Topic: Favorite Photo.

This photo is of my late mother in law, Joy Hoffmann, and our beloved cat Minou who lived to 19. Take on board our boat in Pittwater, NSW, Australia, about 1975. Although the following story is a sad one, I still love this photo for the peaceful happy time it represents.

Joy was visiting us from England. About 23 years earlier her husband Squadron leader Bill Hoffmann AFC was drowned when aged only 39, while trying to rescue a woman in difficulties. So his widow had every reason to hate the sea and anything to do with it. But her son Geoff, my first husband, wanted to show her his boat ….

Less than 20 years later Geoff himself died from melanoma and eight months later Joy herself died, her friends said of a “broken heart” – certainly it would have contributed. It is a lasting regret that I didn’t get to know her better.

And Minou? In cat years, she outlived everyone. She also outlived at least twice the normal number of cat lives (9 x 2) and had a string of adventures anyone would envy … lived in various houses all over two Australian states, caught a snake, got stuck in a chimney and had to be hauled out by her tail, was resident mouse catcher on a tomato farm, lived on a boat for some years and fell overboard several times, flew in a plane, went on long car trips and almost got lost in the bush, once spent an afternoon in a parrot cage at an airport ….