Another birthday come and gone. Lovely presents to unwrap and look at in detail. A beautiful gift hamper with local delicacies was unpacked and … the hamper, a tin bucket which I had already invisaged as a decorative flower pot, is no longer mine. … Happiness is only real when shared, I’m told.
Yesterday Henry had a grand old time chasing after leaves and blossoms torn from the tree in the garden as gusts of wind were promising rain. He had such a good time that he forgot to come home – no matter that Lothar and I were calling him, switching the light on the porch on and off, and playing with the door handle to make noise. I am also glad that he has a name that I can call without being embarrassed. Imagine having a cat called Mr Tittibomboms or Butt Nuggett.
But he never came. He stayed out all night. At three o’clock I was cross, at six o’clock I was getting worried, at nine a clock I was cross and worried. When he showed up at midday, I was just glad that he was back, gave him his food and some cuddles with a half-hearted attempt at scolding him. I felt like the mother of a teenager all over again.
Henry had his first fight today. Our neighbour uses the communal garden with her two Jack Russels every afternoon. She comes and rings our bell so that we make sure that Henry is either inside (aka: safe) or outside (aka: able to get away / hide) and that our doors leading in the garden are closed. We fear that the Jackies follow Henry in the house and corner him there.
This afternoon he was outside and next thing the neighbour rings and shows off Waltraud’s face (that’s the dog’s name, not the neighbour’s) featuring a bloody scratch under the eye. She told me to watch out for Henry, who after the fisticuffs ran away, and check him for injuries.
He’s come home, is slightly more cuddly than usual but otherwise unharmed. And he smells a bit … let’s just say the excitement must have loosened his bowels. He’s not as though yet as he likes to think.
Do you remember the laser dance from Ocean’s Twelve or Catherine Zeta-Jones crawling blindfolded through a maze of laser beams? A poor man’s laser field can easily be created with yarn.
That’s what our living room looked like this morning – thanks to Henry’s talent in taking the lid off my box filled with knitting yarns and hey presto! instead of triggering an alarm you can trip over a piece of string and fall flat on your face.
And yes, he will completely ignore you lying on the floor, looking at everything but you.
Arriving home. The Lord of All He Surveys is on the window ledge surveying. Once he has spotted me I get an earful about why I am coming home only now or rather, why I left at all, leaving him alone with incompetent minions who have to be reminded when to feed his Lordship instead of knowing instantly when he wants or needs something!
When I came home today I saw a black ball of fur barrelling out of our gate and charging across the street, disappearing into a neighbour’s yard a couple of houses down. I nearly had a heart attack. The cat – whom I recognised as Henry – was not in danger this time but the street crossing was reckless.
I parked the car and followed but didn’t find a trace. I returned home deeply worried. That’s when I heard Henry meowing at me from above. It hadn’t been him after all — phew! Nevertheless, I will have to teach him that the backyard is good, the side of the house with the road, even if it is not a busy one, is bad. I also wonder if it was really Henry that our neighbour spotted the other day. If I could have made this mistake, so could she.
Neighbours have reported seeing Henry at the parking next to the local cemetery – he is definitely enlarging his radius of operation. Maybe that’s why we see less of him around the house. When he is here, he definitely displays the stealth and gait of a black panther.
We used to have a cat before Henry. Her real name is Lady Baby Cotton Socks and she has her own limerick:
Lady Baby Cotton Socks
That’s what my cat is called.
She has her mother’s pitch black locks
And someone else’s cotton socks
whom mum most likely balled.
When we moved into our first place with a garden in South Africa, it took less than a week and Socks moved in. I had never had a pet (save two neglected budgies when I was little) and I wanted a cat. My husband wasn’t keen. “Cats smell”, he stated categorically. It took me a while to find out where this supposed knowledge came from: he’d had a friend whose mum kept 40+ cats. 40+ cats smell. No argument there.
It was winter so kittens weren’t plentiful and I followed the first “kitten to give away” sign I found. I ended up in one of the seriously rich neighbourhoods of Johannesburg, their driveway from the gate to the house was longer than the whole cul-de-sac we lived in. When I approached the house a black and white cat came running towards me. “Oh, is that the mother?” I exclaimed. “No, that’s the kitten.” I was immediately smitten.
Socks looked fully grown (she wasn’t but her long hair made her look a lot bigger than she actually was) and gorgeous. I took her with me and ended up with her climbing all over me, trying to settle on my head while I was driving since the box I had brought was far too small for her.
Lothar who’d been against a cat (see above) took one look at her and it was love at first sight. I often wonder if he ever looked so adoringly at me.
Socks is a wonderful, beautiful, elegant cat. She was well behaved from the word go (never climbed on tables and counters while we were home, not because I had such great training skills but because she decided she wouldn’t do it). She caught less than five birds while she lived with us, at least never brought any as prey home with her. She defended me from a snake and a bat (which admittedly she had brought those in the house) and she would eat crickets and Parktown prawns on demand, usually leaving a leg so I could admire her prowess and willingness to please us.
Except for noxious insects, she was a finicky eater preferring fresh fish to anything else – which forced me to learn how to gut fish. She loved to be brushed (and reminded me about it by throwing up on my feet if I got negligent). She purred as loud as any cat I ever met.
She moved with us to Zimbabwe when she was 14 and almost died in the process. We (Lothar, two small kids, me) drove the 15 hour drive (including the 3 hour wait at the border) in a car and thought we’d spare our little aristocat the stress by placing her in a kennel and letting her take a plane once we were in our new house. Well, she never ate a bite in her luxury B&B accommodation and the airline misplaced her travelling box which left me wandering in the airport storage halls of Harare for a day until I finally found her. She was very weak but recovered soon.
So, when we had to leave Zim three and a half years later to an unsure destiny of unknown months in Germany before moving to Saudi Arabia, we decided to leave her in the care of an elderly lady. We never heard from her again which is why to this day I refuse to believe that anything changed. Socks is alive and well and living in Harare. She is 38 now and going strong.
When Henry wanted to go outside today, we opened the door to the patio for him. He went out and next thing he was flung inside again by a gust of wind.
He complained loudly, blaming us for setting the outside blower on high!
Henry 