Cat People
I was up at five this morning. Not by choice. Never by choice.
I was woken by an almighty loud crash and a screaming wailing noise that sounded like the gates of Hell had ripped open in my kitchen. Meeester sprang into action like a cougar, coughed slightly, turned over and said, “You see to it”.
Effectively our splendid lady cats, Lulu and Libby, were being brutally battered by their birth brother Ziggy The Ginger Bastard. He had brazenly come in their (not his- he doesn’t live with us) cat flap and set about terrorizing them both. Sonny The Black Menace, our spaniel and potential protector of the lady cats was blissfully sleeping upstairs in his Spiderman jammies lying on the bottom tier of the bunk beds with his sooky blanket tucked under his chin and lace rimmed sleep mask covering his peepers. He was not due to rise until eight, and then only if someone brought him a nice cup of sweet tea and a freshly toasted crumpet.
The job fell to me.
I went down to the kitchen just in time to see a ginger flash disappearing out the flap and a swish of black “Hooded Claw” type velvet cloakage.
I looked at my two fluffy ladies cowering demurely in the corner. Where did the love go?
It occurred to me that Ziggy is in many ways like Jim Corr, guitar player and brother from horrible Irish pseudo folk rock/beauty pageant, The Corrs.
Here are the Corrs. They are siblings, we’re told.
Poor Jim Corr:
Nine months later, there you have it, a son for Papa Corr. But he is a cuckoo in the nest. They all know it, but no one dares speak it. Oh,…oh dear. Poor little Jim. Stick him in with the girls, something might just rub off on him. Quick someone give him some sunglasses for Jaysus sake!
So here is evidence of some bizarre genetic goings on in my own little gang.
Here are my ladies.
Talullah “Lulu” Martini
Elizabeth “Libby” Martini
A couple of prizewinners, aren’t they?
And here is their violent brother, in the only photo I have of him. It’s the one I saw of the little litter on the Cat Protection website before me and my buddy adopted them wholesale. OK, he’s quite cute there and I do have a very soft spot for him still but…. Ziggy is now fifty times that size and full of rippling muscles and covered in tattoos. He has ASBOS and a gym membership! He is also supposed to be resident at my pal’s house over the road but he seems to prefer our house, with its ready supply of beautiful maidens for him to cuff gangsta rapper style.
Yo, where’s ma bitches?
Ziggy also reminds me of this character from Coronation Street. This is Gary Windass, the Young Pretender to the Bad Boy throne of dear departed Les Battersby. He is currently about to get “sent down” for GBH after he put the weasly David Platt in hospital with a single freckled knuckle punch.
See? Same hair, and, same attitude.
The thing is, two weeks ago our well-loved old boy cat, Harleyboy, who was seventeen, died. And my ladies were left without a dad/man about the house. Although in the last few months, our Harley was unable to see, didn’t know what the blazes was going on, and was frightened to go outside never mind see off a feisty ginger intruder, his musky presence was enough to warn off other toms.
When I told my daughter that Harley had gone she wailed and cried. And then she tearfully broke off to ask, in all seriousness, “But who will look after Lulu and Libby?!”
We thought that was tremendously cute. But cuteness aside, it appears she is right. Who will look after Lulu and Libby?
And how can I go about persuading my family that we need a new Tom Cat about the House of the Flying Martinis, given that even my youngest child declared about six months ago, “Mummy, we’ve too many animals.”
We need our own tom round here. Preferably one of those lovely Bengal cats, that just happen to grow to the size of a panther and look like they could be rather handy at five in the morning.
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Old Boy
“I’m 86, you know!”
My sixteen and a half year old cat Harley-Boy and I have been together longer than me and Meeester. I love that wee black and white guy, but lately he has been letting us know that he’s not got long left.
Here’s how:
1. By pissing in an open suitcase under our bed this morning like a small racehorse despite many good years of fertilising the neighbours’ gardens with the bounty of his bladder and bowels.
2.By smelling of Death.
3. By wanting to be on us all the time which is unpleasant to anyone with a fully functioning sense of smell.
4. By being really bloody annoying so that when he finally goes we’ll say phrases like “It’s a blessing” or “Thank God for a merciful release”. All old people do this, they become intolerable to be around, so that it’s easier for you to say goodbye.
5.By being constantly hungry because the receptor that tells his brain his tummy is full has short circuited. Like Henry the Eighth, Mr Creosote and George IV, he’s going to eat himself to death.
6. By refusing to spend any of his pension on new clothes because there’s no point, he’ll be dead soon. Hang on, I’m maybe confusing him with my late Gran.
7. By having short bursts of frantic activity like a kitten just to fox us and give us false hope. One minute you’re lamenting how slow and lame he’s become, the next you’re watching him sprint the length of the house to the sound of a tin being opened like a stinky Jesse Owens.
8. By shouting at us all the time. He’s not quite clenching his fist in a defiant gesture, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw him doing it. He’s that angry.
9.By dribbling on everything like a furry John Merrick.
10. By shouting out everyone else’s answers during Trivial Pursuit. Sorry, no. That was my Granda.
11. By constantly laying down the law to his younger feline friends. I swear I heard him miaow something along the lines of“ In my day it was all tins. Sachets? Sachets??We didn’t even KNOW what a sachet was! A sachet was something you did along a windowsill!”
12. By being blind but noticing every move you make, specially with those magical tin opening opposable thumbs and index fingers. It’s like Grandmothers who claim to be deaf but can clearly hear you badmouth them behind their backs.
Harley-Boy, the cat of the Flying Martinis, is knock knock knocking on heaven’s door but I’m concerned, do they have a cat flap?
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