In memory of Sába

…or why we became SÁBACAT/SABA Kennel.

Sába came to me in the spring of 1993. A painter from Szentendre was her breeder. Like me, she kept many different animals, but never in large numbers. Alongside her “old-style” Siamese, she also had a Tonkinese cat. I’ll never forget when she said she was going to feed the Cameroon dwarf goats, opened the kitchen window, and went out into the garden.

A few minutes later, she somersaulted back through the kitchen window onto a designated mattress because the billy goat was chasing her. Seeing my puzzled expression, she simply said:

– He’s not always like this.

I remember that after just a few minutes, I immediately took a liking to Sába. I asked for her, but the breeder tried hard to talk me out of it. She pointed out that the last tail vertebra was crooked, which meant she couldn’t be bred and wouldn’t receive pedigree papers. I said that was fine.

She guided me to see that all the other kittens in the litter were excellent, and she even had a Tonkinese cat. But I insisted that I wanted Sába. And how right I was. Though she didn’t become the breeding cat I had hoped for, she became my most loyal companion for 19 years. The bond we formed was incredibly deep, and in my opinion, truly special.

Of course, I spent a lot of time with her—we played together, I trained her to walk on a leash, she learned to jump over obstacle courses and even retrieve objects. At my signal, she would jump from the ground to my shoulder without ever scratching me with her claws. And all this despite suffering from a severe middle ear infection during her first six months, which required painful treatments that I could only administer by wrapping her in a towel. I was afraid I might lose her trust forever, but fortunately, that didn’t happen.

The trust between us was never broken.

They say that cats are attached to places. Well, that’s a huge misconception! It’s something people say when they’ve never managed to form a deeper bond with their cat. Of course, like most things, there’s some truth to it—cats do have an incredible sense of direction, and even cats taken far from home manage to find their way back.

I used to take Sába along with the ferret and the raccoon on hikes when I went out with my dogs. We must have looked like the Bremen Town Musicians. If we sensed any danger (like encountering another hiker with a dog), all the small animals would climb onto me when I gave the signal (Sába and Bleró, the little ferret, would perch on my shoulder, while Perszil the raccoon would hang onto my forearm like a sloth), while my dogs stayed at my side, guarding the group.

Those were unforgettable, happy moments.

I remember when Sába would sleep with us in bed and, during the night, would “hunt” down any unconscious movement of a toe. Can you imagine how pleasant it is to wake up to a cat biting your foot in the middle of the night? This too is part of having pets.

When we went on vacation, we took Sába and Pamacs (a Chinchilla Persian) with us to the forest inns, just like we did with our dogs. So many years filled with so many shared experiences.