A lot of them I’d already found for myself. Cinema sites such as IMDb;
It’s twee, it’s cute, it’s what it says on the tin: a daily picture of someone’s moggy. But cats are not cute. They are the tiger in your living room.
Over the last twenty years two of the creatures have added my home to their territory.
HETTY was the first. Hetty, because we didn’t realise at first that he was a tom. We never had him neutered, or castrated as I prefer to call it. There were various reasons for this anti-social omission.
First, he was a fine cat and deserved to have his genes preserved. Second, the tabby cat in general is in danger, with people wanting to show off their wealth with pedigrees and other designer cats. In any case, it’s the female’s job to worry about contraception, isn’t it? (Only joking). Third, as a fellow male, I felt a kinship with him and couldn’t bear the thought of mutilating him in that horrendous way. I did consider a vasectomy for him, after he’d had a busy year or two impregnating the local queens, but that brought me up against the fourth reason: sheer bloody stinginess.
I did have to take him to the vet once. Playing cricket with one of my children in the back garden, I tossed the ball towards the bat, and as the child swung to hit it, Hetty appeared out of nowhere to try and catch the ball.
He was laid out cold and remained so for an hour or two.
The vet hummed and haahed, prescribed some tablets and suggested tests. By the time of the test results, three days later, by which time Hetty was bounding around like a kitten, the vet informed us there was nothing wrong and presented a large bill.
Hetty would be away for days on end, and we learned not to worry, but then came the time when we knew he would never return. Perhaps he had hopped onto a lorry that was often parked nearby and ended up in Grimsby. Perhaps that neighbour had carried out his threat to shoot him if he trespassed on his garden again. Perhaps he found a better place to stay.
For he never belonged to us. And that’s why I loved him.
* * *
PIXIE, who replaced Hetty, was a female. Like Hetty she was black and white, and beautiful. (The pictured cat is very like her).
I always assumed it was a sexual thing that Hetty took to my wife more than me, but with Pixie mine was her lap of preference. Every day, when I returned home from work, she would be waiting for me and as I pulled the car into the drive she would trot towards it in greeting. But when I got out of the car and walked towards her she would turn her back and ignore me. At all costs she must remain cool and keep her distance. Our relationship was strictly on her terms.
Two things I found she had difficulty in resisting. Being groomed with a comb. I envied the sensual pleasure she seemed to derive from the stroke of the comb under her chin. The other was marmite. I discovered that the greatest treat for her was licking a dollop of the spread from the tip of my finger. So rough was her tongue that my finger was left totally unsticky. A genuinely shared pleasure.
Desmond Morris once called a domestic cat ‘the tiger in your living room’, and he was quite right. The last time I saw a tiger, in a zoo, I was struck by the way it walked or rather slunk along, head down but wary, ears flicking, hind quarters low-slung and ready to pounce.
Pixie always hunted. I used to watch her in the back garden, sitting under a buddleia eyeing the butterflies and occasionally grabbing one out of the air. I’ve seen her stalking through flowers and emerging with something furry in her teeth, a tail dangling from her mouth. Once she took this victim and placed in what I would swear was the geometric centre of the lawn and lay it down. Then she moved several yards away and watched. The prey – vole, shrew – scuttled towards the safety of the bushes. But in vain, because Pixie would wait until it was inches from shelter before bounding over and catching it. The process began again. Eventually, either through boredom or as a reward for passing her own test, she ate it.
Let’s not apply anthropomorphic sentimentality to a wild animal. Let’s admire the perfection of its predatory instincts and skill.
PIXIE’S KITTENS were born in the middle of the night on my daughter’s bed. One fell to the floor and it was its scream for help – a scream so shrill and piercing that it was difficult to believe so tiny a creature could utter it – that woke me. I picked it up and placed it with the others, which were already suckling.
I believe I saved that little cat’s life. So much for not interfering with nature!
While the four kittens were chasing balls of rolled up newspaper, fighting with each other and flattening the flowerbeds, Pixie was driven to a hunting frenzy. At least once a day we would hear her summoning yowl at the kitchen window and she leapt in with some dead creature. There followed a scramble for the prize, and I noticed that the kitten I prided myself for saving usually missed out. He remained the runt, even in a small litter of four.
I’d found homes for them all, but heard that I should wait twelve weeks before parting them from their mother. I needn’t have been told, because Pixie knew. For at that time, to the day, she rejected them. She was lying on the floor, and when the kittens approached to nuzzle at her belly she snarled and spat and clawed them away. They sat back, expressions of shock on their faces – or was that me transferring my own reaction to them? But if cats can shrug their shoulders that’s what they did next.
A few days later they departed for their new homes.
Pixie is old now, bad-tempered and weak, but she still enjoys being groomed and still has her own personal jar of Marmite. She may have grown old but she retains the desire for certain pleasures. I know how she feels.
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