Category Archives: Cats

The Return of the Ginger Ninja

25 Monday Nov 2013

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It was beautiful this morning.  Not warm and there was a slight breeze blowing, enough to chill the cheeks but the sun was shining and this far south there’s enough heat in to make taking the dogs out on a sunny winter’s day an absolute pleasure rather than a chore.  Then, crossing the field behind the house I saw something reddish…

Kits is our senior cat and an independent soul.  She’s very affectionate at feeding time and when there’s a fire lit and thoroughly enjoys accompanying you on a walk (once when I was taking the dogs over the main road I saw a ginger figure stepping daintily along the white line behind me), at all other times she rows her own boat.  In other words she’s all cat.Nov 11 025aUnfortunately Kevin loathes her.  He’s seven years younger and quite possibly seven kilos heavier (let’s just say that he’s been guarding against a famine recently) and he leaps on her at every opportunity.

This sort of harmony is not common.

This sort of harmony is not common.

She’d begun to spend more and more time away, we suspected that she’d found another billet because she was never very thin when she did turn up.  This time she’d been missing for over two months and we’d taken to keeping a nervous eye on the verges every time we went out just in case there was a ginger corpse there.

As I hoped, it was Kits in the field this morning.  She was comfortably ensconced in a little nest watching the world go by and certainly didn’t have the air of a cat who’d been homeless for two months.  She chirruped politely when she saw me and got up making it quite clear that as I was there I could go back home now, never mind the dogs hadn’t had their walk, and she’d come with me to catch up on two months worth of breakfasts.Nov 13 007Her tummy is now as round and tight as a drum and she’s asleep in one of the dog baskets.  Kevin jumped her when she’d been in the house for ten minutes and was firmly booted out but sadly it doesn’t look like he’s got any intention of letting her live in peace in the house.

Kevin throwing his considerable weight around. That's Desi's bowl.

Kevin throwing his considerable weight around. That’s Desi’s bowl.

Still she’s obviously found somewhere quite comfortable for when she’s not here and she looks perfectly content with life so I suppose we’ll have to settle for just seeing her when she chooses to visit.

As I said she’s all cat.

Facing Up To The Inevitable.

06 Monday Aug 2012

Posted by in Cats, France

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It’s just over a month since my daughter appeared at breakfast with a scruffy black kitten and told my OH that she’d found him another birthday present.  ‘Oh, no you haven’t…’   We’ve been looking hard for a new home for Kevin and apart from an offer from Lucy at Literary Relish to post him to Manchester we’ve been met by a variety of ingenious excuses from English friends as to why they couldn’t give houseroom to a small kitten, one frank ‘We don’t do cats,’ and an appalled shudder from a French woman who was looking for a kitten at the very idea of having a black one.  So we took the decision today and booked him into the vet…

… for his vaccinations and microchip.  We’re now officially a three cat family.  The dogs are not pleased at being outnumbered and I doubt the ginkgo tree is going to survive much more of this treatment:

He’s up and down it about seven times a day and every day it has fewer and fewer branches and fewer and fewer leaves.  Bankie will be pleased though, having initially completely traumatised by this small intruder he suddenly realised that for the first time since we found him when he was four weeks old he’s got a feline friend to play with.

I, however, cannot believe that we’ve ended up with a cat called Kevin.  The name was a joke, we all thought we wouldn’t have a problem finding such an attractive fellow a home and anyway all animals in our household seem to gather nicknames like frogs catch flies.  All except Kevin that is, occasionally he’s called Kev, but that’s it.  He’s distinctly lacking in table manners too,

Bankie’s been known to sample water from a glass but he dips one paw in and sucks it and doesn’t try to actually get in the glass.  There’s also this:Kevin, take note.  We’ve been soft touches so far but there are some things up with which we will not put.  Sharing our evening tipple with the cat is one of them.

How Can Anyone Do This?

12 Thursday Jul 2012

Posted by in Cats, France

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This is Kevin the Kitten aka Agent K:

Last week Kevin joined the 60,000 club – an unenviable membership – as he became one of the estimated 60,000 cats and dogs abandoned each summer in France at the beginning of the holiday season.  Kevin, who’s about two months old and has obviously been brought up in a house, probably with children as he’s quite used to being handled and cuddles up to you, was dumped on the side of a road in the forest near Villandraut.

Luckily for Kevin my daughter was taking her dog for a walk and heard him mewing.  It was well over a kilometre to the nearest house, far too far for a kitten of that age to go so he can’t have strayed from home and in any case we plastered the area with posters and no one has rung to claim him.

People who live in the forest are used to people just dumping their animals there – when we lived there our neighbours even rescued a hamster from the undergrowth –  usually it’s elderly dogs whose owners don’t want to pay for vets bills or to have them put down but abandoning kittens is also common, there’s an assumption that they’ll be able to look after themselves.  Not at Kevin’s age they don’t, he’s a domestic kitten, not feral, besides he’s far too young to know how to hunt for himself and he’d probably have been supper for a fox or a buzzard within a couple of days.  The vet who looked to see if Kevin had a chip said he’d probably only been  there for a day, if that, as he was still in very good condition.

I’m not going to express my opinion of the person who dumped Kevin – the words would scorch even an electronic page – all I can say is that I hope there’s a special and very painful corner of Hell reserved for all those who see animals as disposable.  But I will ask this, If you can’t be bothered to look after your animals’ progeny properly why don’t you get them sterilised?  The sad truth is that it’s cheaper to leave your unwanted puppies and kittens by the wayside like fast food wrapping than take them to the vet for an op.  And so people like us who do get our pets seen to are usually the ones who pick up the pieces.  If we took Kevin to the SPCA he’ll probably be put down almost immediately, they’re overrun at this time of year and it’s always difficult to rehome black animals in France, they’re regarded as being unlucky.  So it looks like that unless we can find a home for him he’ll end up here.  He’s absolutely enchanting but we’ve already got two cats, one of whom was rescued in similar circs from a woodpile and who is going into a deep depression over this energetic little intruder.

Would anyone like a kitten?  Delightful, housetrained, purrs a lot, will do anything for cheese, used to dogs, Bordeaux area…

Cat Therapy

21 Monday May 2012

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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.