Confessions of a Cat Sitter: The Columns, page 11
But when he’s forced to fight, it’s fearsome. Just recently, I glanced out of the window as I was about to go to bed, and there was Bodmin in the orange glow of the streetlight, face to face with a large tabby who’d just started his one hour retreat. Normally, I’d just let Bodmin get on with it - it’s only pride gets hurt. But the fact the pair were sitting in the middle of the road worried me. Staring doesn’t work on cars. I opened the window to intervene. Huge mistake. As Bodmin looked up at the window, the tabby saw its chance and jumped on his back. The screeching, rolling ball of claws and fur that followed was horrific. Without thinking, I raced into the street in my boxer shorts, clapping my hands and shouting. The tabby saw me coming, probably didn’t like the look of me (not many would in my boxer shorts), and limped away into the night leaving half his fur behind. A clearly rattled Bodmin attempted to go after him. I sidestepped to block him. Bodmin gave a low growl and feigned right, I went with him in a hunched position, my arms spread.
‘OI TARZAN’ came a voice from a neighbours window, ‘WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON OUT THERE?!’
Tarzan? What? I assessed my situation. I was standing in a darkened street in nothing but my boxers squaring up to a snarling mini-panther. This was a ridiculous look, even for me. I scurried indoors with my head hung low. Tarzan wouldn’t have done that.
Having said all this, despite having no face, no emotions and a violent stare, Bodmin has really endeared himself to our family, and I often find myself chuckling about his habits and ways. For example, I was at our local theatre watching a ‘James Bond Orchestral’ the other night, just wanting it to stop really, when the band launched into a crashing rendition of ‘Thunderball’. In a heartbeat, I was adapting the words for my favourite food loving panther: ‘He looks at our fridge and wants it all (DA-DA-DA) then he STRIKES (DADADADADA)…and breaks the door.’
There’s more but you really don’t want to hear it.
If Its Got Hair, Its Just a Cat
Your Cat Magazine 2015
I’ve just been working out how much time I spend sitting with various shaped baskets containing various shaped cats at my local vets. My calculations lead me to the conclusion that I’m at the vets more than the vet is. Certainly in the case of one of them anyway - I can remember once glancing out of the waiting room window and receiving a cheery wave from the very man I thought I was queuing to see, as he ambled past munching a burger.
This particular vet, John, a very good friend of mine nowadays (brought together by the sheer love of being bitten by angry cats) seems to fancy himself as, well, a bit of a comedian – which is supposed to be my job. In the words of the late great Bob Monkhouse ‘They all laughed when I said I was going to be a comedian. Well…nobody’s laughing now are they?’ Sadly, John’s no better at it than I am.
So, I thought I’d dedicate this column to John, the comedy vet, and a couple of the great and not so great lines he’s subjected both myself and my already traumatised feline charges to recently.
Take the case of Declan, an extremely lively wonderful little Sphinx. Declan lives with his owner Martin, a ‘skinhead’ and I truly believe that the main reason Declan became Martin’s chosen pet is that, technically, Declan is also a skinhead. Anyway, Declan had been a little under the weather at the time, off his food and temporarily not charging round the house like a whirling dervish. So off to the vets we went, Declan in a carrier emblazoned with the words ‘IF ITS GOT HAIR, ITS JUST A CAT’ and we soon found ourselves in John’s examination room.
‘Hmmm,’ muttered John, after a long examination, ‘Seems young Declan is a little dehydrated, probably getting over an infection of some sort. Right….best thing you can do with Sphinx cats is take them home and completely cover them in butter.
’Butter?! Really? Does that help?’
’Oh no, quite the reverse. They go downhill pretty fast after that.’
And there it was. The joke. I looked at Declan, Declan looked at me. I couldn’t suppress a muffled chuckle, causing that wrinkled Sphinx brow to crease just a little further.
Declan was fine of course, and soon back to kicking litter everywhere and head-butting furniture – normal skinhead behaviour.
A few weeks later, it was a charming young tortie named Brenda’s turn. Brenda was in for suspected cystitis, and not at all happy about it.
‘Right,’ said John, ‘If you could just hold her gently and get down to around eye level, that’d be great.’
‘Okay,’ I said wondering why I was the one facing Brenda’s rear end, rather than John. As John started his examination, I asked as much.
‘Ah, well that’s because..’ John quietly mumbled as his fingers probed Brenda’s waist and bladder area… ‘when I’m doing what I’m doing now, it really isn’t good to be in the firing line.’
I’m not sure what hit me first; his words, or something else.
As I often say, it’s not all cups of tea and cuddles, this job…
A Cat Called Mouse
Your Cat Magazine 2015
I've just been looking after a shy indoor cat named Mouse. It wasn’t easy meeting Mouse on my pre-visit because, very much living up to her name, Mouse lives in a hole. Well, not exactly a hole, but she’s ex-rescue and tends to retreat into small dark spaces whenever people are around. Mouse’s first view of me was my giant moon-like face suddenly appearing upside down under her sofa hideaway. This won’t have done much to ease her concerns about the human race, but at least she’d now recognize me on my visits…as long as I entered the house performing a walking handstand.
Mouse’s owners gave me my care instructions, adding that due to Mouse’s reclusive nature she would be ‘minimum maintenance.’ This was very true until my fourth visit, when she nearly gave me a heart attack.
Arriving in the morning, I nodded and smiled a happy hello to the sofa, knowing that Mouse would be beneath it. It was then that I noticed that Mouse’s food hadn’t been so much as nibbled on, and Mouse had proved to be a BIG eater. Very odd. I turned and glanced at her litter tray, and saw with mounting concern that it hadn’t been used. My moon-head hovered below the sofa’s rim once again, straining in the dark to see the reassuring white splodges of Mouse’s coat. She wasn’t there. I raced upstairs and peered under the bed, looked behind curtains and under tables. Nothing. I was now in a state of shock – the indoor Mouse wasnae about the house. My heart beating ten to the dozen I slumped down on the sofa. There in front of me, was Mouse, regarding me carefully. I’d failed to see her because she was in the one place I hadn’t even considered – in her cat-bed, out in the open. I almost collapsed with relief.
But my relief was short-lived, because I couldn’t help notice she was lying in a very strange position and didn’t look particularly comfortable. Also, there was still the question of the untouched food. I got down on my knees, murmuring soothing words and edged closer, now convinced she must be unwell. I also noticed that one of her paws was twitching at an extremely rapid rate. Nerve damage possibly? A seizure or fit?
It was then I got my biggest shock of the morning, and that’s saying something considering what she’d already put me through by hiding in plain view. Mouse appeared to have one too many paws. After twelve years catsitting, I’m pretty sure they all have four, apart from the careless ones who fail to maintain accepted quantities and drop to three. Mouse had five.
Regaining my senses, I realised that the twitching paw clearly wasn’t a paw at all. Especially as it had just squeaked.
So, a suckling kitten, not a fifth limb. This was to be the very first time I've ever looked after a cat, and the owners would come home to more cats than they left. Considering they were convinced she’d never ever left the house, they were clearly in for quite a surprise.
I can report that mother and baby are doing very well, and the big bonus is, the Mouse has no desire to return to the hole, and we’re now firm friends.
I love happy endings!
Charlie Wilson
Your Cat Magazine 2015
My catsitting duties very often take me into an extremely salubrious gated estates frequented by equally salubrious cats.
There’s the most elegant pair of Somali sisters you could ever hope to meet, living in luxury, the (typically ungrateful) owners of heated beds with satin cushions. Just round the corner lives an immaculately groomed and incredibly handsome Tiffany boy named Tobias, and a couple of bends further on you’ll find a wonderfully aloof Russian Blue named Misha. All of these beautiful cats seemed to belong on this millionaire’s row, perfectly matched to their privileged surroundings.
And then there’s Charlie. Amongst all this feline finery, in a house at the very end of the street, lives a scruffy one-eyed rogue of a black tomcat named Charlie Wilson. It was Charlie who first got me into this gated-paradise – not by showing me the best way over the fence you understand, but because his owners were the first here to book my services.
Since then, I’ve taken on the holiday-visiting care of all of the above cats, and whilst none of them really socialise with each other, they’re all well aware of Charlie. This is hardly surprising as, even when I’m not actually visiting Charlie, I end up…visiting Charlie. I haven’t been in a single house on that street and not found Charlie somewhere inside at some point. On my first visit to the Somali sisters for instance, who should I find lying flat out fast asleep in one of those heated satin beds? And who is it that regularly breaks into Tiffany Jack’s timer-feeder, and snuggles up with a certain Russian lady? Yep, Charlie, he’s everywhere - if there’s an accessible catflap or an open window, he’s through it.
This week, however, I arrived at my latest assignment on the estate – looking after a Siamese named Whisper, knowing that this was one cat who’d definitely be keeping all her food for herself. Not only was Whisper’s food safely protected behind a state-of-the-art microchip catflap, her garden was protected by an elaborate system of walltop-netting, expertly angled to keep Whisper in and others out. Not even our ‘’expert’’’ cat-burglar Charlie was getting into this place!
On my third day visiting, having fed and brushed the delightfully vocal Whisper, we both headed out into the garden. I surveyed the Colditz netting atop the walls while Whisper settled down to chew some grass and rip up a couple of flowers. There’d be no Charlie visits here, I thought.
I sat with Whisper for ten minutes or so, and then, out of nowhere, a black cat landed with a huge thump in the middle of the lawn. I stared aghast, first at the familiar one-eyed face watching me carefully, and then up at the branches of a tall tree in the neighbouring garden. What a jump!
Before I could form the words ‘Charlie Wilson, what the hell’ he was past me, skidding straight through my legs and into the open back door. He was in. And I’d just been nutmegged by a cat.
I looked at Whisper, she looked at me. She went back to eating grass, I trudged off to perform the all too familiar act of removing Charlie’s face from someone else’s food bowl. Politely of course and with the offer of appeasing Dreamies, because I know that very soon his owners will be on holiday.
And from that day forward, Charlie Wilson will be my boss.
Emergency at the Senate
Your Cat Magazine 2015
If you’re a regular reader of my column (and if so, what’s wrong with you?) you may remember Ian & Liz Senator, those two stalwarts of Cats Protection, who took their responsibility of care to such a level they gave a homeless cat a lift to the Isle of Wight. The cat in question hadn’t been hitch-hiking at the time – he was a CP inmate with FIV, and Ian had found him a new home, 100 miles and a ferry trip away.
Anyway, when the Senators went on holiday last week, I was charged with looking after their cats. Aside from the garden Cats Protection pens full of leaping kittens, the Senators have seven cats of their own, all of them big characters but none more so than Silly and Henry. Henry, a lovely old shorthair white & black with a distinctive curled tail very reminiscent of a cute and fluffy pig’s tail, manages to stay happy and vibrant despite being on a huge cocktail of medications. Silly meanwhile, a jet black 2 year old girl is just basically…silly. Silly would be her middle name if it wasn’t her first.
With so many cats to look after and Henry’s vital medication to be applied every 12 hours just to keep his old heart pumping and that pigtail wagging, Ian suggested myself, Lorraine and Maya might like to move into their house for the week. Their house is better than ours, so we did. Our main briefing was on Henry’s meds. Missing just one dose could put him in jeopardy. No problem I thought, with Henry staying indoors, courtesy of a microchip catflap that excluded his chip, what could possibly go wrong? Well, lots actually.
On the first morning, Henry virtually rode Silly’s back straight through the catflap, using her microchip as his key, and completely vanished. After an hour we were worried, but as the 12 hour medicine deadline passed we were beside ourselves. Going into emergency mode we began knocking on neighbour’s doors. ‘Have you seen our cat?’ was our continuous question. Nobody had. An elderly lady across the street who decided to help us could be heard calling ‘CHRIS, CHRIS’ for the next half hour - I think she may have misunderstood my introductions. After just 12 hours in residence we’d thrown this quiet street into turmoil.
Then, while all this was going on, Silly had a fight with a pigeon and cornered it under a neighbour’s car. While Lorraine and Maya continued hunting Henry, I was ordered to rescue the pigeon. Thus it was that I found myself lying in someone’s drive, only my legs protruding from beneath their car trying to grab hold of an injured bird. At that point, my phone rang – Lorraine had found Henry. I literally whooped with joy and began laughing, surprising the pigeon, and also I think, the owner of the pair of slippers that had suddenly appeared beside the car. I recognised those slippers - only twenty minutes previously I’d disturbed this night-shift worker from his slumber, raving on about a missing cat, and now I was laughing under his car.
‘You found your cat?’ he asked, quite calmly I thought.
‘Yes, yes, thank you, I have’ I replied, slipping out from under the car holding a pigeon.
His eyes narrowed, I started to speak, but he was gone, quickly closing his door behind him.
So now Ian and Liz’s neighbours think I’m insane. It’s amazing what you can achieve in 12 hours…
The Doorway to Summer
Your Cat Magazine, Christmas 2015
Isn't it strange that many of us can just about put up with any level of sadness in stories involving our fellow human beings, but when it comes to a sad cat story, we're reduced to sobbing wrecks.
I definitely belong in this category. I've read lots of heartbreaking books, but the only one that totally devastated me was a chirpy quirky sci-fi novel involving a time traveling man and his cat. Chirpy quirky sci-fi’s shouldn’t really scar you for life, but this one tried very hard to do so. The cat’s name was Pete, and one of his biggest dislikes was bad weather. He'd regularly ask to be let out of every available door in a building, convinced that behind one of them, there'd be a sunny day All through the book, Pete accompanied his loving owner and best friend on all of his adventures, even saving his life in an action-packed penultimate chapter. After all the excitement, feeling happy and relieved, I turned to the next page and read the words. 'Cats grow old, and Pete died that winter.' What, no! Don't write that! You take that back, you chirpy-quirky fiend! Eyes filling up, I read on…’Pete never did find his doorway to summer'.
See what I mean? Those two sentences had such an effect I'm still a bit upset now, 30 years after first reading them.
I mention all this not just because I want to make people cry at Christmas, though that was of course a consideration, but because I was reminded of Pete this week while looking after a very angry young cat named Dennis. Dennis is a Persian, so it’s never easy to work out whether he’s absolutely livid or just happily watching you work, but just lately Dennis’s mood has visibly darkened. The reason for his annoyance has been the weather. Like Pete, he's convinced that there has to better weather beyond one of his home’s many doors. Unlike Pete, Dennis becomes extremely agitated at my inability to find it for him.
We have a routine on my visits – I open the front door, always clumsily knocking its huge festive holly wreath to the floor, scattering mini baubles throughout the hallway, while Dennis glares, first at me, then at the baubles rolling his way, and finally at the dismal weather outside. He then turns away in contempt, bats the odd bauble away with an irritated paw-swipe, and marches to the back door, insisting I open it immediately. I do so, and Dennis stares in disbelief. He looks up at me long and hard, the unspoken inference being ‘Eh, this is no better than the weather you’ve just shown me at the front door. What the hell are you playing at catsitter?’ No change at other doors either. Dennis was not a happy kitty.
This held sway for five days until…something wonderful happened. I arrived in the rain and, after reattaching the holly wreath, we set off for the back door. As we walked I noticed encouraging light begin spreading through the house, and when I opened the back door, we were greeted by the first rays of blazingly bright sunshine. Dennis stared in wonder. He always knew it must be there somewhere! He’d found his doorway to summer.
