Write about what you know - cats part 1

Cats part 1 – Tibbles and new cat owners

When I was a kid I wanted a dog. We had two guinea pigs who were midly anti-social (ie no fingers lost but they didn’t exactly rush up asking for a cuddle either) and lived long, and I managed to convince parents and senior school science staff alike that I really needed to give a home to little grey mouse with huge black liquid eyes they day before they gassed its sibling and cut it up in biology lessons. Naturally I refused to take part and sat at the back of class emanating waves of revulsion and hatred. But what I never particularly wanted was a cat.

Skip to early twenties, not long married, bloke at work says he is going away for several weeks at Christmas, does anyone want a cat? It is a stray he has been feeding but he can’t afford to put it in a cattery while he is away so it has to go. Sad.

And if no-one wants it, it will have to put be down.

Oh.

End of same week, husband returns from business trip, met at airport by me asking how he would like an addition to the family. No, not that!  A cat. A cat who is going to die otherwise and there is no real good reason why we can’t. Is there?

A weekend of relentless pressure. He weakens. Let’s go and see it then, ok probably. So off we go. This guy lives in a flat above a chip shop on an island in the middle of the ring road, with a concrete back yard and one tree. How has this cat not been killed on the road?? It sleeps on an old woolly jumper in a cardboard box on the landing outside his front door. It eats Katkins, the most inexpensive cat food on the market in those days (and probably because it was avoiding the trades description act). How hard could it be to give a reprieve to this animal, we had a garden and trees for a start and lived in a cul de sac. But ground rules first, just like when you have children, let’s agree before we start what is allowed and how we will do this (and that’s another story, about the ground rules for babies).

So – it is allowed in the house. It will not be allowed upstairs, certainly not in our bedroom and no way, no how on the bed. It is called Tibbles by the way. Thanks, Dave. It’s a cat, not a person, just an animal we can offer shelter to, not hard is it? Hmm. The bliss of ignorance.

We get it home, in its box, take it into the house and open the box. It has never been here before and knows nothing of the layout. But it immediately hurtles unhesitatingly up the stairs, through the open bedroom door and straight onto our bed. Ah.

And when we showed it the cardboard box and its woolly jumper bed, it became clear this was an ex-bed. Tea time. Here is your bowl and your tea. This is what you usually have, right? -Katkins, you think I’m eating that???- but, but, Dave said you did, this is how you’ve been living without complaint……..the look of sheer cussedness gave her away, yes but that was then and this is now! Maybe this is not so easy. “it” is already “she" and asserting herself. Hmmm. Add Whiskas and a cat bed to the shopping list.

Incidentally Whiskas might be ok but a cat bed is clearly a preposterous idea and no right minded cat could use one whilst there is a settee, a bed, a jumper or a person on which they can sleep.

I didn’t know cats moved around so much and changed their favourite places to sleep but in the coldest winter in a house with no central heating and ice on the inside of the windows, she knew her place, and it was mostly wherever you wanted to be. We sat in front of the gas fire with our feet IN the hearth to be near the heat. Tibbles managed to get nearer. We slept huddled under a massive layer of duvets as ice formed on the inside of the windows. She used to jump up and down and force her way between us to get the best coverage of quilt. We planned holidays from serious amounts of brochures. She immediately sulked because she could spot a brochure. As soon as a suitcase went onto the bed, she got in and stayed there. See- you can’t pack so you can’t go. She never got the hang of the snow. We had a sunken bird bath which got covered and she failed to remember where it was when she ran up the garden. She stopped too late once and skidded into the French door. I’m sorry I laughed. Well no, I’m not actually, slapstick comedy with cats.

She accompanied me gardening and tried hard not to molest the robin who often came too. I bought one of those round conical cane chairs to curl up in. Wrong, apparently it was her to burrow into the centre and never come out.

She enviegled her way into my neighbours’ house and affections, well why not, they were like family to me already, and she was my family, and this way there need never be another “holiday” in the cattery………and I stopped having to come home at lunchtime to let her in or out as she distinctly disapproved of a whole day in one or the other. She liked human food and demanded a try of just about anything you ate. She adored cheese and onion crisps, pork in red wine sauce, sweet and sour and curry and had her own xmas dinner in the end, it was easier than being stared at the whole time.

When she got old, she got ill and a trip to the vets every fortnight had me in tears all the way there because I thought this was the day, and all the way home when she got another 2 weeks reprieve. Finally d-day arrived. I asked could I hold her, they said no, it is so quick anyway, afterwards yes but she will already be gone. And 14 years into our long friendship they told me she was a boy not a girl. I’m glad she never knew that, she thought she was a girl and so had everyone else until the anal prodding. Poor Tibbles. I felt as bad about that as giving consent to her being put down.

And so Tibbles had became my friend, not my child substitute, and when she died I did feel as though I had lost a family member; we grew up properly  together, she observed my pregnancy with a wise and watchful supervision, accepted without jealousy our first child (and who arrived disobeying the rules just as she too had done - who knows, perhaps she whispered in the baby’s ear, encouraging her to do her own thing) and she begrudged none of their co-existence for the next 4 years. 

She was buried in her favourite part of the garden which sadly now belongs to someone else and has been dug up. Gulp.

But that's not the end of the "tail" if you will pardon the pun. Cats are like buses, either none or more than one..........