Friday 17 February 2012

Cats

Not quite black-and-white

I was thinking about cats the other day. I find some of them quite cuddly and strokeable but if I am honest, I am not their biggest fan. The sign I saw in a shop window in Folkestone the other weekend summed it up. It was one of those joke signs akin to 'Beware of the dog' - you know the type. This one said, 'A cat lives here with several servants.' I thought that was pretty apt.

I used to have a cat myself when I was eleven. Her name was Twinkles and I got her as a kitten from my then big birding buddy and local neighbour, Cornelious Ravenwing III. Twinkles was a doppelganger of her mother; slender, black and white and likeable. As a kitten she was very playful. I used to routinely have lascerated hands after a bout of boisterous playing with her. Perhaps the best thing about Twinkles was that she used to meet me as I walked home from school. She would wait on our street standing on someone's wall and then jump into my arms. Sometimes I'd whistle for her as if I were calling a dog and she would appear out of nowhere, delighted to see me.

One day, I came home from school and Twinkles was nowhere to be seen. Wailing, I searched the streets for two days. No sign. I had only had her for six months although it seemed like an eternity. I was heartbroken.

There. That's my cat story out of the way and I bet you thought I was going to talk about cats killing birds!

3 comments:

Joe Beale said...

I had a black and whit cat when I was a kid, he used to meet me at the end of the street after school and then race me to the house! He was cool. I know cats can kill birds (mine didn't, fortunately), but I still prefer them to the noisy and sometimes hostile intrusiveness of dogs. Hm, hope I'm not starting a cat v dog debate... :-)

Andy Williams said...

yep! you got me thinking about bird mortality due to cats and I am wondering what is the recorded scarcest/rarest bird ever killed by a whiskered fiend in the uk?

Emily Walker said...

I admit, I was fooled! I thought this would be about cats and birds. I had the perfect cat when I was a kid, a marmalade tomcat named Buzzsaw, who used to follow me everywhere. He did kill birds, and mice, rabbits, muskrats, just about anything--he would always offer the spoils to me and my brother first, and then eat them in front of us after we'd declined. This is probably why I can watch horror movies without flinching today. Now I'm much more of a dog person; I think I never got over it when Buzzsaw died! (P.S., now I firmly believe in keeping cats inside, and would be horrified to view the carnage my cat left behind.)