Two years ago my middle daughter came back for lunch with this on her shoulder:
We’d already heard how one of the tenants where she worked had left leaving all his animals behind including three cats with kittens. To save them from being shot or poisoned my daughter rounded up all the mothers and 16 kittens and took them to the SPA. Two days later the seventeenth kitten, which had been frightened by a dog, emerged from the woodpile. He was four weeks old and so weak that he could barely walk and of course once he got his furry little paws under the kitchen table there was no question of taking him to rejoin his Mummy and siblings.
Within a week Bankie (he was called Bandit originally but my husband nicknamed him Ban Ki-moon…) was plump, strong
and really suffering from his hard life in our household.
We all love Bankie, it’s not his fault that being grey he’s the colour of the night so you absolutely can’t see him as he makes a dash to come inside and he isn’t really the embodiment of evil like several people have claimed (he is a cat after all) but there’s no doubt he has … issues.
My daughter says it’s because he’s still suffering from abandonment issues and a traumatic kittenhood; all the information I read about bringing up very young kittens said that if they survive they become very attuned to humans and enormously affectionate. All I can say is that in that case Bankie shows his affection by playing ‘bite ankle’ – done at high speed as he dashes from one of the kitchen to the other, ‘bite sleeve’ – enormous fun with my husband’s dressing gown especially if he’s suffering from – ahem – a late night. Extra points are scored if he gets through the sleeve to the arm below. Then there’s ‘climb leg’ – only played when the wearer has shorts on. The object is to hook one paw in the fabric and to use all the crampons on the remaining three paws to inch his way up. He can be affectionate – at meal times, he used to bite if you weren’t quick enough with the can opener but is intelligent enough to realise that meant the tin went back in the cupboard as his victim searched for plasters, so he’s now sweetness and light. Funnily enough the one person he never menaces is my daughter.
Currently Bankie is very fond of lounging on our bed, he’s quite well behaved there and even purrs but you’re never quite sure when the voices in his head will start up. This morning my OH was sitting on the bed, half dressed, taking his blood pressure when Bankie started chirruping and purring and rubbing himself against the OH’s bare back. Normally my husband’s blood pressure is about 130 over 90, this morning with the Bankie effect it was 87 over 65.
I wonder if we could patent him.
Victoria Corby 
We had two cats when I was growing up. One would lie in wait for me at the bottom of the stairs, until, at the tender age of 4 I took to grabbing it by the tail and hurling it across the floor to give myself a chance to actually get to the bottom. Strangely she seemed to like it, because she was always back there the next day. Our other cat had the bizarre chance to look exactly like my grandmother’s black fur hat. I can’t tell you the number of times we stroked it only to find that this particular furry ball was definitely dead!
I went off cats when my landlady’s cat was found under a chair eating frozen prawns (bag and all) that it had whipped off the worktop … my dinner!
Cats often do things that make you go off them I find but then they have this knack of worming their way back into your affections. And they make a nice noise.
purring whilst washing being one of them I think!
That is a very cool cat!
Well done your daughter in rescuing all those abandoned cats. Chapeau to her.
He’s a fine, if not entirely normal, beast. My daughter is one of those people who can’t not try to help an abandoned animal.
Very cute, there’s nothing like a cuddly adorable cat or even a mischievous one about the house to add to the mix.
He’s being utterly delightful at the moment – a pleasant change. I think I’ll have to be rude about him more often.
He looks pretty cute. However, rather than patent him, have you considered selling his story as he sounds perfect material for a Stephen King plot to me!
You’d better watch out on dark evenings after posting that. He melds into the darkness so the first thing you’ll know is when a grey cat starts savaging your leg…
He is lovely but seems to bear a striking behavioural resemblance to our cat – long-haired and ginger, so nothing like him to look at. Ours inflicts what we call “kicky, bity, scratchy” on us, where he rolls over, grabs our feet and pedals at them with his back paws while biting them. We rarely escape unscathed.
It’s called “being a cat”. If they weren’t so beautiful we’d probably refuse, quite wisely, to have anything to do with them.
Cats can be like that if they are taken from their litters too soon. playing and fighting with their litter mates teaches them to withhold the nails and the teeth. Always best to have two kittens together.
That makes perfect sense, however when I was looking up information about very young kittens separated from their litters that aspect wasn’t mentioned, just that they tended to be very affectionate.