Lewis Caroll’s Cheshire Cat in Alice In Wonderland was a tabby, but no surprises there. All the truly eccentric cats we’ve ever known have been brown and stripy.
There was Napoleon who liked to sleep in the washbasin and Jemima who spent the night dragging a cotton bobbin to the top of the wooden stairs then chasing it noisily down again. Jarvis hated towels being dried on the radiators and would pull them down with his claws.
Our near neighbour Muffy will rush up to strangers purring, chirruping and rubbing around their legs. Yet to touch the animal is to risk death – or at least a badly mauled hand.
And after an unpromising kittenhood Prudence (above) is steadily improving with age. Now aged 16, she’ll cheerfully sit up like a meercat when wanting to be stroked or fed, and has come to regard her own tail as a mortal enemy.
One of Terry Pratchett’s cast of comic characters from his Discworld novels is The Death Of Rats – a skeletal rodent walking on its hind legs, wearing a black robe, and carrying a tiny scythe. But for us the death of rats is no laughing matter, since Child K has just lost her beloved pet Ruby in a genuine small-scale tragedy.
When Ruby developed a small tumour on her stomach earlier in the year the vet advised against trying to remove it. She was still her active, inquisitive, and friendly self – with no signs of discomfort or lost appetite. And the cancer was so close to her vital organs that an operation would only have had a twenty percent chance of success. Better to let her enjoy a decent quality of life for as long as possible – which she continued to do for many happy months.
Last week however, Child K discovered that the tumour had ulcerated, and Ruby was once more rushed to the vet. At this point the choice was stark – if he did nothing the tumour would burst and Ruby would die from the infection. If he operated, there was still only a twenty percent chance the little creature would survive the anaesthetic and surgery.
First thing Monday morning, before school, my wife and daughter took Ruby in to have the operation. And by afternoon the glad news came through that the operation had been successful. The 5 to 1 gamble had paid off, and the vet advised only that Ruby should stay at the surgery overnight for observation. Much relief and celebration all round… read more
Sometimes kids get more pleasure from a cardboard box than the present inside it… so how much pleasure in 20 cardboard boxes ? These two seem determined to find out.
Prudence is now a sociable old lady of 14 or 15 after a highly unpromising start. As a young cat she was paranoid & neurotic – cringing away from any stroking hand and fleeing in terror from the food bowl.
A decade of daft stunts was crowned by hiding under a neighbours’ floorboards just before they went away on holiday. She then emerged in the empty house to mew loudly & piteously by the front door. Luckily we’d been left a set of keys, except that anytime we opened the door she would bolt back under the floorboards.
Recently I’ve been baffled to find myself the object of her sudden and completely disarming devotion. She follows me round the house purring & mewing for attention. She even parades anxiously and down on the bed while I’m taking a shower before sitting assertively on the pile of clothes I’m about to put on – as she does on other random objects such as my rucksack and computer case.
You can tell she’s feeling her age by a growing stiffness in the way she walks. Plus the fact that she’s started viciously attacking her own tail – growling and biting whenever it tries to get into bed with her.
She may be a tabby fuckwit but life would be a great deal duller without her.
