If you can't think what to write, write about a cat.
Cats have personality. Cats are cool. Cats are annoying. These are things that all cats have in common, just as they've all got four legs (unless they've lost one in an accident,) a tail (unless they're Manx cats,) and two ears (unless they grew up in Shields.) But cats can be eccentric, too, and each cat's eccentricity is his or her own.
Scruff's eccentricity was the ping-pong ball. She had plenty of things to play with but her favourite thing was the ping-pong ball, which was dented and didn't roll properly, it just bounded across the floor with Scruff bounding after it. When she was old she still loved that ping-pong ball, though I can remember one day when Tony was trying to get her to play with it and she wouldn't, so he patted it across the floor a few times in front of her. In ten minutes Tony was running around playing with the ping-pong ball and Scruff had settled down to watch the entertainment.
Somebody I knew had two cats, each with its own food dish. Halfway through eating they'd swap over, as if they wanted to check that they were both getting the same thing. Sophie would climb on to the roof, fall off, and walk away with her tail up pretending she'd done it on purpose. One of the Friary cats at Alnmouth escorted me round the grounds. Maybe that's because she was a Franciscan cat and knew that hospitality was important, or perhaps she just didn't trust me. I think my favourite eccentric cat story was of one that belonged to my dad when he was a boy. I forget the cat's name, but it used to walk along the windowsill and was clever enough to slink behind the ornaments without knocking them over, EXCEPT
the blue policeman. It was a wooden pencil case, I think, that looked like a policeman and the cat had a grudge against it. Needless to say, the boys used to put it on the windowsill or anywhere else the cat was likely to find it so they could watch him hurl it the floor with a single paw swipe. In those days you had to make your own entertainment.
Any more cats, anyone?
4 comments:
Oh, this is lovely, Mrs. McAllister! Especially as I've just come in from visiting my sister's cat, Arwen. When she was a very small thing, hardly weaned, my sister and dad rescued her as a stray from underneath an old church. Those origins aside, she needed sanctification! The smaller-than-a-rat kitten was really quite wild. But once she moved past the hissing-and-drawing-back stage...she developed into a character. Even now, if you traipse through the yard with your guard down--she will bound behind you, and fling her front arms around your pant-leg, clinging in a strange hug.
My grandfather's cat, Kenobi, follows him through the barn and the backyard...he oscillates on the rocking chairs, and routinely attacks my grandmother's plastic garden flamingos.
Oh, and Snips...when my brother found her as a pariah coming in from the field, he scooped her up and ran into the house. "Mom! We have to keep her! We have the same color eyes!" (Needless to say, she is presently a contented member of our menagerie.)
But I think the most recent acquisition is special to us all. Grandfather discovered a very homeless, very dusty, very friendly black and white kitten with a "moustache" placed patch. My twelve-year-old brother dubbed the foundling in honor of his swimming instructor...thus, we are the proud owners of "Coach Blake." I can't stress enough how strange I feel every time I ask, "Where's the ladder? Coach Blake is stuck in the oak again."
Whoop, a misprint of sorts...
I haven't had a cat ever, but the beloved orange kitty next door once ended up twenty feet or so up a tree - while I was catsitting - on Christmas Eve, of all times. We called the fire department, who would not turn out at that time, prayed, and waited; finally around midnight he found his way down and came to greet us, apparently quite all right. (We think there was a loose-running dog who scared him - I met a loose-running dog that night and I fancy I might have ended up twenty feet up a tree, too, if I could have and a house hadn't been handy by.)
Kaitlin - as I said recently in response to a comment, mother animals always tell their babies where to go if they need rescuing. They somehow know whose doorstep to cry on. The cats have got your family sussed.
Scruff was a church cat, too - or at least, her mother was a pregnant stray adopted by the curate. She did occasionally follow me to church, but she definitely had a mean streak.
Rina - I was once babysitting the Golden Child when the cat came in with something dead in its mouth. At least, I think it was dead. I just yelled 'OUT' and much to my surprise it obeyed.
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