At the weekend the youngest of our three cats, Meredith, was hit by a car and died. She would have been three at the end of the year. She was a happy, mischievous, fearless little cat who poked her little pink nose into every project I’ve worked on since the day we brought her home.

Meredith made it known that she wanted a crochet cat bed.

I couldn’t prove it, but I’m certain it was her who ran of with crochet motif I left on the sofa, leaving a trail of yarn that wrapped round the legs of the coffee table three times before dumping it next to her food bowl. I bet it was the most exciting thing in the universe right up to when she saw there was food still left in the dish.

Meredith never met a dangley thing she didn’t love/kill.

Meredith loved her food, and on her last day with us she enjoyed one of her favourite treats, bacon rind. She got to do a lot of her favourite things right before she died.She leaped on to the bed, waking us up and accepting a lot of fuss and attention before insisting that it was imperative to feed her immediately; she chased the elusive red dot as nephling no 1 tormented her with the laser pointer; she made a nest in our new net curtains as I attempted to neaten the edges on my sewing machine; she pounced repeatedly on our older cats; and she sat under the neighbour’s tree making excited chirruping noises at the birds as if she could sweet talk them into swooping down straight into her mouth.

I feel quite lonely sitting here typing this without her asleep beside me on or under my latest crochet WIP.

You could usually rely on a warm patch of sunshine to calm Meredith down enough so that you could mess with her for photos.

I miss the sound of the bell we made her wear in a futile attempt to warn our other two cats that she was about to pounce on them.

One of the few pictures I have of all three cats together – and you can see Meredith is about to do something wicked.

Meredith had such a strong personality and was so full of life that her sudden absence is very hard to accept. We live on a very quiet road and it is very unusual for any animal to be hit by a car, so I suppose Meredith was just unlucky.

Someone knocked on our door Sunday morning to let us know that she’d been killed, and we took her to the vet to be cremated. I made sure she had with her the two seagull feathers she proudly dragged home, and the knitted dinosaur that she loved to bunny kick the stuffing out of.

Meredith enjoyed a short but passionate affair with my knitted penguin hot water bottle cover.

I try and keep my posts craft related, but it would’ve felt wrong not to mention Meredith this week. I miss her, and it’s sad that I’ll never be shooing her away from my yarn again.

Mr BAM’s favourite picture of me and Meredith. She fell asleep on the arm of the sofa but slithered off in her sleep without waking up

I know Mr BAM misses her terribly too, but we will always remember her as a happy little cat who crammed all nine lives into her three short years.