‘Is he OK now, your cat?’ she asked, hurrying across the road as we came home the other day.
Well, not really… but he’s always been like that.
It transpired, though, that this woman had noticed a cat hooked by the claw in one of our front net curtains. (Yes all right - Nets! But we’re a handspan from a very busy pavement, and I like to keep our sordid goings-on to ourselves, thank you)!
Anyway, probably-Scully had apparently been struggling to unleash herself for aeons, and the concerned cat-lover had come over and rung the bell to alert us. With no answer, she’d crunched across our bit of gravel to the window to
sympathise.
And Loh! With one bound the cat was free!
Instant terror at the unexpected Looming of anyone Not-Us had instantly done the trick!
(We're hoping to get her down and reunite her with the toe very soon).
So that’ll be another on our little-sweetie-cats’ long list of sufferings since we cruelly transplanted them to this Completely Unsuitable dwelling. With practically NO garden!
Scully doesn’t even deem our patch worthy of a stroll in.
Mulder has valiantly found he fits snugly into an old black cooking pot by the weeping cherry. (With which he seems to feel an empathy).
Gazing out from the tree's sad danglings, he dreams tormentedly of the old days – the neighbour’s vegetable patch (his loo of choice), the stream at the bottom of the garden full of sparkly swimmy things, the bushes overrun with tiny tasty rodents… Now both poor dispirited specimens resort to sleeping (all day) in the sun-drenched bay window, grumpily accepting generous comments of passers-by, for surely they are ‘so sweet and gorgeous, Mavis - probably very young don’t you think…?’
In fact, Mavis, they’re seventeen and molly-well coddled...
Hark! Could that be the agonised howl of a cat desiring to come in immediately? Or that, the pained expression of one desperately needing a dollop of whatever we’re having for tea instead of Not flaming kittychunks again? And could we STOP plumping the settee back into shape, because they’ve spent hours getting the cushion concavity just right…
They seek solace in a hitherto unknown diversion – TV. If George and I are watching, we now squeeze onto the settee with both cats. Mulder particularly loves David Attenborough or Anything with birds - his head follows their flappings like a tennis match.
But it’s slightly worrying that only their heads are getting exercised; in the past they always worked hard to stay in shape...
What can we do to reinvigorate their lives, once more to see their merry, appreciative faces prancing in from The Tree and CookingPot for dinner?
And Now! (at last - I couldn't make it work...) for the results of Canary Islander's painstaking Research (see his comment May 2nd):-
Splendid, CI - Thank You!
