Our neighbour’s ancient cat has come to sit under our apple tree and soak in the rays of early spring sunshine. It’s an old tom that does absolutely nothing. Honey bees buzz around him, nuzzling into the early orange blossoms and he nods his head as sleep clouds his eyes and sinks into a deep sweet slumber. I dig a little distance from him because I don’t want to disturb him. What a stark difference to the state of things not too long ago.
When Miu our Persian was alive, she reigned as supreme queen over our garden, hissing away all intruders. But once she passed, there was nobody to hold the fort. The following year, with the fresh spring breezes, a few neighbourhood cats would wake from their long winter snooze in their cosy kitchens, have a good yawn and stretch and amble into our back garden, dig up the soil and do their jobs and some even forgot to cover it up. Then my neighbour, who lives on the opposite side of the narrow lane facing our garden, a lover of cats in other people’s gardens, decided to feed them. She placed a cracked plastic bowl under the lamppost which happened to be outside our gate and kept filling it with cat food. So more moggies and mousers from other yards came and buried their faces into the bowl and crunched on those cat biscuits and fought away others and spat and swiped at each other and created a proper ruckus. More slipped through the gate and went to the flower beds and dug up the bulbs. And when the stars came out to twinkle and lull the night in, the tomcats and teddycats came out to howl and yowl their mating calls to the mollycats and dollycats that trilled and quivered in anticipation. Then they partied throughout the night, wailing and shrieking about who gets whom…and enough was enough.
I complained to Yiannis about it.
Me: It’s that cat food outside our gate that’s luring them in!
He: Never mind.
Getting no help from that quarter, I consulted the cleaning lady.
She: Let’s put the bowl in her yard ( twitching her nose in the direction of the neighbour’s house ).
Me: No way! That would start a war!
She: Let’s dump it then!
And so we did…when no one was looking. When my neighbour saw that we had removed the cat bowl, she was silent. Just as the feline population in our garden was dwindling to my delight, Yiannis looked at me and asked,
He: What happened to the cat bowl?
Me: I got rid of it.
He looked at me as if I were some version of Cruella de Vil!
He: The kakomires! (ill-fated creatures) Well…I’ll have to put a bowl of cat food and water in the garden for them.
I couldn’t believe my ears! But I replied in a controlled voice…cracking up in the corners.
Me: But they belong to other houses! Why do you need to bring them here to trample on our flowers and do their business everywhere?
He: Never mind. I’ll put the bowls in my part of the garden.
He meant his vegetable garden. The trouble with Yiannis is that he carries a lot of cat baggage. When he was a boy he used to hide behind trees and bushes and jump out and frighten the living daylights out of these unsuspecting creatures. He also tried to shoot the fleeing felines with a catapult and even pushed the family cat’s face into the yoghurt bowl and tried to suck her tail in with the vacuum cleaner. Now he’s full of remorse and doing his act of contrition to redeem his soul. With that kind of cat guilt there was no way I could talk any sense into him.
Then it came to me…I thought about the two cat lovers who used to live a few streets away. One was an old bachelor who lived with his cat. Then he developed dementia and as he got worse he rounded up strays…more and more in his yard, feeding them and encouraging them to invite their mates. When he died the council had to find homes for forty cats. The other similar case was of this old lady who lived in this crumbling mansion with an orchestra of mewing moggies. In fact, this was way back when Annie was of pre-school age. When we went to the grocer’s together, we used to see the old dame. She would pull down a jet black wig on her head like a cap, drag a small shopping trolley with her and fill it with cat food. They used to whisper that she shared the same food with her feline companions. Eventually she passed and the authorities broke into the decrepit mansion and got quite a scare…all her cats came out of the bag to tell the story of their communal living…so to speak of course.
So what did I do with these two stories? I just casually recounted them to Yiannis while he had his face buried in the computer… and then with Machiavellian cunning, I dropped a sneaky remark.
Me: Funny isn’t it when we start growing old and senile…we start feeding cats.
He humphed and then went silent…and whatever spark of cat love he was blowing on was smothered. He never brought up the subject again.
Now besides the tom sitting quietly under the apple tree, sunning his old rickety bones, there are a few young ones climbing the bougainvillea vine or chasing butterflies in the garden…and let’s see if we can keep it that way.
So that’s all for now my friends. Cheers!
