`BUT THE SOFA SMELT OF CAT…’

This is a wonderful line from Beatrix Potter in The Tale Of Johnny Town Mouse. Annie and I used to read it together and break out in ripples of laughter. In that single line the whole picture unfolds, so succinctly, describing the presence of a cat in the house. I must admit though, I was never what you would call a cat person, at least I didn’t start off as one. In fact, I remember my childhood on the rubber estate in Malaysia, where Mum used to shoo away wandering strays that stretched their scrawny necks to meow at the kitchen window or sneaked into the yard. So I grew up having a slight aversion towards cats. But when I came to Crete in the late 80’s, I noticed that almost every household had a feline. Most of them dozed on sunny garden walls or stretched out in the yard, fed on scraps outside the kitchen and sent the mice skittering away. Our yard, which we shared with Yiannis’ parents and aunt was reigned by a cat called Piki, arrogant and aloof, ready to spit and scratch… and condescended to grace all three houses with her presence. She was the epitome of the species Terry Pratchett describes in Pyramids…`In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.’… She was a grey female, bristling with character, dined in the corner of the aunt’s kitchen, occupied the sofa and licked our butter. One day she was caught napping in the baby’s cot and was then promptly banished from our house.

Then we got our very own cat, a striped amber called Tabby. He came from a village and was used to scrounging around for food and continued to eat from bins, didn’t grow too big and neither did he last too long. Soon after, we adopted a white fluffy puppy and named him Louis. He galloped awkwardly around the place, did his jobs on the marble floor and uprooted all the flowers in the garden. When we left for our summer holidays, Yiannis’ parents took him to their house and he never came back… much to our relief. Afterwards, there followed a succession of Siamese cats. The first was Aries, a typical male and a bit of a loose canon that wreaked destruction as he streaked around the house like a live wire. In one of his fits of frenzy, he knocked over this beautiful pair of blue crystal candle holders that came crashing down on the marble floor and lay splintered in a million glittering pieces. Aries didn’t last long either. He was poisoned and died in our yard under the lemon tree. Apparently there were too many stray cats in the neighbourhood, digging in people’s gardens, jumping into their open kitchen windows and stealing food… and somebody decided to decimate the feline population by offering them poisoned food. Aries was quite the lady’s man and may have dined with some strays, probably the `ladies of the night’ in the neighbourhood and thus met with an untimely death.

So we had a bit of a respite for a year and then one of my students offered me yet another Siamese kitten. She assured me it came from a line of purebreds, the fruit of the loins of her own regal Siamese male. We called him Bob Cat because he appeared a little fierce and sat in corners wailing and glowering at us. Siamese cats are supposed to be affectionate but this one, I fear, was inbred a little too closely, even worse than Aries. They say that when pedigrees are line bred, they retain the finer qualities of the race. On the other hand, if they are inbred and the gene pool is limited to siblings or close relatives, it could result in genetic abnormalities, very much like in the royal families of Europe. The Habsburgs were afflicted with mandibular prognathism or in plain English…a protruding jaw which made it difficult for them to chew. Charles ll, the last Habsburg ruler of the Spanish Empire, could neither chew nor talk and suffered severe mental illness because of this inbreeding.

 Bob Cat was a feline example of such a case, beset with waves of madness. He was the terror of the neighbourhood, attacking other cats and small dogs. Louis was terrified of him. The cat would lie, splayed out, on the second step leading to my in-law’s house, unsheathe his claws and take a swipe at the dog as he fearfully sidled past. Louis suffered such mental trauma that even after the cat’s demise, he would hesitate before the second step…still haunted by the cat… vault over it and land on the third or fourth and very often took a tumble.

 Bob Cat also pursued ambitions of being the alpha male in our family, displaying boastful tendencies, especially towards me. One early morning, I stumbled into the kitchen, with sleep still playing in my eyes and pulled up the shutters of the kitchen window… and what a shrill scream I let out. Bob Cat was sitting on the sill and appeared to have grown an enormous twitching walrus moustache. He had a pigeon in his mouth and was looking straight into my eyes for signs of adulation. He was also a bully. When he didn’t like his food, he hid in corners and attacked my ankles as I passed by unawares. I’m certain my screams fed his ego and he gradually gained more confidence. One day, he decided to look for a more challenging victim. Yiannis was lounging in his shorts and reading his newspaper, when the cat sprang from nowhere and sank his claws into Yiannis’ knee… received quite a hit, scatted off and spent the following days skulking around `like  a bad cat bearing a grudge.’ One day, he just didn’t come home and we wondered if he had suffered the same fate as Aries, or something worse. We didn’t go looking for him.

After that we had two other cats that hardly made it to the end of their first life, which actually debunks the saying that cats have nine lives. I then decided to give it up altogether. But sometime in late August 2007, I was doing a little shopping in Chania, trying to get Annie a few things before she left for England again after the summer break, when something caught my eye at a pet shop. I saw a little cage with a litter tray and two kittens sitting in it. They were two little long haired Persians, one white and the other black, a brother and a sister with pug faces and bull dog chins…very much like our royal Habsburgs. On impulse, I decided to buy the black one. But before the shop man could pull it out, the white kitten stood up on its hind legs and started clawing the cage…` I think she’s chosen you,’ said the man laughing.

When I brought her home Annie and I pondered what to call her. For a few days she didn’t utter a sound and then finally emitted a small little…`miu’ and so we called her Miu. The first thing we noticed about her was that she was extremely territorial. If anyone went into the toilet downstairs and closed the door behind them, she would scratch at the door and cry out frantically. Yiannis, who normally used that facility in the morning, would growl from behind the closed door while reading his newspaper…` I’m not using your litter tray!’… and at other times…` You just have to wait your turn!’… The minute he stepped out, she would rush in and paw about in her sand…mistrustfully.

 Miu has not been an easy cat to bring up as she doesn’t take well to discipline. It has been a battle of wills for fourteen years and it’s clearly evident who has come out the victor. The backs of our sofas have been clawed and ripped, our curtains torn and a couple of vases broken. In the initial years, she slept on all the furniture, drank water from the fish bowl and tried to snuggle into bed with us and sleep on our heads. Now she sleeps on the sofa or in the armchair. At night, she sleeps on the landing outside our bedroom and snores. Whenever I pop anything in the oven, she waits patiently at the oven door, for the food to cook. She loves cheese, pies and cake. At teatime in winter, when we indulge in a chunk of rich fruit cake, she gets a whiff of it immediately and comes running down the stairs, crying all the way, insisting that we don’t start without her.

When we go out on Saturday nights, she sits like a sphinx on the stone wall and waits for us. Her favourite pastime is hanging out with the boys, Jimmy and Yiannis, in the garden and watching them dig and plant and chat with the neighbours across the street. She loves it when Annie comes to visit from Brussels in summer and we sit outside…and she joins us, listening in to our long conversations and nodding off. On warm starry nights, when the air is still, except for the chirping of crickets, she stays out late, crouching under the orange trees, waiting for nocturnal creatures that scamper in the dark… geckos and mice. She’s a bit off a show off sometimes, ambling in at dawn with a cicada buzzing between her teeth or leaving a few of her conquests, a dead gecko or a locust on the marble floor for us to admire and have something to talk about.

 In human years Miu is 72 years old but still acts like a diva. She’s been spayed but the male cats in the neighbourhood don’t seem to have got wind of it. They still come around and try to approach her. When they come too close, she lets out a shriek, so sharp and piercing that they slowly back away and observe her from afar. Lately she’s been attracting a younger crowd…the old ones have passed on. The `boys’ half her age, hide behind flower pots and stalk her from a distance. Miu in many ways is a feline equivalent of a femme fatale… given to capriciousness… giving the boys a `come hither’  then snubbing them… causing a lot of distress in our yard.

They say Persians live till a very ripe age…so our sofa will smell of cat for a long time.

Cheers!