Write about what you know - cats part 2

Cats part 2  - Kipper and Whiskers, and death

When Tibbles died, I buried her and we planted a pussy willow tree over her, my neighbour and I; it had catkins on it and was one of the few things with any flower that time of year. I cried for days and missed her terribly.

In time you begin to temper that with the advantages and freedom of having no pets and the of course the natural reluctance to repeat the risk of having your heart broken when they die.

And just when you think you’ve cracked it, one of your best mates who has taken in two homeless sibling kittens (and has failed to get them neutered quickly enough due to the cost) invites you round to see the kittens. Yes, the ones they both had a fortnight apart. And which need homes. And it is Tibbles all over again - I can’t think of a single reason not to (other than the cost, the mess, the fuss, the obligation and responsibility and the eventual heartbreak all over again of course, mere trifles) and so we sign up for one from each litter – but not until they are older and I have made some provision for them in our somewhat disorganised and overstuffed house. Now these are cousins born 2 weeks apart and devoted companions. But first we take home Kipper, a little brindle girl, the eldest. Brindle is not the most usual or perhaps attractive colouring for a cat but it does have character. and a week later bring home Whiskers, a cute little black and white boy.

They hate each other. They fight. They rush around the house jumping on things and pouncing on each other and they are not playing. They have forgotten each other already! Oh. I have to go out and in fact I am glad to do so, what on earth have I let myself in for, one or both will be going back to Joy at this rate………

When I come back they are cuddled up fast asleep in my ironing very close but not touching. I guess they sorted it out in my absence and thereafter were happy companions again. They developed a taste for football and telly. Teletext and anything like the footy results where the cursor moved, they were there. Apparently only some cats can see telly, Tibbles never bothered. Football included the ping pong back which went through the house and back again at a speed and with skill which many footballers would envy. Kipper liked to sleep on the bed next to me especially if I held her paw. She liked Cadbury’s chocolate trifle. I found this out one day when I innocently opened a rare treat in the living room to find a cat up the garden through the door, on my lap and with its head in the pot at the speed of light. Uncanny.

Whiskers liked his weetabix with warm milk and if he’d lived until Christmas I think we would have had regular aerial displays far more entertaining than a fairy on the top of the tree. He was lively, funny, lovable and a right little bugger and I ran him over and killed him on my own front drive when he inexplicably decided to race the car instead of doing what he always did and rushing up next door and cutting through at the top. I cried for days and the guilt was enormous, I cannot express how awful it must be to kill a person by similar accidental means. I was supposed to look after him and care for him and instead I ended his short and happy life.

Human resilience works in different ways and I needed some humour however wry. I was surprised to find that when you run a cat over it doesn’t actually flatten it (the first time anyway). The bump I felt on the drive wasn’t a natural unevenness and when I carelessly thought “hope that wasn’t the cat” it was, he’d run right under the wheels.

Once he had been pronounced very dead by the vet after an emergency dash in the car, I couldn’t face burying him immediately I was so distraught.

So he spent two days in the boot of the car in a box. I found myself wondering what would happen if someone stole the car. Report car stolen to police. Was there anything in it, madam? – Yes, a dead cat. Hmmm. What if I was in an accident and the back end of the car was bashed in…….well the good news is your car is repairable, but your cat which was in the boot is dead. – Yes, I know he already was. Yeeeeeees.

Kipper adjusted to being an only cat again. Too well, I found out when we got suckered into having Susie. Dogs can sense fear. People with cats they want to re-home can spot me a mile off too. Note to self - learn to say no.

Susie had been taken in by a couple who then moved to a busier street and knocked the inside out of their house which was not ideal for cat what with no stairs and not much floor, and since it coincided with the need at 6 months to think about inoculations and sterilisation made it a good time to mention down the local pub that you needed to re-home your lovely fluffy black and white kitten.

No accounting for it, this time it was my husband’s idea. I was sceptical, I’ve lost two and can’t go through that again, let’s stick with Kipper. Maybe he just wanted to impress his friends, but we went to look at her and she came home with us on the spot. He insisted. Company for Kipper I thought, she’ll have missed Whiskers.

No.

Susie tried, she really tried, ingratiating and anxious for approval but Kipper wasn’t having any of it. They got put in together at a cattery through unfortunate mishaps and both came back changed, Kipper was thoroughly annoyed and Susie was traumatised. She got her own back later in life on a future generation of new inmates, or maybe the old trauma came back and made her leave. But that’s a way down the line.

Kipper, the most predictable of cats, was never out of earshot, slept on the bed still holding paws with me, did not come home one hot summer night. Or in the morning. So the phone call wasn’t really unexpected. A kind man, going home from a late shift, had picked her corpse up from the main road – well away from where we lived – and brought her round. He had lost cats, he understood. Thankgoodness for the name tag and phone number on her collar. We were close, I was devastated again. Why on earth had she gone so far and so out of character? Did she have a death wish too like her cousin Whiskers?

Another grave, next to his, under their favourite tree. Damn, this is getting a bit of a habit.

Plant some flowers.

Note Susie adjusting to life as an only cat and without the pressure of Kipper’s lack of acceptance. Such a pretty cat. And almost indistinguishable from the big black and white toy rabbit of my daughter’s.

She grew up, my daughter grew up, we went to live on our own, us girls. She liked being an only cat.

She sat on the edge of the bath to her ongoing peril. She slept in the vanity basin in the bathroom. She launched herself onto your lap every time you sat on the loo for goodness sake!, and we were fine.

And then we met Sid.