The Amazing Life of Cats (21 page)
It was chilling to think she could easily have ended up under a car wheel. Someone was looking after her that day. We soon settled into a new rhythm. Our new little furry bundle was such a girly girl we called her Harriet, as she looked like she’d stepped out of a regency novel. It was only when we looked back that we realised she’d arrived in our lives exactly six months after we’d lost Puss, and she was certainly rescued from an uncertain fate. Harriet has settled in beautifully and daily warms our lives. Naturally we’re at her beck and call, as is most of our tiny inner-city street, but that, we have learned, is the natural order of things, and we are quietly grateful for it.
Maggie Hamilton
Cats are connoisseurs of comfort.
James Herriot
Felines are dream walkers—they straddle the worlds.
Amelia Kinkade
‘I
want this one.’ I held in my hand a small black and white kitten. I didn’t realise it then but this was my first meeting with a very special cat. My friend, who was giving me first pick of a litter of three kittens born to her warehouse cat, and I would both have laughed aloud if someone had told me that this rather ordinary scrap of cat was destined to cross the world.
The mother cat lived in my friend’s grocery warehouse, keeping it free of vermin. A kitten from her, I reasoned, would be quite happy to live in our extensive granaries to augment the vermin-control staff already there and which had, over the last year or so, become seriously depleted in numbers. These cats, inherited from my mother-in-law, weren’t like many other farm cats I have known, semi-wild and poorly fed; they were tame and enjoyed one good meal every day fed to them in the loft closest to the house. The farm buildings were a fair distance from the house and none of these felines had ever attempted to become house cats, or even been seen away from the farm buildings. A kitten born of a renowned hunter who lived in a warehouse seemed a perfect addition to their number.
There were three kittens in the litter, two handsome tabby and white males, replicas of their mother, and this black and white female. I had no hesitation in choosing her. I wondered afterwards if it was her likeness to my childhood cat, long-dead Mrs Muggins, that influenced my choice. With the wisdom of hindsight I could see that it would have suited my purpose much better to choose the two males.
‘Are you sure you want that one?’ Even as my friend asked the questions I saw she was pleased. ‘I didn’t think anyone would want her,’ she added. ‘But I did promise you first pick.’
I said I was quite sure and happily bore my eight-week-old kitten home and ensconced her in the barn where the cats lived without taking her anywhere near the house. I left her exploring her new surroundings and introducing herself to the cats in residence and walked back to the house. This took several minutes, as I had to cross a small paddock, pass the garages and cross the top of the wide drive. It entailed opening and closing two gates. I walked quickly, glancing over my shoulder several times to check she was not following.
I entered the house at the nearest side door and followed the long passage to the kitchen. In this solid Victorian house doors were thick, keeping sound in, or out. After one last glance over my shoulder I closed the kitchen door behind me. It would soon be time for afternoon tea so I moved the kettle over to the hot spot on the Aga and paused, my hand still on the handle. Surely I was imagining the piercing screams of an outraged kitten.
I retraced my steps to the outside door; opening it, I faced a tiny black and white figure, bristling with indignation. I returned her to the barn. By the time I had done this five times, the day had moved forward and it was definitely afternoon teatime. I was ready to give up.
‘I thought she was supposed to be a farm cat. You’ll never get her to live in the granary if you bring her into the house.’ My husband, in for a cup of tea, looked down at Tilly—I had given her the name on the drive home—who was sitting in front of the Aga with the satisfied composure of one who has triumphed over great odds.
‘I did not bring her. I took her straight to the granary, she brought herself.’ I gritted my teeth at this injustice and, with my back to them both, poured boiling water into the teapot.
‘I’ll take her back and get away quickly so she won’t see me go,’ he told me smugly as he swept her up and marched to the door.
‘She doesn’t have to see you—she knows the way.’ But I was talking to his back.
‘You just have to be quick,’ he told me confidently, some time later, as he came back from his trip to the barn and sat down at the kitchen table.
Silently I poured the tea, passed him a cup and waited. Not for long: the cup of tea stopped midway to his lips as piercing and very indignant shrieks were heard.
‘Is that her?’ He stared at me, put down his untouched tea and pushed his chair back; with determination in every line of his body, he marched to the door.
By the time he had done this several times and the shrieks were rather hoarse but had lost none of their indignant determination, he gulped his now cool tea, walked back out to the side door and let her in. She bounced into the kitchen ahead of him. ‘I think,’ he admitted ruefully, ‘that we have to accept she has won.’
I agreed. ‘I’m afraid she has.’ Bowing to the inevitable, I poured her a saucer of milk. After all, working so hard to get your own way must be thirsty work. We smiled when she finally turned towards us, a large pearl of milk on her chin, and gave us a small pink mew of gratitude—or was it triumph?
We marvelled at her determination and wondered how an eight-week-old kitten, born in a warehouse to a mother who herself had never been a house cat, had known about houses and that some cats lived good lives in them. Was it some mystic inborn knowing, or had her mother instructed her to set the rules for her future life immediately? Either way, having chosen to be a house cat she never went near the farm buildings again.
We soon realised that we had adopted an extraordinary cat. We often pondered how on earth she knew that life as a house cat would be a definite step up from a barn cat. She was only eight weeks old when she came to live with us; she had no knowledge of living in a house and could not have learned anything from her mother who had never been in a house in her life but had always been a warehouse cat.
We didn’t know then that she was destined to live a life that, by normal cat standards, would also be extraordinary. By the time she died at the early age of eight, she had experienced incredible adventures; the few cats that sail from one side of the world to the other are usually highly bred and highly priced pedigree cats— ‘aristocats’, not ordinary moggies with no claim to lineage or beauty. She lost a few lives along the way, got run over in England, caught in a rabbit snare in Tasmania, and crossed water yet again when we moved to mainland Australia. Along the way she had earned the love and admiration of the entire family and been unstinting in the love she bestowed on us.
Her untimely death so young was heartbreaking. It was given an added poignancy because she crawled into the house to die on the morning of my twin son and daughter’s eighth birthdays. She had been poisoned, possibly by catching and consuming a rabbit that had itself eaten the poison. She came into the house and collapsed on the kitchen floor, giving us only time to bid her a tearful farewell before she left us forever. Sometimes when I looked at her little black and white person I remembered my much-loved black and white cat, Muggins, and wondered.
From The Power of the Cat, Ann Walker
H
e was the biggest cat I’d ever seen. Not flabby, just solid. I took one look at him and decided: ‘His name’s HARRY.’
I’d been on the phone talking to a friend and heard a child crying in the background. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked the mother.
‘We have to get rid of the cat because of Fiona’s asthma. So he’ll have to be put down. No one will want a fifteen-month-old tabby.’
‘I’ll take him,’ I said. ‘Give me five minutes to talk my husband into it.’
My husband’s a dog lover. He tolerates cats. Just. After a pause he said, ‘Okay, but be it on your head.’
So the woman delivered the cat, saying, ‘His name’s Cheyenne,’ then adding hastily, ‘but you can change it.’
We did. Fast. I couldn’t imagine this big tabby cat riding a horse. Not that calling him Harry didn’t cause other problems. My next-door neighbour at the time was also named Harry and his wife must have wondered why I kept calling, ‘Harry, HARRY!’ every night.
We had our Harry desexed, because next door’s tomcats were fighters and we weren’t asking for trouble. Harry came back from the vet’s and gave me the first of many filthy looks. His face could change from a radiant, beaming smile to abject fury in a nanosecond and it wasn’t long before he discovered a more obvious way of expressing his anger. At that time we had a large rug on the bathroom floor. The kids would yell, ‘MUM! Harry’s done it on the rug. Again,’ and I would rush into the bathroom, while Harry stalked past, tail erect, grinning in evil triumph.
He was nothing if not theatrical. During a game of Scrabble, he once waited until a particularly tense moment before delicately pussyfooting through the tiles. We held our breath, expecting him to scatter them, but he got safely to the other side then sat down and with one dramatic swoosh of his tail swept the board bare.
Harry could also be pig-headed, affectionate, intelligent and placid (not all at once). He made an excellent babysitter. When my youngest son was a toddler he would refuse to take afternoon naps for fear of missing out on whatever the other kids were doing. Enter Harry, never averse to a snooze; if I could persuade the toddler to lie down beside him—bingo, sleeping toddler.
Harry was also a hypochondriac. He was too big to fit into a normal cat box, so I would carry him to the vet’s like a baby, his paws clasped round my neck, frequently with claws dug in as well. Talk about white coat syndrome: when I finally managed to prise him off, ten kilos of solid cat would turn into quivering jelly. But only on the surface. Underneath he was as tough as ever.