Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

In Rhoda’s 1962 Diary, my mother talks about our pet Poppy and how we dealt with losing our first Poppy.

February 25

This insert in the Diary has partly cleared up a mystery. Poppy outlived our beloved dog, Laddie. Laddie and Poppy have told their own stories in my Boyhood Recollections. I can remember the ‘disappearance’ of Laddie, but for some reason, I can’t recall the disappearance of ‘Poppy’. One reason is that, as a boy, you’re not so closely connected to cats as you are to dogs. Our dog Laddie always said ‘hello’ to you (by wagging his tail) when you returned home from school and was like ‘one of the brothers’, joining in our boyhood escapades, such as hunting rabbits. He was the ‘main’ hunter. But Poppy would only say ‘hello’ to you when she was hungry by rubbing her body across the back of your legs if you were in the kitchen. 

Poppy was fifteen when she died (according to the Diary), and basic math tells us she was born in 1947. So, this was not the same Poppy that lived with my mother at Mardrumho Cottage, Strone, Argyll, in 1941—together with Buster, the dog.

The first Poppy was a ‘he’. My mother mentions in her letters that the ‘original’ cats sometimes ‘disappeared’ only to turn up later. So it seems likely that both Jonah and Poppy wandered out into the streets of Leith one night in search of ‘queens and kings’ and never returned. No doubt their descendants still populate Leith unless the local authorities have been overly ambitious in implementing a ‘final solution’. 

My strongest memory from visiting my grandmother, auntie and uncle in the 1950s at 29 Scotia Street, Glasgow, when I was a little boy, is the overpowering pungent stink of the urine of ‘he-cats’ that had free access to the waterlogged cellar of the tenement building. My grandfather Hector MacGillivray died in 1950 when I was one year old. In other words, the only grandparent I have a vague memory of is Morag MacGillivray (nee Campbell), who was very sick and bed-ridden when I visited her in the early 1950s. 

My brother Gavin remembers Poppy (written in an email dated 15 May 2023)

I have to say that my brother has an excellent memory – although he was only four years old at the time! But he gets the dates wrong, it was 1962, not 1961. But it wasn’t Poppy ‘Mark Two’ , but at least Poppy ‘Mark Three’ that lived to 21.

February 26

As an afterthought my callous mother wrote the entry above. She doesn’t even mention the poor cat by name! This fact is something I have forgotten over the last 60 years! But on reading this, I vaguely remember that Poppy had a burial plot not far from the potato furrows at the back of the back garden—Mother told us to respect this small patch of earth!

In other words, perhaps my mother got a new ‘Poppy’ in 1946/47 when she was living in Edinburgh, and my father was in Rangoon, Burma. But I don’t think she mentions this in her letters. I think this would mean that my mother had three Poppies altogether! It’s not easy to keep track of! She also had a ‘Poppy’ in Billericay/Thurso/Wales. If I remember correctly, the second ‘Poppy’ was a tabby cat, and the third was a black cat. But her ‘ceramic’ Poppy was a black cat with a white ‘waistcoat’! 

February 28