born on the 6th of
November the year before. He was bearly twelveweeks old, and the smalest kitten in
the litter. After a couple of days we had to take him to the vet, because he was bleeding from
his rectum and we thought he was going to die. But luckily we had just given him wrong food.
We started to feed him canned food with crums of bred in, and from that day he got better
and better. He grew and put on weight. My daughter Ann Kristin, who was then 4, learned
quickly that the cat was a live creature. They were very good friends.
Sølvfaks came from Roald Westre in Tomter. His white chinchilla persian
had been unfaithful to her rase, and thats was how he was born.
In the begining his eyes were blue, but after a while they went green.
He was a outdoor-cat from the summer, but he had to spend the nights inside.
Ann Kristin walked in her sleep at night, so we had security locks on all
doors in the house. When she let him out in the mornings or afternoons,
she had to get up on a chair to be able to reach the lock.
After a few times, she taught the cat to jump up on the chair before she
got on it herself. The last years, he jumped on it even before she had moved it to the door,
so she had to carry both the chair and the cat.
Of course, she didn´t need the chair any moore, she was tall now, but it
had become like a ritual for them.
Sølvfaks also had a pal named Olaf. They played in the garden all day.
It was fun to watch them run after eachother and playing catch.
Since we didn´t want our cats to go out at night, we had to get them inside at five
before darkness fell. Then it eas practicly impossible, ´caus the bats were far more fun to play with
than going inside...... But we fooled him, and managed to get him in almost every night.
The few times he spent the night out, can be counted in one hand,
but then we always heard him scratching the door around four in the morning.
When Sølvfaks was 9 months old he was nutured.
It wasn´t any fun, ´caus it seemed as if the cat felt that the
vet was doing something to him. I was standing with my head pressed against his head,
while the vet did his job. It was several unnutured cats in the neighborhood.
We had heard houls at night and we didn´t want our neighburs to complain about not
getting any sleep. We didn´t notice any difference in the cats behaviour immediatly, he was
just as funny and playful as ever. Hunting and stalking on anything that moved.
Neither at our house or at any of the surrounding houses there were mice. Sølvfaks
was a good mouse-catcher.
I don´t know how many mice I´ve braged of, before throwing them in the garbidge.
We also had birds. Two. The one that we had just bought had beautiful
yellow-white feathers. A young female. I had just come down with a cold, and was in bed.
Ann Kristin and Sølvfaks was in the bedroom keeping me company.
I could hear the chattering of birds in the living-room, but didn´t think much about it.
Then Sølvfaks wanted out, and Ann Kristin went to let him out through the living-room door.
But when he came to the door, he saw the bird on the floor, and in a jump, he had caught it.
Ann Kristin screamed and yelled to me but I couldn´t understand what she
said through the tears. When I came in the room I saw the bird in the cats mouth.
I caught the cat and took the bird away from him. It was not going to be catfood.
Sølvfaks got so much yelling and shouting at him that day, so much that he crawled
under the flowerpot and stared at me most of the day. And we did not let him out.
The bird had gotten out through the feeding-cup, wich was not properly closed.
We called dad and told what had happened, when he came home, he brought with him a new bird.
But we returned it a few days later. We did not want that witch of a bird.
Luckily, we found a new Lady for our bird, and Sølvfaks learned to stay away from them.
Sølvfaks was intelligent. One night we was eating chicken-wings,
he got one thrown down at the carpet. As he went close, and we said:
"Go to the kitchen and eat".
And he looked at us, then he took the wing in his mouth and carried it into the kitchen.
We was impressed. Sølvfaks went and talked to me all day. He liked to have humans around him.
In the night, he slept on the pillow next to me. Sølvfaks was a big cat, but he never took a
lot of space. I never noticed that he was there until I woke up, because then he always had a
morning-meow to me.
Sølvfaks went on Easter holiday.
We went to the cabin at Sjusjøen, close to Lillehammer. He liked it at the mountain.
We haven´t water at that cabin, so we saved the water from the melting snow on the roof.
We dug a hole so that he could *acsess* underneeth the cabin, there it was loads of oppertunitys
for a cat good at hunting mice. When he wanted in, he came to the window and meowed.
The snow had built up so that it was easy for us to see him.
His sleeping place was on a shelf above the bed in the room behind the fireplace.
He slept nowhere else, exept on my pillow. In day-time, he walked on the snow, but never so far
away that we couldn´t see him. When he was 5 years old, our trips to the cabin at Easter ended.
First of all we had a second cat, who of all things in the world, thinks that snow is the worst
thing humans has thought up.....
Second of all, Ann Kristin was no longer the youngest in the family, and aunts, uncels, cousins
in all shapes and sizes wanted to share the cabin.
One of the aunts is also alergic, so we stoped going there for good.
One night, Sølvfaks was late, and we thought it would be an all-nighter,
but then I opened the door tocall on him, and there he was. But when I bent down to pet him,
I saw that he had blood on him, and that something was wrong with one of his behind legs.
I was pretty shaky, but called the vet that was on duty. He didn´t have x-ray, so I got the number to
the animal clinic in Oslo, but there it was fully booked.
I was given the number to Drøbak, they said that I could come, even if the vet I spoke to, wasn´t
on duty. When we came, he could tell that the cat had broken his leg.
I asked him to fix it, and cried a little.
Sølvfaks was drugged, and had x-rays taken of his leg to see how big the damage was.
He had several broken bones, but the vet said he could try to bandage the foot
and hope for the best. So he got a bandage-stocking that formed after the foot.
The vet had a visitor, who was a dentist, and he just had to look at Sølvfaks´s teeth.
They were ok, exept for a stripe along the corner, we got some penicillin, and went home.
Several people thought he´d never be all right again, but we trusted that
it would be ok. In the beginning, he had a bandadge shaped so that he couldn´t walk.
We went to the clinic in Askim to take new pictures, and to have folow-ups on the broken bone.
We were very satisfied when Sylliås, the vet, said that everything would grow together nicely.
After a long time, he had walking-bandadges attatched, and could get around on a higher level.
At least higher than the floor.
But after two days, he kicked the bandadges of. His fur was fair and "slippery"
so he got them of easily. When the vet saw that, he put loads of *sprayplaster* on and put on a
new stocking. This time, it stayed on. And finaly the day came, when the bandadges were to be taken of.
Back home again, he started to lick himself with the result of him jumping four feet up in the air
and running to hide. I found out that his tounge, with the sandy feeling wasn´t any good
for soar fur and skin..... I put on some old bandadge with stretch in, and attatched it well.
When I took it of, a couple of days later, the foot wasn´t soar any more.
He had to stay in for a long time, ´caus it was still winter, but since he had been going
with the bandadge for so long, he din´t bother.
The neighbours came and said that they had noticed that Sølvfaks had been in
for so long, ´caus they had lots of mice that winter.
Sølvfaks had several habits. One of them was that he always laid down in the shadow of the
carbidge-can, and waited until Ann Kristin came home from school.
When I went out to get the mail, shortly before she arrived, I asked if he wanted in, but
he always answered with the special sound that ment he wanted to stay.
But then, when she came, he meowed and wanted to be petted and hold, and she carried him inside.
And they had a special game together. In the begining, I thought she was beeing too rough against
him, but after a while, I understood that he took the initiative to the game. Always.
He would jump up on a chair and lay down, preferably with his tail towards her,
expecting her to snatch a few hairs form his leg.
He would then quickly turn around, and she would snatch a few on the other side, and he quickly
turned to the other side, and.... They went on for eternity. He never bit anyone, but she often
had long scars from his claws. If she didn´t snatch, he would look after her and meow in a playful
way, holding his head horisontal begging her with his eyes. Like if he wanted to say; "Hey, come on!"
We were going on holiday to Denmark, and had to have someone look after our cat.
He was placed in a kennel, and of we went. After a week, when we came home again,
we was shocked by the news that neighbours had seen adds looking for a missing Sølvfaks.
The kennel could only verify that he was gone, and we travelled to were he had disappeared.
He had disappeared only two days after we left, and no one had seen him since then.
We looked, and called out for him, but nothing. I also spent a night in a barn,
´caus someone said they had seen him in the area, but we had to go home without
a sight of our beloved little furball. A saturday evening, after sesamy street, I asked if we
could go look for him one more time. As we left, I brought with me a pack of his favourite food,
*leverpostei*. When we drove down the road to the kennel, we met him, walking along it,
and we immediatly stopped the car. I ran out and called his name. He turned around and came running
towards me, skinny and tired. I opened the pack and fed him from my fingers. Sølvfaks was so hungry
that he practicly ate my fingers, a happy cat, and an even happier owner came home that saturdaynight.
Sølvfaks always had curfues that he kept. He had his feeding bowl on the field
on the other side of the street behind the house. There he catched birds and mice.
But mostly he was sleeping under the rhodohdendron shadow. In the summer,
when I was sun-bathing on the grass, he would sleep under the bed, to be in shadow.
He wanted to be petted and cuddeled with, so he was always nearby.
Then, one day, he wanted out much earlier than usual.
When I picked up the mail, he wasn´t there, and when my daughter came home from school,
he was not at the carbidge-cans either. She looked for him, but couldn´t find him.
We went out to look, but no cat was there to see. The neighbours had spotted
him earlier in the day, out on the field. We understood what had happened. They were cutting
the corn that day. The kid on the tractor drove so fast that Sølvfaks didn´t have a chance. He
hadn´t seen a cat either. And he wouldn´t have noticed it either, he said. We looked for any trace of
him, but were told that there wouldn´t be any. It was over too quickly for any blood to spill.
Still we looked, mostly to have something to do, while tears ran down our faces.
We never saw him again, neither dead or alive, after I let him out one half hour before I use to.
Many times i´ve thought; What if? What if I had waited, maybe I would have heard
the cutting, and not let him out. But there is no way of knowing.
