A cat story. - It's both sad and happy.

Let's get the sad bit out of the way first, eh?

A month or so ago, on a Sunday morning, I came downstairs to find our little cat crying out for me from under the sofa. When I reached in and touched him he was incredibly cold. The vets card was no longer on the fridge where it should be, so knowing some sort of delay was now inevitable I went back to ease him out from under the couch (I never saw any good in laminate flooring until that day..) to find out what was actually wrong with him. HIs back end was pressed to the floor, it looked wrong, and he was too quiet and compliant for this to be anything good. I had to wake up my partner, she had to find the emergency number, and then it did not work... It took around an hour to get him seen, and five minutes for them to tell me it was all over for poor little Maq. He'd had a thrombosis and euthanasia was the only viable & decent option according to the Vetinarian.. He was only six and three quarters years old. Frankly, it's put me out of the game for quite a while as I discovered just how big a part of my life he had become, and how meaningless most of what I do really is compared to the simple things like looking after and relating to my cat.

Now let's do the happy story, eh? (The first para is still sad, but it gets cheerful... 

Back in 2014 I lost my best friend at the time, A black cat by the name of Blackjack to cancer. The diagnosis was hard to come by, and came too late even for RSO to save him, although we cleared up the oral tumours to the amazement of our vet, we could not restore the lost function of his tongue, and he couldn't accept syringe feeding (which given that we'd beaten back the tumour with RSO, seemed worth trying) so after a valiant battle during which he showed me, my partner and the vet (who wrote it up, quite fairly in her notes, so it's real, not imagined) that RSO can work well against tumours he died, and I discovered that I loved my cat more than anything else. He was my little mate...  

After six months of mourning, we went out looking for a "new cat for my girlfriend". I still hadn't understood the concept of "emotional support animal" or how that might apply to me, (that understanding was still six and a half years away), so off we set to a house in Northampton where a lady who lived by a dual carriage way that had already claimed one cat that year, had a six month old kitten for sale. We had chosen her and her cat because all eth cat charities were refusing us a cat this time around as the road by our house had been designated as deadly, and no-one apart form me seems to know that you CAN train your cat to avoid the road, if you care enough to figure out how. So we had to go to gumtree. (NEVER consider a "pedigree cat" if you are looking for a companion, the ads you red, and people you meet will probably appal you). We came home with a tuxedo cat, who apparently was the "bees knees" according to my partner, but clearly did not care for me very much...

MAQ as he had been previously named, and "Maccy" as we called him, (spelt from this point as "Maqi") soon turned out to be not going to be my friend. I suddenly was made painfully and completely aware that "she was for love" (and cuddles and sitting on), and I was for violence. However his predecessor had trained me very well (It was one of the reasons I loved him so much, his gentle and patient ability to teach me stuff) and I already knew the seven basic things a cat needs and will ask his or her human for, and I had been taught by his predecessor the importance of ritual, and pauses, and "positioning" (O.K. we did get some help from "cat books" too, but he was a good teacher) So Maqi although starting from the most offensive position a cat can take, (active avoidance) soon figured out that I had my uses, other than violence. I had become quite upset initially with his obvious dislike, and running away (even from being on her ladyships lap) as soon as I appeared, but for me it turns out the "emotional support" part is more about "taking me out of myself", and making me responsible for another small creatures welfare and happiness, so I simply accepted the cat for what he was, and engaged in the primary method of getting a cat to co-exist with you. I would appear carefully into the room where he was, stop moving as soon as he saw me, and painfully and carefully explain where I was going, and how he did not need to relocate. You'd be surprised how well this works and with how many cats. Ive no idea how "I'm going over there, and you don't need to get up" works, (or why it works so much better than "I'm going to go over there and you don't need to be scared" which does not work at all) but it does, and did work well, and soon I had little scared Maqi, at least able to stay in one place, even if relaxing was clearly out of the question. I've NEVER been able to last longer than two weeks before letting a new cat outside, and Maqi was no exception, so our first (and only) bad fight was about to erupt. Remember that road?

I had to train him quickly to avoid the road outside the front of our house, and the day soon came when he found his way around to the front of the house. He was sporting a GPS collar at this point, (If I remember correctly, if not, very soon after!) so I was able to quickly catch him on the drive, and pick him up for his first lesson about road safety. About a half a century ago, I learned that you can do this from my (fairly evil) stepmother, and essentially it consists of picking your cat up and explaining to them in your best words, clearly, that the road means death, no matter how inviting it is and to stay away from it.. You may have to do it a couple of times before you cat gets the understanding, but if you are determined and explain it clearly, from that point on your cat should (and in my experience does) "stay away from the road". In my case both of them kept very close to the house frontages, even when they could not know they were being monitored on my laptop. (Bwoahhaa the power of spying from a safe distance, completely unknown to my subject! Made me feel like Mark Zuckerberg or the government etc.)  SO, anyway, I have this small cat in my arms, and he decides he is having NONE OF IT. He attempts to become a whirling ball of razorblades, and I sure as shizzle am not letting him go into the road, so we actually have a fight! If my memory is correct, I managed to retain my grip on him, and subdue him physically, long enough to to give him the basics, before he broke free lightly wounding me in the process, but at least he didn't head towards the road... Later when he had a chance to calm down, and his faith in me had been restored by me doing as many of the "seven services" as he needed, I gave him the extended version of the road safety lessons, (A theory is that cats can pick up on your fear and dismay when you explain about cats getting run over, but how the heck they can associate that with the road outside is beyond me. I was young and stupid when she taught me, so I just believed, and when I had my first cat on a major Birmingham bus route, stupid enough to just do it, and it has worked very well indeed across at least three cats of mine and others I have taught seem to have benefitted. Several days later his gps collar for the first time EVER showed him to be on the other side of the road so I went out to "rescue" him. He saw me walking up the pavement and clearly in guilt darted straight back home, which is EXACTLY what we didn't want. I've only got one tool for this, so I explained to him in the clearest terms possible, that he should not cross the road, not because I tell him but because it can kill him quickly and without warning. "IF you only ever do ONE thing I ask Maqi, let it be this." I asked him. for teh life of his GPS collars service, the company went bust, I later used the cheapo chinese ebay gps modules taped to a collar, but to be be honest, one they get the idea, they just don't do it any more, so you can relax, just refreshing me message from time to time) Maqi certainly did. (I had the neighbours who came to like him, keep an eye out and confirm that he was never seen in the road after I stopped the GPS surveillance. He was a GOOD cat, as we shall see. 

Then of course the "hunting instinct" kicked in and he started bring us worms when they come up on damp evenings, proudly walking in sporting a Zapata style "worm moustache", he would walk up and spit one out in front of me or my G/F, with what looked like obvious disgust. He quickly learned that I like my gifts intact and unmarked, and as he moved through the insect and mouse kingdoms, he would bring his quarry in (mostly) unharmed, and I always had a "creature catcher" to hand (some sort of box with a lid on it) ready to hand. HE wasn't keen on the concept of catch and release, but we managed it on the whole quite well, and a combination of feeding him well and daily violent exercise chasing a thing on a string or a laser dot, or one of the many other things we did involving feathers on a stick, ablated the "urge to kill" fairly quickly and his "presents" became a very rare event, as they always do with my cats. Although he did seem to like to get me to wind him up with the feathers on a stick and then he'd go outside and pick a fight with his nemesis/friend we were never quite sure. They made a lot of noise but rarely seemed to damage one another.

Generally though until the age of about three, he'd accept my services, but never with good grace. Since he seemed to enjoy being teased and "wound up" with the playing, I allowed myself to be somewhat "cruel" or perhaps the better expression would be "as annoying as it is possible to be", making it just out of reach, and openly mocking his efforts whilst calling him the most horrible names, and he loved it. All the time whilst keeping me firmly at bay as far as affection went. Until we went away. We got the best quality cat sitters we could get (aso we thought) an ex-police superintendent and his other half. After the first three days of being unable to raise them and find out if my cat was O.K. I was ready to take a flight home and find out, and they did NOT get a "review" from us.. However, when I got back, expecting the usual non-reception, Maqi made it certain in no uncertain terms that he had missed me specifically! When I say "me" It was all the little shared rituals I guess, just as I came to miss them myself.. From that point on, although I always had to "know my place", Maqi lost his fear of me, and started to lose his hesitancy to engage to a great degree with my male friends and my Daughter too. The rituals grew stronger, and we would spend time together guarding the bay window (presumably against his nemesis, a seemingly very small black cat who used to show up and gaze at us with the most innocent expression that obviously excited Maqi hugely). We'd share a side, then one of us would check the other side, until one of us got bored..

He graduated to bringing us the very occasional small bird, but they didn't seem to survive as well as the smaller stuff, (I guess they took more subduing, and with all those teeth and claws, being gentle is difficult), and my this time, he obviously liked to please, and I'd made it clear that dead things made me sad, so the presents abated until the day he bought me a complete pidgeon with a ring on it's leg. He proudly plonked it on the floor in front of me, it was very still and held it in one paw whilst looking up at me with a look of achievement on his little face. I reached down to pick it up, he removed his paw, and the Pidgeon seized it's opportunity to hurl itself off the floor into the bay window. He gave me a look, which honestly conveyed, exactly the concept of "You F*&(ing idiot, you sort it out" and stalked off seemingly in disgust... After I finished laughing, I managed to rescue Percy McPidgeon, record his number for later investigation and since he was unharmed as far as I could tell, and Maqi had left the scene, I set him free out the front of the house. But that look he gave me, still makes me smile..

Well, Maqi had decided early on that the best way to initiate "play" was to attack me in some way, and once I caught on, and he'd figured out how soft and easy to damage I am, and accommodation was reached, and a ritual was created (largely by him) where he'd sit in one place by the A4 sheet of paper kept under the table where the catnip is served, bolt upright and very trim and attractive looking. I'd reach over and rub his ears in the way he liked, and he would enjoy it for a while, and then at a fairly unexpected point he'd bite me! (As over time he came to love me more the bites became softer, sometimes more of a nibble really, but I'm getting ahead of myself) At this point I'd draw my (always undamaged) hand back and call him a rude name whilst threatening revenge. He would respond not with the fear you might expect from hearing my side of the ritual, but by sitting bolt upright with a very insolent "well what are you going to about it?" look. At this point my faux outrage was being expressed by me saying stuff like "you're in for it now" and  "pointing fingerrrr" whilst the one hand was pointing the other was selecting a favourite "Cat beating tool" with which I'd tap him very gently but repeatedly until he fell over into his fighting stance, which was more of a fighting "lie on your back waving your legs in the air" sort of affair, really, then the action would start. As he grew older and more wiley, I had to "up my game" and keep trying for variants, but that little ritual was so comical, especially the look of insolence. 

Now one thing I like about cat's is their directness. Once you know your cat, except in matters of illness, they never bother to try to deceive you, or at least so we thought. One of the "seven services" involves a human being directed to open the refrigerator and provide (perhaps a piece of cheese or ham, every cat has their own preference). So having drawn my partners attention by the usual psychic means of staring at you until you stop what you are doing and look up (how do they do that??) he proceeds to request a fridge visit, and she gets up to comply. As she passed the threshold into the kitchen he (rather smartly) nips back into the living room and (rather boldly I thought) steals her seat! He didn't make a habit of it fortunately.

As it happens I am something of a night owl, (I am writing this bit at 05:30 A.M.)! So when the foxes started appearing in our streets late at night, his departures used to often include a "safety briefing" about them. However, as it turned out is was not his nocturnal outings that were to consume at least one of his nine lives.. No, it was at 10:30 A.M. on the hottest day of that really hot summer, we had a few years back when everyone had got to the point of complaining about the heat, when he returned burning hot and absolutely drenched having clearly had a whole body immersion. And scared, oh yes. A closer inspection revealed teeth marks in his head, and every claw worn down to a nubbin, in some cases slightly bleeding... At that point I guess all that exercise, plus his natural physical strength and indomitable character allowed him to beat whatever it was that somehow found water on the hottest day of the year and tried to drown him. That day I sent up a drone and actually DID use it to be "nosey". I searched in vain for an uncovered body of water in every garden nearby and could find none. Maqi was quite subdued for many days after that, but thankfully he came to no other harm. 

Gradually, I came to get some occasional "sitting on", and he started to clearly enjoy my company more and more, no matter what was going on, and although I'm never quite sure when it happened, at some point we became "best buddies". Every day I'd wake up looking forwards to seeing him, the services became not only a pleasure to be able to do, but a pleasure to do in themselves as he found more ways of expressing his gratitude for a job well done. I go out for a smoke in the garage, he'd often come and join me, although wisely keeping to the cleaner air by the door. He really started to charm the neighbours both sides, and he was really growing up to be a fine cat by the time he got to his sixth year. Although he'd got a heart murmur, it was nto adjudged to be serious in nature and indeed he clearly gained stamina due to the playing, and it seemed to cause him no issues whatsoever. One Saturday, he not only came to lie on me, a rare but increasing occurrence, but to my surprise, he actually fell asleep on me for some considerable time. Much more surprising however was that when he woke up instead of bailing instantly he was up for some real fuss, with lots of kisses (yeah, he actually could kiss you with a bit of lip smacking that you could hear, that surprised the heck out of my G/F when she kissed his head, and learned that he'd figured out how to kiss her back!) and a LOT of very firm "nuzzling" too. Yep, I was looking forwards to the next few years, with this increasingly confident, loving, and happy little chap...

I've tried to write this as readably as possible, I'll edit it if it needs it, (who am I kidding) when I read it myself a bit later. OMIGOD, even the basic edit for spelling was a LOT of work... I get a weird dyslexia when I try to write.