Storm Claudia was the culmination of a grim week for my cat. Not that she understood that it was impending. Orange warnings went straight over her head as she sat expectantly in front of the kitchen door, expecting it to open of its own accord or me to take the hint. I explained that she wouldn’t like it if I opened the door but she kept staring at it so I did.
A gale force wind came through the gap, flattening her whiskers against her face and she rejected any possibility of an exit, which was just as well, because I wasn’t able to keep the door open.
Now, since she is an indoor/outdoor cat, this meant she could not go out to pee, which might mean she would use the shower for that purpose, which is fair enough.
It had been a tough week because Specs had gone to the vet to be vaccinated against everything except fleas, but also preventatively treated for them.
On her return, she came out of the cat cage in a vile temper and made speeches for nearly an hour.
The curious thing about these complaints is that they had no immediate target.
She may be so dim a feline bulb that she doesn’t connect an annoyance to the person who delivered it, although she does associate the cage with negatives, and runs from it as if it were a live predator. Other than that, her complaints are non-specific and passionately general.
Being a devout coward does not help. A massive golden retriever visits the house occasionally, although “visiting the house” is overstating it a bit.
He actually visits only the garden, resolutely refusing to come indoors where he might be called on to face Specs.
Now, Specs is one-tenth the size of him. The cat is terrified of him, even though the golden retriever has never been found guilty of anything other than emotional incontinence.
Meaning, if you’re pleasant to him, he wants to go home with you right then, even if you’re a total stranger. The dog is as scared of the cat as the cat is scared of him, which is ridiculous, but reasoning with a dog tends to be unproductive. Reasoning with a cat, even more so.
Specs' brother Dino was the General Patton of cats.
When Specs had a sibling, we hardly noticed her, because Dino had a big personality and was the General Patton of cats.
This included paw-swiping his sister or chewing the back of her neck a little if she irritated him, which she frequently did, mostly by existing and doing it in the same room as him. I told him this was coercive control and sometimes, when I caught him at it, would yell at him to stop it.
Specs, however, seemed to accept that this was her lot, and got quietly on with it.
Then Dino got sick and knew it. His resolute death march reminded me of the Native American leader Tecumseh’s great advice about dying.
“When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.”
Having sung his death song one morning, Dino went off to die someplace else, like Tecumseh’s hero going home.
Which amazed Specs, who searched the house for him for ages. Having given up on finding him, she then underwent a complete personality change. She had always been the silent one of the pair up to then.
Now, she became as vocal as a cockatoo if not more so. Except when eating or sleeping, she was now speechifying. She would announce herself as having come in through the cat flap, hint at the top of her voice that food would be good, yell at the closed front door to get itself open, and complain bitterly when the telephone/wifi guys visited.
Once I even found her giving out to a wood louse. She didn’t do anything to it, she just seemed vexed by its presence, which made two of us, although my vexation proved existentially problematic for the insect.
The other aspect of Specs’ personality change after her brother’s death was the development of affection for her owner. She started to do figures of eight around my ankles.
Suddenly, her favourite place was my lap, where she would sit, purring like a motorbike.
At night, she would lie on the bed, vibrating with contentment.
She even followed me around the house, although that may have been caused by her need to stay close to my iPad.
Not to look at the screen, but to settle down on the keyboard, which is her second favourite place to rest.
Try to move her to get some work done, and you run into vocal protest so precise and sustained it would make Richard Boyd Barrett seem like an oratorical wimp.
Cat-haters, of whom millions exist, maintain that cats are utterly selfish.
This seems to be based on two canine observations, the first of which is that dogs come when called and cats don’t.
This isn’t true, for starters. Specs comes when she’s called. Most of the time. Well, maybe 60% of the time. The other 40% she can’t be arsed, which indicates her individuality, as opposed to the servility characterising dogs.
The other thing dogs do is bring you their toys. Covered in dog drool. Who needs it?
Anyway, the truth is that cats SO bring presents to their owners.
They bring dead mice, rats, and birds. Or sometimes, in the case of mice, they bring them while they’re still alive. None of which are welcome, but cats, even when they’re young, are not amenable to training.
When they’re old, no chance.
That said, their behaviours do change with age. Specs, at this stage, is maybe 16 years old, which makes her an OAF (Old Aged Feline), and seems to have given up on reducing the rodent and avian populations around the house.
Because I don’t watch television, Specs is going to get to the end of her time on earth without encountering David Attenborough, which is sad.
But then, I also don’t listen to music in the house. It’s current affairs or nothing, and current affairs puts her to sleep. She’d be better off with my sister, who has classy classical music tastes and also a piano, although I suspect that’s just for show. I beg leave to doubt that she finds time to play Handel’s Messiah on it.
A friend of mine has a much younger cat named Max who quickly evinced an interest in good music, particularly if it’s delivered by Pavarotti.
The cat stands on its platform, closes its eyes, and goes into silent ecstasy when the operatic tenor’s voice is played.
