Tag Archives: Cat Stories

A Tribute To Missy

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Missy cropLast week I introduced our lovely new puppy Rex, just beginning his adventures in this world. Well, life has come full circle with the death of Missy. In this post I’d like to celebrate the life of a very special cat. This is her story. We run a small boarding kennel and cattery here at Pilyara, and one day fifteen years ago, a young couple arrived with a dog and six-month old kitten in tow, Max and Missy. They were going away for the Australia Day long weekend, and had booked their animals in for three nights. The boyfriend turned up on cue at the end of the stay – by himself.

‘I’m only collecting Max,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘Me and my girlfriend broke up. I’m taking the dog and she’s taking the cat.’

The girlfriend didn’t come for Missy that day, or the next, or the next … She didn’t answer phone calls. Weeks passed. I began to feel sorry for the half-grown black-and-white kitten, languishing in the cattery. I brought her inside. Missy was a nondescript little thing – quiet and shy, with a tiny meow. She fell asleep on my bed.

Lofty's first day 006Nobody ever came for Missy. Lucky for us. Her unfailing good-nature soon won everybody over. The ideal cat – loyal, beautifully behaved and gentle as a lamb. Sometimes she would sway slightly when sitting, as if to some rhythm only she could hear. She never scratched the furniture, and always used her carpet post. She never made a mess and always used her litter tray. Unlike the other cats, she never scratched the kids during an over-enthusiastic hug, but patiently put up with their clumsy affection. She wasn’t a hunter.The native wildlife was perfectly safe around her. One day a mouse famously ran across the carpet and into her tail. Missy jumped a mile!

Missy 8I became her favourite. Wherever I went, so did Missy. If I was writing in the office, or dining room or in bed, she was with me. If I spoke to her, she always responded with a considered mew. My youngest son, Tyson, dubbed her my writing cat. If I was stuck in my story he would say, ‘You need your writing cat,‘ and unceremoniously dump her on my lap. Hey presto, the words would flow. I began to believe it myself – that Missy was my muse.

Missy 5She never cost me anything. She suffered no injury or illness, no expensive medications, or operations or special diets. She never caused us a moment’s worry, and gave our family enormous pleasure – a perfect life, well-lived. She even died well. That morning she had some breakfast, played with her toy mouse for a while, and went to sleep on the bed in the spare room. Fat and shiny, calm and happy as ever. Tyson went in to to cuddle her. It was still the first thing he did every morning, although he’s now nineteen. ‘Mum,’ he called, his voice urgent. I hurried in … Missy had passed away, still curled up in the blankets. Tyson’s tears flowed as freely as if he was four again. He wasn’t the only one. There was no sign of distress in her pose. Her expression was peaceful. She died in bed, in her sleep, which is more than most of us can hope for. She spared us that heart-breaking last trip to the vet, the sleepless nights because she was sick, the fears for her. She was simply there one minute, and gone the next – an angel even in death. Thank you Missy! Wonder if I’ll be able to write without you?

We have plenty of other cats and dogs to comfort us, but none like Missy. This post is to celebrate the life of a much-loved, humble little cat who we were proud to call our own. Missykins, you never put a foot wrong, darling! If I can live my life half as well, I shall be happy. Rest in peace. I miss you … Missy's Grave 002 BB14

The Butch Tales 2: The Boy King.

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Well, Christmas has come and gone, and I’m still madly editing Turtle Reef to meet a January 7th deadline. Author and writing mentor Sydney Smith is guest-blogging for me over this period – about her cats! Here is the second instalment …

The Butch TalesThe Butch Tales 2: The Boy King

I left the shared house where I met Daka and the two of us moved into a flat in Brunswick. It had gardens for her to play in, with lots of places she could hide and spy on other felines. I left the lounge room window ajar to let her climb in and out as she pleased. She was an old cat and arthritic. I placed a chair outside the window, to help her get inside.

Two years later, Daka sickened. It hurt her to eat and she left messes outside the door of my upstairs neighbour. I took her to the vet, a man with wildly romantic looks and a sharp tone of voice. Though he was irritable with humans, he was firm and gentle with Daka. He told me she had to be put to sleep. He let me stay with her while he shaved her forepaw and injected the drug. All the strength melted from her body.

I cried over her. Then I went home, and the moment I lay down on my bed to grieve properly, a cat flea, one of Daka’s little tenants, jumped onto my arm and bit me. I cried even more. Inside that flea a little bit of Daka lived on, and that somehow was more heart-wrenching than her death.

It took me two years to get over Daka. It was lonely to live in my flat with no animal. But every time I thought about adopting someone new, that grief for Daka welled up again. But grief will go, if you let it, and after two years in mourning I was ready. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted a cat. Maybe I’d get a dog. Or a budgie. Whatever it was I’d call it Butch. In particular, Butch the Budgie tickled my sense of humour. But I wasn’t set on getting a bird. I would see what caught my fancy.

One day I was walking along Rathdowne Street in Carlton, one of the routes I took on my expeditions into the big world after a morning spent at my computer. A vet clinic there kept a big cage of kittens. I had often stopped outside the window to watch them climb the stairs inside their cage and tumble through the trapdoor. On this day, I went inside.

I wanted a female, but they’d all been taken. I was ready for an animal, and wouldn’t be put off by a little matter of butch 2gender. The vet nurse opened the cage. A black kitten with a bushy tail as big as he was stepped out and allowed himself to be carried, a boy king riding his human palanquin to the counter. From there he jumped to the floor and explored the reception area with such a singular air of eccentric personality that I fell for him.

His ragdoll mother had bequeathed to him the distinctive white markings on his black face, his white shirt front, the dab of white at the end of his black tail and his king-sized paws. I took him home. He meowed all the way.

Daka was my first pet, and she had come to me as an adult, set in her ways. I consulted my cat-owning neighbour. What should I do with a kitten? How should I train him? Where should he sleep? Daka had slept with me but I thought I ought to train Butch differently. ‘Shut him in the kitchen at night,’ she said. ‘He’ll learn to sleep by himself.’ I made up a bed for him with an old jumper in a cardboard box, and added a toy cat so that he wouldn’t feel lonely.

Butch had lived all his short life with his brothers and sisters. He had never been alone. A synthetic toy cat didn’t count as company. Moreover, he had a strong sense of what was due to him as a boy king. The moment I shut the kitchen door, he set up an imperious meowing. I hardened my heart for about ten seconds, and then gave in. From then on, it was Butch who trained me. He knew exactly what he wanted and would stop at nothing to get it.

In those days I was working part-time at the writers’ centre. Every morning when I went to work, Butch sprinted around the flat, screaming at the top of his lungs. After two such mornings, I couldn’t take it anymore. I packed his lunch and some kitty litter, put him into his carry case, and took him to work on the tram.

As Butch grew bigger he wanted to go outside. I opened the front door for him. I’d sit there reading a manuscript I was assessing while he ventured out into the big world of the garden. Every few steps he’d look back at me and meow. ‘It’s OK, Butch. I’m right here.’ Soon I stopped sitting at the open door and he would come and go as he pleased. Once I heard him plaintively calling. I went outside and found him in a tree. I thought he was stuck and climbed up to get him. He meowed his protests, and as soon as I put him on the ground, he quickly scaled the trunk and sat on a branch, singing.

Butch the catWhen Butch was confident in the garden, he wanted to go further afield. In the evening, soon after dark had closed over Brunswick, I took him for walks around the block. Was this normal? I knew of only one wandering cat, a Russian Blue who went for walks on the end of a leash. Butch seemed to think it was perfectly natural, and by this time, I knew better than to argue.

Other cats were out there, adult cats, big cats with territories. They hissed at him, but maybe because he was a kitten, they didn’t hurt him. One night we met a woman taking her seven cats for a walk to the local school playground, where they could run around. The beefy grey tom built like a rugby forward, who was really in charge of the expedition, strolled across the road to greet us with his round, smiling face. He looked benignly on Butch before sauntering back to his team.

One evening Butch demanded his walk twenty minutes before a show I wanted to see came on TV. I asked him to wait, but he insisted. The boy king had never heard of delayed gratification. I kept an eye on the time, thinking we could do the walk quickly and I could get back for my show. Butch had other ideas. He lingered in every interesting nook and cranny. He especially loved a rose garden up the street. At five minutes before my show started, I left him there and raced home. An hour later, riven by guilt and worry for his safety, I returned to the rose garden. ‘Butch?’ An answering meow. He had waited for me all that time, hiding under a bushy fuchsia.

Coming soon – The Butch Tales 3: Mouse-hunter.

A of N CoverSydney Smith is a writing mentor, teacher and author of short stories, essays, and The Lost Woman, a memoir of survival. She will soon be releasing The Architecture of Narrative, a book about how to plot and structure fiction. She offers writing tips at www.threekookaburras.com. If you have a question on any aspect of writing, feel free to visit her website.

 

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The Butch Tales 1: Daka

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A of N CoverWell, it’s almost Christmas. Instead of relaxing into a new year, I’m madly editing Turtle Reef to meet a January 7th deadline. Author and renowned writing mentor Sydney Smith will be guest-blogging for me over this period. I gave her an open-ended charter: book reviews, publishing information, publicity for her upcoming writing craft book, The Architecture of Narrative – all great topics. ‘Or you could write about your cats.‘ Now we have six stable cats here on the farm, most of them acquired quite by accident. They are great characters, so I understand Sydney’s love for these creatures. Without further ado, may I present to you the first in a series of city cat stories – a little tale about loyalty, and how it needs to be earned.

 

The Butch Tales  1: Daka

The Butch TalesEvery time I think about writing the Butch Tales I think first of Daka, Butch’s predecessor.

Daka came to me late in her life, when she was twelve. We met when I was sharing a house in Brunswick with Nell. I had been house-sharing for years and was used to having a pet around the place. In these situations, there was never any question of whose responsibility the animals were. They were fed and walked and petted in the usual way, and I never gave it a thought.

But soon after I moved in with Nell I realised something was wrong. Nell had two pets, black, feline Daka and a white bitser called Gina, named after La Lollabigida. Daka is one of the nonsense words Indian musicians and dancers use to count out beats. Her full name was Daka Dimi, which is the four-beat mantra.

Nell used to let Gina into her bedroom first thing in the morning for some private communion and kept Daka, meowing angrily, out in the passage. Nell said, ‘Daka has to learn to be loyal.’ Every afternoon when Nell cycled out to her second shift at work, Daka crouched at the front door, waiting for her to come home. She waited for something that would never come, for though Nell never hit her animals, she didn’t pat or praise them either. She didn’t understand animals and their needs.

Daka was a shrewish cat who scratched anyone who tried to pat her. She’d take a swipe at people as they walked past. She’d squat in an armchair, a cranky look on her face, like a little devil waiting for some unwary mortal to stray too close. People were nervous around her. All animals need love, and her uncouth manners kept her starved of it.

The problem for me came to a head over food. Nell fed her pets once a day, sometimes at five o’clock, or nine, or midnight. She thought a cat could live on rice and vegetables cooked with a bit of mince. But cats are carnivores, and Daka used to go hungry. It caused me a lot of distress to see her starve.  I kept telling myself she was Nell’s cat, that it was none of my business how she treated her pets.

Then late one afternoon Nell packed her bag for an overnight stay with her partner and cycled over to Kew. She didn’t make provision for her animals. She didn’t feed them before she left. I waited for her to call and ask me to feed them. I didn’t know the number at her partner’s house. I waited and waited, watching Daka and Gina grow frantic with hunger. Every time I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water or to make dinner, they crowded around my legs. Finally, I fed them.

Once I started, I kept on doing it, every day on the dot of five o’clock. If Nell was home, I’d ask her permission. It felt weird. They were her pets, not mine; I had no rights over them. Yet she didn’t object. I’d trot up to the milk bar to buy some cans of food and fill the pet bowls at home. As Daka ate, I stroked her to help her associate human touch with something good.

I never felt comfortable about feeding Nell’s pets, but I felt worse not feeding them. Nell complained more than ever about Daka’s “disloyalty” while accepting with imperial serenity that feeding her pets was now my duty.

Before long, Daka took up residence in my bedroom. A curtain hung over the doorway, and whenever people came into the house, she’d poke her head from behind the curtain and meow. Nell would look at her, aggrieved, as if Daka had struck her a painful blow.

Daka never became a cat whom people could pick up or pat, but since she spent most of her time in my room, people could walk about without fear of her claws. After a few months, Nell went to live in Kew with her partner. She took Gina and left Daka with me.

Two weeks later, Nell returned to pick up some things. We sat on the glory chest in the kitchen to have a cup of tea and chat about her new situation. In strolled Daka. She froze at the sight of Nell, one paw in the air. After a little think, she walked over to Nell’s side of the glory chest, jumped up, trampled across Nell’s legs, and sat down beside me, her flank touching me, her Byzantine head turned away from her former owner.

Nell, looking more baffled than ever, said, ‘I don’t understand why she’s disloyal.’

Coming soon, The Butch Tales 2: The Boy King.

It is my great pleasure to announce the book giveaway winners – Karen McDermott and Laura Boon. I shall email you both privately for your postal address. Many thanks to those who commented and a very merry Christmas to all!

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