I don’t get cats
I love ‘em but I definitely don’t get ‘em: cats are the strangest creatures sometimes. Just when we think we’ve got them understood, at least the ones sharing our homes with us, they do things to confound, amaze, and even frustrate. Take our FIV-positive three-legged marmalade tabby, Mandrake: he’s either got another home, despite the one he has being the closest he’ll get to cat heaven until his last remaining point-percentage of his nine lives finally gives itself up, or he’s just happy now the weather’s getting colder, windier, and wetter, standing around outdoors all night long, sometimes for several nights. He’s away during the days a lot of the time as well.
Now this cat, he’s undoubtedly the most spoiled of all our felines. So why a second home? Okay, I get that cats like to be promiscuous where humans are concerned, but to spend more time with others than in his original home with those who cater for his every need? That I don’t get. As a life-long cat person, you start to worry that he’s either on the way out—cats can vanish when the end is nigh, preferring to die alone hidden away somewhere—or that you’ve done something to offend the creature. Of course a second home may not be involved at all. Mandrake may just be further confirming our years-old diagnosis that he’s a nutter of a cat; he is, we have no doubt, as mad as a box of frogs.
This is the cat that spends hot summer days indoors, on our bed, and won’t move. Come heavy rain, gale force winds, and snow, Mandrake is out there, often just standing on the garden path, apparently loving the cold, the wet, the windy, the downright unpleasantly icy. What gives? I wouldn’t care so much, the cat has a fur coat after all, but being FIV-positive means, as with HIV infection in humans, his immune system is compromised and may be doing its job or may be flat-lining. We worry if the cat so much as sneezes because he’s had his nose up his own ass too long, as cats are wont to do.
I’ve given up lamely standing at night in the garden rattling a dinner bowl like some demented drummer who’s had his drumsticks taken away from him, and is turning to anything he can bang to make a sound. Fuck it. If the cat wants to come home, he’ll come home. But try explaining to someone who doesn’t have pets, or who has no affinity with animals, that a creature has hurt your feelings by its behaviour, they’ll look at you oddly and suggest medication. Of course other animal lovers will know exactly where I’m coming from. There are times you go out with the dinner bowl and get a response from inside a hedge that suggests the animal is surprised that its internal body clock didn’t tell it to come home for food. And the animal comes back indoors with you. But lately, I just know the little bastard has heard me full well, and might only be a few feet away in concealment, but is playing some kind of game that either empowers or delights him.
The thing is, one of our two young black-and-white brothers, Jasper, is just like Mandrake in these things. The harsher the weather, the longer he stays out. It’s not like these autumn and winter months are prime hunting season for voles, mice, baby birds or even slugs and worms. Jasper can come to me in the garden when I’m cleaning out the hens or planting bulbs, and he cries at me. I go to him, he moves away, just out of reach. I move in response. He moves again. It’s another fucking game. I play this game for a minute or so, and then I tell him to fuck off and either come home or go away—and he does make a choice, one or the other. Sometimes I’ve found you have to act contemptuously, no matter if you don’t feel it, with cats, because contempt is something they fine-tuned long ago and, I’ve observed, they like to deal but don’t like it dealt. A cat, like a dog, generally wants to be loved. The attitude of a cat can be summed up as ‘I can treat you like shit but if you treat me like shit with just a harsh word or by ignoring me, I’ll put on a sad face and cry’.
If either of our philandering cats fails to be in the house at the hour all five long ago learned (by repetition, I guess) is the time when they get fed, then the missing cat(s) doesn’t/don’t get a chance at food from us until the same time the next night. Usually this strict routine works well, and ensures all the cats are home and are accounted for at least once a day. Lately, though, where Jasper and Mandrake are concerned, I don’t know what’s going on. I’m wondering if some lonely granny in the nearby housing association bungalows for the old and the vulnerable has two new pets. They’re microchipped and collared (the cats, not the senior citizens as far as I know) but who knows why people feed other people’s cats sometimes? Oh. It looked hungry. Oh. It seemed hungry.It kept asking for dinner, so I gave it some.
If you want to feed a cat on a regular basis, and have it keep you company, I say this: get your own, preferably by adopting one from an animal charity. The ones who feed other people’s cats aren’t so readily available to the cat when it needs worming, medicating or taking to the vet. That’s when the cats find their way back home, to their true home, cut and bruised from their misadventures. They know who they can get food out of; they also know who is there for them when they need the most help.
Cats. I love ‘em but yeah—I don’t get them, not all of the time. Maybe that’s actually one reason why I do love ‘em. They are mysterious in their ways.
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Sara Burton
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spicycauldron
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spicycauldron
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Sara Burton
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