Cat Notes -- a collection of anecdotes
by
Geoff Ewing
copyright 05-29-2006
Age Rating: 10 to 127
This is a non-fiction piece, obviously. I hope you enjoy it.
a) In my personal experience, cats fall into two mutually exclusive categories (if you’ll pardon the partial pun). These two categories are: first, those cats who will come and lie or sit on or against you but who take exception to being picked up, and second, those cats who rather enjoy letting you pick them up but will never come and lie on you.
N.B. There is anecdotal evidence that there are cats who do not fit into this categorization. Isn’t that so like a cat?
b) As observed by a lawyer from her personal experience: “There is not only a quantitative but a qualitative difference between having two cats and having three cats. If you have three cats, there is not one room where you are in which there is not also a cat.”
c) You come to appreciate that you do not own a cat. A cat may condescend to let you share its living space.
d) There can be great comfort it living with a cat; not least in observing the amazing and aesthetically pleasing poses they assume.
e) Every cat I have ever met has a unique personality.
f) When two or more cats share accommodations, they mysteriously choose a ‘top’ cat. When we already had cat “A”, we acquired cat “C”. They were both indoor-outdoor cats (like the carpeting) and they quickly resolved the problem in this way. Indoors, “A” was top cat; outdoors, “C” was top cat.
g) One house I lived in had a backyard which one could see from a window in the kitchen. One summer day as I was sitting at the kitchen table near the window I heard “A” meow outside. I called to him because it was not his usual call; it sounded muted. I looked out and saw him standing by the back door. He turned his head up and around to look at me and mewed piteously, clearly asking to be let in. However, I could see that he had something in his mouth. I went down to the back door which had a screen door outside it.
I told him that he could not bring his treasure into the house. He looked up at me beseechingly. I repeated my admonition. Reluctantly, he carefully laid down his prize – a bird. I opened the door and as soon as it was wide enough open to let him enter he quickly bowed his head and picked up the bird again. Seeing this, I closed the screen door which neatly cleared his head. By the time he raised his head again, the door was shut and we had returned to the previous position. Oh, the look of puzzlement on his face followed by sad disillusionment at the ungallant and unsophisticated nature of bipeds. We each held our ground.
Finally, I was able to slip out through the door while preventing him from slipping in. I had to use a plastic pail to cover the bird when he finally dropped it again so that, I fondly hoped, I could deal with it. When he had accepted the fact that the bird had disappeared, he let me swoosh him into the house. When I uncovered the poor creature I discovered that it was not dead but merely stunned and after a few minutes it gathered itself and flew off.
h) One night I awoke to odd sounds. Our cat, “Ch” was calling as if wanting help. I called out to her but she ignored me.
I then heard a noise of something bouncing and I was amazed when I realized what was happening.
I should explain that the house was two-storeyed with a basement. The bedroom was on the second storey and an enclosed wooden staircase led from the kitchen, on the first floor, down to the basement. We had given the cats super-balls as toys and “Ch” was playing with one of these by herself. She would hold the ball in her mouth, stand at the top of these stairs and then release it. It would bounce down the stairs. When it had come to rest she would go down the stairs (pa-dump, pa-dump, pa-dump, pa-dump), pick up the ball, and climb back up to the top of the stairs (pa-dump, pa-dump, pa-dump, pa-dump), and release it again. From time to time she would mew – whether in comment or admonition who knew? This was the only time I knew her to do this.
i) John D. Macdonald, in one of his Travis McGee novels, has his hero encounter a cat in the apartment of a potential client. After watching the cat’s behaviour for awhile, McGee observes: “When in doubt, groom.”
j) A friend once mentioned that it was marvellous to watch kittens as they discovered their world. “When they walk across a solid wood floor they occasionally get caught in the updraft.”
k) Once a year the cats had to have their inoculations renewed. When this happened, we would get small metal tags to hang on their collars. My then wife used to say that they had got a medal for being shot.
l) It may be true that cats admire bipeds most for their opposable thumbs by which they release meals from metal containers.
m) Although normally most cats would disdain doing anything dog-like, many cats will fetch balls of aluminium foil so that you can throw it for them again. I have known several cats how will jump several feet in the air to catch such balls thrown up for them. They snag the ball in their front paws and transfer it to their mouths before they hit the ground.
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this is sooooooo great! my cat, buddy, is the most important person to me! i tell him everyday, he's the KING! he gets great big kisses on his pink nose! they are such interesting and wonderful creatures!
Wonderful, Geoff! Absolutely wonderful!
And everything you've said- right on the marker (well, except for your own cat stories. Those I cannot say are 'right on the marker,' heh.) My cat, Oskar, every Autumn before we got dogs, would fill the kitchen sink with leaves. Our cats have always been indoor-outdoor cats, so we know plenty about all the wild things they bring in. Oskar, again, once brought home a: a praying mantis, birds, dead mice, and once, just the tail of a squirrel.
He's our little daredevil, our baby, our little silly thing that got himself locked into our neighbor's basement for weeks while they were on vacation.
I miss my cat. Because we have the dogs now, Oskar lives in the basement. He has the whole thing to himself with a cat door in the basement window so he can still lay in the sun, and run up to greet us when we return home.
It seems as if you're going to get quite a few cat stories because of this!
Welcome !
