Picture By Antonio Vargas

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14 April 2004

Feline Fine

You know the way tramps and gypsies used to leave marks at houses letting each other know if the owners were a soft touch? I think somebody put a feline version at the end of our lane.

For some reason every damned stray cat in the countryside turns up here looking for a meal or twenty.

Now I'm a sucker for cats - always have been. I picked Gypsy up (literally) back in the days when I was still taxi-driving. Some fuckers were kicking her around a school dance so my fare went in the car and Gyspy went in the boot. I advertised to try and find if she belonged to someone but she was never claimed.

So I've got one permanent cat. Our baby. Our spoiled little sod who's fussy about what flavour and brand of food she eats and who sleeps on the bed with us during the cold weather.

Then, a couple of years ago, we picked up a stray. Filgrinnity started turning up and since he was so thin his sides were almost sticking together I started feeding him. Every so often he'll wander off for a while, but he always turns up again.

Gypsy doesn't like him and he doesn't like Gypsy, but we're getting it into his head that if he fights with her then he doesn't get dinner.

Filgrinnity's still quite wild. If it's really cold he'll come in for an hour or so but he gets restless after a while and panics until we let him out again.

So we've got one house cat and one visitor we feed on a regular basis. Until a couple of weeks ago.

In the wee small hours of the morning we heard this feeble miaowing outside and opened the door to find a cute tabby persian on our doorstep.

Obviously she was hungry, but she's also very domesticated. She's also very hairy because it wasn't until I coaxed her to sit on my lap that I could feel how painfully thin she was.

I had to cut great big patches of her hair off as well because it had got so matted there was no way we could brush it out.

We weren't sure if she'd stick around, but since she's been turning up for dinner every day I'd say Django is now one of the tribe as well.

However, what gets me is where the hell all these cats come from. Apart from the couple that have stayed we had a couple more pass through in the last year alone - and they're always adult cats, never kittens.

It's the old story. We live in quite a rural and isolated area and it seems to be a lot easier for people just to drive out into the country with an unwanted cat and dump it, than it would be to drop it in to the USPCA or even just get a vet to put it to sleep.

It probably assuages their conscience that they leave the cat healthy and alive. They can kid themselves that someone (like us) will take pity on it when the reality is it will most likely starve to death, get killed by a fox or a badger or get run over on the road.

Meantime I'm going to find where this secret cat sign is round our house and wipe it off before we go bankrupt.



Stale Fresh

You call me a bitch like it's a bad thing