I didn’t really want another cat. But. Puss-Kat revealed his presence, quite brazenly at the beginning of last Autumn. I was aware of the presence of another cat sneaking around at night over the previous week. Then one morning I watched him stroll over to Oedipus, who was sunning himself and who allowed Puss-Kat to sniff his now upturned tummy. I took it as a sign of Oedipus’ approval, or at least submission and was very relieved to see that there were to be no screaming cat fights and no one would have to be fatally ‘dealt’ with. A thought that had crossed my mind when I was first aware of another feline presence outside in the shadows.
I was living in a farmhouse–quite remote from anyone other than a couple of neighbours in either direction and both about 500 metres away. I talked to one of them–Bernie. He asked. Is it a big tabby? Yes, I said. Quite big. That’d be the cat that belonged to the previous tenant. She couldn’t catch it when she left and as she drove out she said I could shoot it if I saw it hanging around. And he more or less offered to do same now. But as it didn’t look as though there were going to be fisticuffs between Oedipus and Puss-Kat, shooting Puss-Kat seemed a mite unnecessary.
If Puss-Kat had belonged to the previous tenant it meant he had been living rough for over 12 months. And so I fed him. He had a nasty, raw wound on the underside of his neck (over-grooming the vet said) and I thought at least I can take a bit of pressure off the wildlife in the short-term.
At the time I was running a cafe and once or twice a week I’d bake a chicken to use for sandwiches. Once I’d taken all the meat off it and was left with a steaming carcass, that I didn’t really like just throwing in the bin, I had taken to walking the still hot chicken carcass in a plastic bag over to the other side of the creek and emptying it out for the foxes to clean up. Foxes. Or so I thought. It was around about this time that Puss-Kat showed up.
After a week, he’d become a regular at the back door at mealtimes and so one morning, I took the next step, picked him up, whacked him into a cage and drove him to the vet’s to have his balls chopped off. It was the least I could do. He promptly took off for another three weeks after suffering this grave indignity but when he returned he stayed for another two months or so until about the time Mercury went retrograde in June last year, when he vanished for nigh on five weeks. I was very sad, as I was sure he was dead and I missed him a great deal. Plus the mice were starting to become a bit of a problem and I suddenly needed Puss-Kat’s ace mousing skills.
When he finally miewed meekly at the front door at about 11 pm one night, he found himself welcomed in, totally fussed over with food, milk. Cream? Puss-Kat? And the place literally crawling with mice. He has seen no need to ever leave again.
It is nice to have a young cat bounding about the place and ambushing me from behind outhouses and fences. When I moved here he followed me all over the property like a dog. He went through a phase of catching many little birds which was distressing for me and terribly unfair on them. But I think I have made my point that CATCHING BIRDS IS BAD PUSS-KAT. VERY BAD. And told him emphatically– DO. NOT. CATCH. BIRDS with a cuff across the rump, as we stand over the POOR DEAD BIRD, DEAR LITTLE BIRD. BAD. PUSS-KAT. It seems to have worked. He still hunts, mostly mice, rats and rabbit kittens and he is possibly learning that if he brings any into my vicinity and they are still whole, intact and alive, I will rescue them and his hunting efforts will have been in vain. If he is still catching birds he is being very sneaky about it as I have come across no remains.
He has thoroughly ingratiated himself into our lives. Although Oedipus probably regrets at times, giving Puss-Kat the seal of approval; when there’s not much to pounce on Oedipus sometimes finds himself the target of an ambush. But Puss-Kat is not a fighter of other cats and Oedipus, old, deaf, and pretty decrepit occasionally manages to get the odd left hook amidst vociferous yowling and nasty nasty halitosis hissing, which Puss-Kat takes good naturedly on the chin.
0 Responses to “Puss-Kat”