When both of Anne’s parents sadly passed away within weeks of each other earlier this year, she and her husband Doug felt the need to bring some life back into their house. Being long-time lovers of cats, they had been continually checking The Lost Dogs’ Home adoption page, watching the kitties come and go as they all went on to find new and loving homes.

All, that is, except one.

“We monitored the website for about three months but didn’t come in to adopt one because we were always travelling to visit my mum and dad at the time,” Anne said. “But every time we went online, we noticed a ginger cat named Floyd keeping popping up! He had been looking for a home for so long and he was so adorable, we couldn’t believe no one had taken him.”

Anne said she and Doug became very familiar with Floyd over the months, with a simple ‘Floyd is still there’ needing no further explanation. At long last, Anne decided to call the Wingecarribee shelter in New South Wales – where Floyd was being held – and enquire about him.

“I had never envisaged getting a cat without at least meeting him first!” the St Kilda-based Anne laughed. “It was a big gamble but I spoke to the girls at the shelter and they said he was such a beautiful cat. In the end, we decided to just go for it and thought, ‘Well, hopefully he likes us!’

After lots of negotiations with staff at the shelter, Anne and Doug arranged for a pet courier service to collect Floyd and bring him to their Melbourne home. Anne said she was expecting an extremely grumpy cat waiting to be collected by them; the reality was just the opposite!

“After driving for so long, I was expecting a ginger bundle of angry cat to come flying out of his cage, but he just walked calmly out and started smooching with me straight away,” Anne said. “It was just purr, purr, purr the whole time. He clung to me all day; I was trying to work from home and it was just absolutely impossible!”

In the time since Floyd came to live with the couple, he has kept them in hysterics with his antics. Doug, who has owned cats for most of his life, said he’s never had such an active cat before and Anne describes him as ‘dog-like’ in the way he follows her around and chews on their thongs.

“He’s always exploring; for his age – about 16 months – he still acts like quite a kitten,” Anne said. “We think he might have had a bit of a deprived kittenhood, because he always seems so fascinated with everything. And we live in a townhouse so he’s always up and down the stairs. His favourite toys are ping pong balls, he goes crazy over them.”

The fluffy ginger boy has also proven to be quite the food connoisseur, only eating food that passes his unique testing system.

“When given any new food that he is unsure of, Floyd bats it with his paw and then licks his paw to see if it is acceptable,” Anne laughed. “Doug says this is really unusual, as cats generally sniff and lick to test.”

Floyd’s antics haven’t always been so amusing; he once almost gave Anne a heart attack when he decided to inspect what she was doing in the kitchen!

“In the second week we had him, he almost lost one of his lives when he decided to jump up onto the stove top!” Anne said. “I reached out and deflected him as he jumped – lucky, as he would have landed square in the middle of the frying pan, in amongst the chops! One of his paws touched just the edge of the pan and when he landed, he was swiping it furiously and then spent hours licking it.”

At the end of a long day, Floyd loves nothing more than stretching out between his two loving owners for a nap.

“It’s so funny when we let him inside at night, he just collapses,” Anne said. “He’s so exhausted from his busy day. He stays inside at night and is very affectionate in the morning. I’m normally woken up by a little paw on the face and a smooch.”

“There are certainly worse ways to wake up!”