This is Mincemeat’s…
It wasn’t the best start in life for a kitten. Mincemeat was born in the village of Howdoyoudo in the heart of the English countryside. Oh, the house was beautiful …
… and he had the most loving grandma anyone could wish for in his Grandma Twinkle.
Twinkle’s daughter – Mincemeat’s mother, was a beautiful ginger cat named Starlight who spent most of her time dancing around the house, and not doing very much else. It is fair to say that Starlight was obsessed with dancing! Twinkle had very much hoped that Starlight would follow in her own footsteps. Twinkle was a master baker, a talent that Mincemeat would inherit in the years to come. Starlight was a wild child of her time, with dreams of stardom. Well, she did have the right name! But there was little that Twinkle could do to tame her daughter. All Starlight wanted to do, was dance. In fact, Mincemeat inherited that talent from his mother, and as I write this, he is busy sewing a dance costume (sewing being a further talent the sweetheart has inherited from Grandma Twinkle along with her sewing machine!) But that is for another time, and a story you will have to wait for!
One wintry morning, Starlight had ventured out to dance in the snow. She was working on a new routine and had recently partnered with a close friend of hers, a mouse, named Zelda Zucchini.
All this left child cat care to Grandma Twinkle, who wished her daughter would take her responsibilities as a mother more seriously. Not a chance.
“Oh, you have such a great stage name,” Starlight would say. Zelda would twirl even faster.
Coming in from the cold to the warmth of Grandma Twinkle’s homely kitchen, Starlight and Zelda snuggled close to the heat of the range cooker.
The delectable smell of a fish pie, the contents nestling beneath the buttery meltingly delicious pastry, wafted from the oven. Grandma Twinkle’s fish pie was talked about throughout the village and beyond, as was her wayward daughter!
Starlight flipped open the newspaper ‘The Howdoyoudo Times’.
“HOW TO BREAK INTO SHOWBIZ!” the headline blazoned.
Starlight felt her heartbeat quicken, and the bright lights of Hollywood beckon. Pointing to the advert, she whispered to Zelda.
“This is IT! It’s our chance! Look. Hollywood Zelda.”
It really wasn’t the motherly thing to do. The pair left. And told no one.
They were never heard of again. Not in the famous sense that is, for all Starlight’s dreams of fame and riches. It was rumoured that Starlight had been too much of a prima donna for Hollywood – but she and Zelda Zucchini had been seen doing a turn on a cruise ship out in the Caribbean.
Fast forward a few years. Grandma Twinkle has seen Mincemeat through his teenage years – he was never any trouble. Grandma Twinkle is becoming increasingly old and frail. She knows that she and Mincemeat will have to have ‘the conversation’.
“It’s getting harder for me to manage Mincemeat. Especially with the old arthritis. I think I need to sell up and move into Flossie Feline’s Old Age Home. But I’m worried where that will leave you.”
“Oh don’t you worry about me Grandma. It’s you we have to look after. I’ll sort something out. Don’t you fret about that.”
Not long after ‘the conversation’ Mincemeat was sitting at the kitchen table flicking through the pages of the ‘Howdoyou Times’ newspaper.
“Cat companion sought for a rascally Great-Grandma. Local lady living in Roast Potato Lane on the outskirts of Howdoyoudo. Excellent cooking and sewing skills essential. Loves yukky food. Please apply in the first instance by telephone: Howdoyoudo 8507.”
And that was that. The rest, as they say, is history.