It doesn't seem so long since Willow and Wispa were found in a garden shed.
When Bryn and I took them home to be loved and make sure they were fed.
Wispa was born without a tail, had spina bifida too, so very poorly was she.
Too weak to survive and grow strong she was taken to the heavenly cattery.
Willow thrived and as she got older she started to explore outside at night
Until one day she got involved so we think, with a fox in a terrible fight.
Poor Willow's back had been broken and her tail was in a dreadful state
She was rushed to the vets to have her tail amputated and to await her fate.
Her spinal cord was intact and it took a time for her to get well again
But she fought hard to stand on her legs and to walk without any pain.
Willow survived and grew into a charming character in her lovely way
There was a time she went missing for two days, she had gone astray.
She came home after being locked in someone's outhouse very cold,
Hungry, tired and stiff limbed as we welcomed her back to the fold.
Then Mogg her toyboy joined the family the lovelight of Willow's life.
They would lie together in the yard side by side just like man and wife.
Willow loved the rain and would cry to be let out to sit gazing at the sky
Perhaps she was talking in her way to Wispa in the cattery way up high.
She loved to wrap herself round Bryn's neck and when he laid new floor
She left her pawmarks across it but we could not be mad and feel sore.
She looked like a rabbit from behind as she used to run upstairs to bed
To take her place at the back of the pillows where we lay our head.
She would tickle our faces with her whiskers to awaken us each day
I often woke with her paw in my hand as if she was having her say.
She used to love to lie between my knees on the sunlounger with me
Or sit on one of the chairs in the shade, she didn't like to get hot you see.
Amber, Queenie and Mogg the lodger are missing her just like Bryn and I
We know that she has gone to join Wispa in that heavenly cattery on high.
It has left a void in our hearts to have no Willow there to be a pal to us all
We knew it was time to let go of our Willow when St. Francis came to call.
Grateful thanks to Maisie for the poem,Tribute to Willow.
