The Amazing Life of Cats (19 page)
The cats are back with me now, and Mum texts often.
How’s Noodle? Good
, I say.
Is he behaving?
Hmm, not really. He’s Noodle.
Give him hugs for me
. Sure, she asks after Pip and me—her youngest daughter—but it’s clear that Noodle somehow worked his magic on her, as he tends to do. Meanwhile, I’m so happy they’re back, Noodle alternately charming me and driving me to despair. All’s right with the world.
Oh, okay, so tonight as I finished writing this, Noodle wolfed down his dinner too fast, promptly barfed it all back up on the carpet, then wolfed down his cat biscuits before jumping up on my lap and sticking his nose in my face, trying to steal
my
biscuits. And yesterday I came home from work to find the bin knocked over and garbage strewn all over the floor, the object of the raid—a lamb bone chewed completely clean—lying under the table. He’s incorrigible! But that’s the way he is. He’s just Noodle.
Jo Lyons
They say the test of literary power is
whether a man can write an inscription.
I say, ‘Can he name a kitten?’
Samuel Butler
Never Tell a Lie When
the Truth Will Do
O
ur family has always had cats, whether just for companionship or—as is the case since retiring and moving onto our forty acres—to keep our home and sheds rodent free.
The fact that our horse-feed storage area is virtually rat free is testament to their commitment to the task. Evidence of their efficiency is the number of headless rat bodies we find in the sheds. Although I accept that this practice of eating only the head of captured rodents is a sure pointer towards that part of the body being the tastiest, I shy away from being tempted to try the taste test.
When in southeast Asia many years ago, I ate some strange foods with relish; however, boiled chicken heads were one of those few items I couldn’t take, partly due to the manner the head was consumed— locals would hold the beak between forefinger and thumb and insert the head into the mouth, sucking with gusto. Since that experience, no animal’s head has appeared on the household menu.
Back to cats! We generally name our cats with their personality traits in mind—I recall when I was a child living out in the sticks, our family owned a tabby cat my mother christened ‘Gutsy’. A champion hunter, his favourite meal was freshly caught rabbit kittens. Gutsy would often disappear soon after his breakfast of table scraps and return just on nightfall, hardly able to walk, with a belly so swollen with baby rabbit it dragged on the ground. All the same, he would still loudly voice his displeasure if his dinner wasn’t ready. Over the years my wife Janise and I have often changed our cats’ names in reaction to personality development or a particular behavioural trait. Regardless of name changes, though, they still come to the call of ‘Puss, puss, puss’.
Jan is the real cat lover in the household; while I would rather own a dog, I value their companionship. We have three cats at this time—a Bengal, a tabby and a little black cat, all of whom are male but have lost interest in the fairer sex following a visit to the friendly vet.
The Bengal is an exception to the rule regarding frequent name changes in that he has kept all of his names. Soon after his arrival he was blessed with the name ‘Johnny Farnham’, aka ‘The Voice’, and now at twelve years old he’s also known as the ‘Old Fellow’. From the time Jan first brought him home, to this present day, he has never stopped talking during his waking hours. He’s slowing up a bit in his old age and short bursts of running often result in a coughing fit—I suspect he has a secret smoking habit that has caught up with him. However, he remains the champion snake catcher, always bringing his still-alive trophies to the back door. Most of the time they are green tree snakes but the occasional red-bellied black also falls victim to his hunting skills.
The tabby is our inside cat, sleeping in the laundry, much to his disgust. His first name was James Dean (from the movie
Rebel Without a Cause
), so named because of his initially rebellious behaviour— behaviour that attracted a few unprintable names too. His current primary name is ‘Peek-a-boo’, due to his habit of one-eyed peeking around corners. If nothing else, he has a healthy appetite, requiring periodic attention from Weight Watchers and resulting in the name Garfield. To add to his many worries, no bed of any style, shape or material holds an attraction for him for very long. During the time a bed is in favour, Peek-a-boo will spend most of the day and all night in or on it, but two weeks is about the limit before he develops an intense dislike for his current bed and generally ends up sleeping in the laundry tub. With all this stress and strain, Jan and I agree that he is in need of counselling, but unfortunately, so far we’ve not been able to find a psychiatrist who speaks fluent feline.
Our little black cat came to us not quite two years ago; a tiny, bedraggled, dilapidated bag of bones, he appeared on the back verandah and refused to leave. We refused to feed him for two days in the hope that he would leave, but still he stayed, even though he was obviously very wary of humans. What could we do?
We fed him, of course, and so gained another member of the family. At first he refused physical contact, couldn’t be coaxed inside any building, wouldn’t make eye contact and not a purr or meow was heard. But kindness, patience and lots of talking finally won him over. We named him Sooty, and as time passed Sooty developed a fondness for ox heart, Friskies dried cat food, Kraft tasty block cheese and ‘hooman beens’ (his words). However, to this day car travel, sudden loud noises and strangers will send him running, and doorways remain something to be treated with caution.
As his personality and ability to conduct an intelligent conversation developed, so his name changed. ‘Sooty’ was abandoned in favour of Midnight Oil, which in turn was superseded by Panther. The name Panther came about one day when I commented on his hunting prowess. He acknowledged the compliment and then told me that he was indeed a panther trapped in a small cat’s body. Drawing on prebirth memories, he told me that when he was lined up waiting for his panther suit he was distracted by a delightfully cheeky cheetah, and while he was chatting her up, he missed the last call for those interested in panther suits.
Although he retains his Panther name, as he started to put on weight we also named him Black Pudding. His current name is Devil’s Food Cake, in recognition of his attractive appearance and somewhat devilish personality.
All three cats are cautious of strangers and are quick to voice their alarm, frequently before we become aware of people approaching the house. In addition, all three cats acknowledge that tails are not just for showing off bums, but perform their true function as handles for ‘hoomans’ to grab.
I do believe—though of course this opinion is not shared by Janise—that only a pure-bred bull terrier could be a better and more faithful companion.
Geoff Bateman
An ordinary kitten will ask more
questions than any five-year-old.
Carl Van Vechten
M
y beloved kitten Destiny has been missing for a week now.
Destiny was one of three kittens abandoned above Assisi’s cemetery in September 2010—a trio of calico sisters maybe six weeks old. My fellow
gattara
Francesca and I were separately alerted by phone calls from people walking their dogs in the early morning. We called one another, and by nine am we’d met up and were heading out to Porta San Giacomo with a cage, a domed wicker carrier, and a pound of lean ground beef.
Our informants had said these kittens were in the upper parking lot, so when we got to the top we started calling them in the Italian manner—not ‘kitty kitty’ but ‘mish!’, ‘miscio!’ and ‘mi!’, short forms of ‘
micino
’, which means ‘kitty’. This is an affectionate word for ‘
gattino
’, which means ‘kitten’ (the diminutive of ‘
gatto
’, cat). Within moments, out of the bushes came a fearless little miss, a pale grey and rose tiger all white underneath as if she’d been dipped in cream. With the confidence of a majorette she padded straight towards us along the kerb, her long striped tail held high and gracefully curved at the tip. Behind her came her timid sisters, both white with vivid orange and black mottles. Francesca opened her parcel of minced beef, they devoured it hungrily, and one by one she simply picked up each kitten and placed it in her carrier. No chase, no struggle, no meowing in distress. We took turns carrying them back down the long flight of stone stairs to Porta San Giacomo.
This was unexpectedly, unbelievably easy. These were clearly not feral cats but abandoned domesticated kittens. So our original plan, to leave them near the feeding station with a cardboard house for shelter, had to be rethought, particularly when, after letting them loose to show them their new home, the grey one immediately scampered up to someone walking to a car parked outside the gate, and the others followed her. There were too many cars and complicated traffic patterns for three little kittens on their own. Besides, we didn’t trust a grumpy old Italian woman who was watching us suspiciously from a bench. What to do? Francesca’s apartment, on a busy street, was already stocked with cats who would not appreciate a gang of kittens moving in. My own rented apartment is tiny, though it has a gated courtyard and is on a street with residents-only traffic. Given the apartment’s stone walls, screened windows and heavy door of glass and iron bars, there’s no way of installing a cat flap, which I’ve always insisted upon for my cats in the past. Besides, I have never felt quite secure that I’ll be able to stay in Italy as my savings dwindle, so I hadn’t dared take on the responsibility of cats of my own, and have just kept to feeding the strays. Oh, I’ve hosted a few foster-kits, and last spring Jalal, a charismatic young tom cat, moved in—an ardent feline-human love affair which ended in his tragic and suspicious disappearance six weeks later. Then Rishee, a neighbour’s sick old cat, adopted me—he died of kidney failure within a month.
But three little kittens? What a commitment! Surely I could not . . . but while we were worrying about our next step the little grey tiger leapt up on a wall at my eye level and kissed me on the nose. And I knew I was falling in love, and my heart bloomed, and I knew I must take her home with me—we could figure out the rest later. When I went to get the carrier, she was already sitting in it, as if by magic! Well, then . . . why not take them all? But the others had vanished. So I latched up the carrier—pretty tight wicker except for a looseweave window in front—and started to carry it home. Again, utter silence, no protest. I put it down to check that she was okay, and behind her I saw another kitten’s face! Francesca and I returned to the porta and searched all over for the third one, but she was nowhere to be found. Yet when I got them home and opened the carrier door, we discovered the third one was also in there, hidden at the back. They had all voluntarily packed themselves in, a minor miracle clearly orchestrated by the bravest little sister. It was meant to be. So I named the ringleader Destiny. And I knew that not only had she saved her sisters but that she would change my life as well.
