Mad Cat Bloke: Tales of Cats and Cat Rescue

A Potted History

From an early age I was not really interested in animals, sure, we had a succession of goldfish and budgies but my parents were never really into animals and by default nor was I.

My first encounter with a cat came when I was seven or eight years old. A local tabby tom wandered into our front room and decided to give it the once over but then its eyes went wide when it saw the current budgie and was quickly shushed out of the house.

At the time I was fascinated by the way it moved but it was not welcome in my parents’ house so my interest waned rapidly.

The animal that really started the ball rolling was actually a dog. I had only been going out with Ruth for a couple of months when she decided she wanted a dog, there was a history of dogs in her family so it is not surprising that she would want one of her own.

Gyp was a first generation border collie/English pointer cross with the head, tail, coat and intelligence of a border collie while the rest of his body was pointer. This was not immediately obvious until we started playing search and find games. When he found his target he would adopt the classic pointer pose head forward, tail horizontal with a straight back and one front paw lifted of the ground. Gyp was a brilliant seeker.

Gyp was with us for the next fourteen years. He was a constant companion while we were courting and was present at our wedding. Even as I write I can remember some of his escapades, his devotion to the family and his penchant for mounting other dogs regardless of gender. One day I may write a book about him as well, the file of incidents is getting bigger all the time.

When Ruth took on Gyp she effectively saved his life because he was only seven days from being put down and I can safely say that he had the dog equivalent of the good life. When he died of liver cancer at the age of fourteen it left a huge hole in our lives.

Some people will say it’s just a dog or just a cat, get a new one.

It’s not like that.

I won’t go as far as saying they are little furry children but they are a life, a presence, an entity that lives and breathes and has a will of its own.

When you live with an animal for fourteen years plus you can’t help regarding it as part of the family and you also can’t escape the fact that, like humans, all animals are different. Each animal has its own personality, its own traits, and they leave a huge hole in your life when they depart from this world.

I will be honest, when Gyp passed away I did not want any more animals for a while but for Ruth the loss was more profound and she needed something, anything, to focus her love on.

We both found we could not stay in our house and had to get out, especially at weekends, but this led us to visiting rescue centres and pet shops which finally was to be our downfall.

In the nicest possible way of course.

It was around three weeks to a month after Gyp passed away when we were walking past the local pet store.

‘Let’s have a look inside.’ said Ruth dragging me through the door.

‘We’re not looking at the animals,’ I stated, we had already ruled out rabbits and Guinea Pigs (earwig hazard).Gerbils, mice and rats also went by the board (don’t like the tails). I had suggested a goldfish but received such a don’t be stupid look that that suggestion was immediately discounted. There couldn’t be much left could there?

Ruth went straight to the back of the shop there was no subterfuge anymore, she wanted an animal to love and I didn’t.

‘Ooh look they’ve got kittens!’

‘Mmm yea great, can we go now?’

‘Aren’t they pretty!’

‘Very, come on lets go.’

I could see how events were unfolding here and was trying to make a quick exit.

A shop assistant was also aware of the situation, saw a potential sale and moved in for the kill.

‘Are you interested in the kittens?’ she asked innocently.

‘Yes.’ said Ruth

‘Would you like to hold one?’

Noooooooo!

‘Ohh yes!’

The assistant plucked a brown tabby kitten from the cage and plonked him in Ruth’s hands.

‘He’s gorgeous!’ she turned to me beaming with the kitten held to her cheek ‘can we keep him?’

It took less than a millisecond for all my resolve to shatter. The kitten was undeniably cute but the look on Ruth’s face made me melt, I had never seen her so happy since we had lost Gyp.

‘Yes we can keep him.’ I relented.

The shop assistant placed him in an old box while we purchased all the paraphernalia we needed to run a cat, litter tray, litter, scoop, food, food bowls, toys etc. etc. I didn’t realise how much was needed to maintain a kitten.

Eventually we got back to the car and put all the stuff in the boot. By now the kitten was getting fed up with being in the smelly dog biscuit box and was throwing himself at the flaps to get out. I was just reaching for my seat belt when Ruth started getting out of the car.

‘Where are you going?’ I asked.

‘He’s going to be on his own a lot.’ she replied ‘I’m going to get another kitten to keep him company.’

Before I could protest she was gone!

Ten minutes later I saw Ruth coming back but without a box. She got back into the car.

‘No kitten?’ I asked.

‘This one was a bit feisty.’ she replied producing a dark tabby kitten from her blind side. ‘We couldn’t get him to stay in a box!’

We tried to get him into the box with his brother hoping they would take solace from each other’s company and settle down. Instead they launched a double assault on the box lid and in the end they made their journey to their new home curled up quietly on Ruth’s lap.

We named the cats Spitfire and Hurricane after my favourite aircraft.

Hurricane the brown tabby was the more headstrong of the two. Spitfire was more a grey/black; he was a lot more laid back and softer than his brother.

We started with a routine of putting them in a cage during the day, while we were at work, then letting them run free during the evening. Once they had grown a bit and were hitting the litter tray on a regular basis we let them have the freedom of the back bedroom during the day and finally the whole house.

Having the kittens about the house was great and they provided a lot of entertainment, they also created a number of challenges and problems which we had fun solving, after all we had never had cats before so it was all new to us. For a start all the tasteful decorations had to go up a shelf.

Despite all the upheaval Ruth still hankered after a dog in the house so we visited the local dog rescue centre at Stokenchurch. The choice was wide as they had dogs of all ages and sizes. Choosing was very difficult, and it wasn’t helped by the dogs clamouring for attention all at once, the noise from the barking in the cage area was deafening.

Ruth was drawn to a massive dog called Max but he was way too big, his paws were the size of beer mats and he still had some growing to do.

In the end we went for the quiet sad looking one who was not making a fuss but looking over the top of her dog basket at everybody passing with sad, doleful eyes. Her name was Poppy and she was a collie cross like Gyp, except she was a few generations down the line so her head and little tail were definitely collie but everything in between could have been anything.

When we introduced Poppy to Spitfire and Hurricane they were decidedly stand offish but grudgingly allowed her to coexist with them, that is after they had terrified her a couple of times. On one occasion they trapped her in the bathroom by walking at her clockwork style in a threatening sort of way, the first we knew about it was a terrified whine because Poppy didn’t know what to do about these aggressive bundles of fur that had backed her into the bathroom. We lifted the cats out of the way and made a big fuss of her for not attacking the cats.

I did try to instigate a name change for Poppy, I wanted to rename her Lancaster so that we had named all our animals after the RAF Battle of Britain Flight but this was quickly disallowed because it was not a girly name and it was also deemed an extremely silly idea, besides which she answered to and was used to the name Poppy so the suggestion was quickly dropped. She became Poppy the Honorary Cat.

Eventually Spitfire and Hurricane finally came of age and once they had been inoculated and rendered safe we felt it was time to let them out of the house to get them used to their local surroundings.

Their first afternoon out was hilarious. They had been unsuccessfully trying to body swerve us to get out of the back door for some days but we had been very observant and managed to keep them in the house. This time however the door was opened wide and they bolted through thinking they had got one over on us. The pair didn’t get very far however, because as soon as they stepped off the path onto the grass it didn’t feel right under the paws and they both leapt into the air, all four paws left the ground. No sooner had they landed, then they took off again until after three or four comical hops they were back on solid concrete again. They stared at the grass nonplussed as to what to do next, and then Hurricane gingerly approached the edge of the path to carefully examine a long blade of grass. He stared at it intently his head slightly inclined to get a closer view and after a time raised a paw and gently pushed it flat, when he raised his paw it sprang back up which he found totally fascinating. After pumping his blade of grass up and down a few times Hurricane came to the conclusion that this springy green stuff wasn’t a threat after all, and was actually quite fun. Taking a bold leap of faith, well actually a few halting steps, he walked carefully onto the lawn. Spitfire followed Hurricane’s lead and, with a couple of uncertain hops, was also walking on the grass. From this point on events moved pretty rapidly, now that they were happy in the garden I fitted the cat flap and tied it open so they could come and go as they pleased, when they got used to using the opening the flap door was released so that it swung free. It did not take them long to work out how to head butt their way through the door.

We entered one of those periods of contentment where everything fell into a comfortable pattern. The dog was being walked regularly and the cats were out at night and slept during the day, as cats do. One thing was for certain they were brothers, a matched pair, who went everywhere together, did everything together, and got into trouble together for that matter. Shortly after they were let out they went into next doors house through their cat flap, apparently the owner came down to his sitting room one early morning and found them asleep on the back of his sofa.

It was a happy time and there were so many small incidents that would probably fill a book in itself, if I could only remember all of them. I do recall one time when it was wet and we tried to limit the cats to the kitchen to stop the mud being tracked through the house. We came home that evening to find muddy paw prints over every climbable surface of the kitchen, work surface, tops of cupboards, even the top of the bread bin, nothing was spared. The two cats were curled up in their basket looking totally innocent.

‘Mud, what mud?’

‘Messed up the kitchen, moi?’

We knew they were the culprits but we had no evidence to prove it, the pair closed ranks, as usual, and were sticking to their story of innocence. We had little choice but to open the house up to them again, at least the mud would be distributed further and be less noticeable.

Another incident I recall happened one evening when I had just sat down to eat a cottage pie whilst watching the television. I was a total carnivore then, converting to vegetarianism came later, much to the cat’s disgust. I had probably had a couple of mouthfuls, when Hurricane appeared on the left arm of the chair and tried to climb onto my plate and investigate my tea. I lifted him off but no sooner had I put him on the floor then Spitfire jumped up on the right side of the chair and made his advances on my food plate, I lifted him to the floor but by then Hurricane was back on my left. This tooing and froing went on for some seconds until they got wise and attempted a combined assault. I tried shouting at them, growling, hissing and spitting but they just ignored me (or I wasn’t talking the correct dialect of felinese) and continued their moves on my meal, the contents of which were rapidly cooling. When they both realised that a frontal assault wasn’t working they climbed up the back of the chair to perch on my shoulder like the good and bad angels of your conscience. It was time for me to move. After realising that the other chair and the sofa were equally untenable positions for uninterrupted eating I finished my tea in the bedroom sitting on the bed with the cats scratching at the closed door trying to get in.

And then Spitfire was gone.

I was draining the hot water tank to replace a faulty immersion heater and had to run the hose out of the front door so that the water drained into the yard gully. Cats being cats spotted the open door and charged through. The pair dashed gleefully across the front lawn their tails high, resplendent in their new reflective collars. That was the last time I saw Spitfire.

The next morning nobody turned up for breakfast, this did not alarm us unduly as the pair were pretty poor timekeepers but when Hurricane turned up alone we knew something was wrong.

Hurricane was not himself, something had spooked him badly and without Spitfire he became a little lost soul. He stopped going out for a while and became unnaturally soft, frequently he took to sitting near Poppy for company when we were out of the house.

We searched for Spitfire for three weeks but he was never found.

Without being disrespectful to the memory of Spitfire, we felt that Hurricane was in immediate need of cat company so we trawled all the cat rescue organisations in our area for a suitable companion.

Some wanted extortionate fees, others had nothing suitable, and one we tried gave us the distinct impression that we really weren’t wanted there and were interrupting their daily routine.

It was then that Ruth found a little advertisement in the local paper from a small cat rescue organisation. They had a six month old cat desperately needing a home, he had spent most of his life locked in a kitchen and was found in poor condition and covered in fleas. Clearly he was not wanted by the owners.

It really was their loss and our gain.

When the cat was brought around to our house I think we both fell in love with him at first sight. He was a brown tabby, like Hurricane, and was understandably scared and a bit pensive when he was first let out of the cat basket but after ten minutes he relaxed and we found that he was the softest and affectionate cat you could ever meet. At that time his legs were a little short for his body and I suggested the name Stumpy, like some of my previous proposals it was not accepted and a few days later I suggested Ludo. That name was more appropriate and looking back I’m glad that Ruth discounted the first naming attempt. Ludo reflected his character and besides, after a month or so, his legs grew to be in proportion to his body, I would have done him a serious injustice.

While Ludo had been tentatively exploring our house for the first time the lady, Elaine her name was, told us all about her work. She was part of Cat Action Trust an organisation that was the brainchild of the Late Brian Redhead a famous and popular Radio Four presenter of the time. It was a registered charity with each group operating independently. Elaine was virtually working as a one woman band carrying out all the trapping, fund raising and homing all by herself. She was working with another lady called Jessica but shortly after we took on Ludo, Jessica became pregnant and moved to Scotland with her husband, dropping out of cat rescue entirely. All of this struck a chord with us and it wasn’t long before we were fundraising and fostering. Looking back it was a defining moment in our life.

Hurricane was less than happy with the new arrival, for at least week he avoided Ludo’s company and hissed at him whenever they met. We were a little worried that they wouldn’t get on. What we did not know at that moment was that this was normal behaviour for Hurricane, time would reveal that he showed this sort of aggression to all new cats and then after a week or two would accept them and life would carry on as usual.

Sometime later there was a stupid power struggle within Cat Action Trust and control was taken away from Brian. I found this both annoying and upsetting that people should want to claw themselves to the top at the expense of the founder and be totally oblivious(or ignorant) of the rift it caused within the organisation.

We sent a letter to the powers that be that we had elected to break away and work independently. The reply we received from the Secretary was understanding and they kindly allowed us to keep our traps and cages. She wished us luck.

So that was it. We had returned to our animal equivalent of two point five children we did not see our numbers increasing other than those that we were fostering temporarily for cat rescue. At least that’s what I thought.

History, cause and effect, circumstances, fate, call it what you like, were going to prove me very, very, wrong.

A Night Walk With Hurricane

Cats are renowned for their independence, and by nature are curious creatures, but then again in the wild they will often congregate in colonies, so perhaps within our house the cats, humans and the dog are the colony. Accordingly it is understandable that cats often want to be where the action is, especially if they are in good company.

Hurricane was a gregarious cat and was always up for a walk, often he would accompany Poppy and me on our last walk of the night around the block, but this time he decided to come with us on the early evening long walk.

On a dry chilly night he joined us on the path beside our house, as we walked through the car park towards the smaller green. Ludo came bounding over, tail up.

‘Hi going for a walk?’

Hurricanes tail went up also and the two tabby cats walked together in front of us for a while exchanging cat small talk until we came to the path to the small green on the far side of the car park, Ludo stopped.

‘If it’s all right with you guys I’ll stay here.’

Ludo never strayed far, Hurricane was bolder he had the call of the wild on this night and came with us. The trek to the big field was quite a long walk really, as our house is buried in the middle of a housing estate, and involves passing through the estate via the small green and across the main estate road, then on through a second estate to get to the big field.

While Poppy and I walked at our own leisurely pace, Hurricane forged on ahead, inspecting all the bushes, sniffing at plants and gate posts. Eventually we would overtake him or turn the corner, and after a few minutes he would come bounding past us, tail up in the excitement, so that he could catch up and be back on point duty again.

Crossing the main road was no problem that night. I have always found it difficult taking the cat for a walk, as, unlike the dog, Hurricane was totally uncontrollable. Like all cats he would not come to call unless he really wanted too, he was normally more attentive if there was food involved. If you tried to herd, shoo or chase him in the direction you wanted him to go he would invariably go anywhere and everywhere except in the direction you were trying to point him, which is what you don’t want when crossing the road.

Once we had negotiated the main road the rest was plain sailing, a long straight path to the green. At the end of the path was the last street light and we were all together at this point, Poppy was let off the lead and we turned right for the trek around the field, Hurricane would stay with us for a few yards then decide to go it alone.

As we moved further from the street light I lost track of him and for the first time thought I may lose sight of him on the green, Poppy was foraging ahead of me but she was a much larger target and easily spotted.

Mind you, one night Poppy managed to disappear. Like most nights I had got ahead of her because she liked to sniff every blade of grass, she was also a bit lazy and by hanging back she managed to walk only half the distance I did by way of cutting the corner across the green.

On that night I looked back and she was not there behind me. I retraced my steps and scoured the green in search of her. I was then in a Catch 22 situation. The problem was, I could not