Curious visits

“I think it was the same cat as last year,” Danielle told me.

Last year we’d discovered a black cat mewling, apparently inconsolably, in the street near our house. Despite his – or possibly her – pathetic cries, she – or maybe he – looked reasonably sleek and in good form. Not so much a street cat or a cat that had been abandoned, but one who’d slipped out from home and then got lost and wasn’t sure how to get back.

Danielle took him – or her – some food and put up a note on a local website for such things. The comment we got back was that it didn’t look like an abandoned cat. And, after two or three days of being fed by us, to her (his?) obvious contentment, he she/he disappeared again. 

It was a bit of a blow. Had she/he suffered some terrible fate? Or had his/her people found her/him? Or had she/he, indeed, finally had a return of memory and found them? We had no idea.

So it was with some pleasure that a few days ago I heard the same, or possibly a very similar, plaintive mew at the end of our street. A woman had stopped to stroke a black cat who looked terribly familiar. When she (the woman) moved on, he (or she – the cat) came over to me, clearly decided it was my turn to do the petting.

When I found the same cat in pretty much the same place the next day, I decided it was time to do a little more than provide a little stroking behind the ears. By dint of stopping every few metres and making ‘psst’ noises (odd that they come to that, isn’t it? I’d find it terribly off-putting myself), I was able to have her follow me home, into the little yard we like to think of as our front garden.

By dint of providing a bowl of cat food, and then refilling it several times, I was able to persuade him (or her)  to hang around. To the point that I began to think that we might make her (or him) into a kind of outdoor cat. The position of inside cat is already taken by Misty (it’s his diary I’ve been raiding for Paws for Reflection). 

An old acquaintance not forgot

The problem with Misty is that he’s very much a retired cat. A native of France, we took him to live with us in Germany, and then to multiple houses in England, and I sense that he’s never fully forgiven us for imposing all those moves on a cat who feels, rightly, that he deserves better. Still, he seems to be more than satisfied with his most recent move, to Spain. The weather suits him. A fine place for retirement, he clearly feels. You can imagine how relieved I am to have at last find a move that actually suits him rather than putting him out yet again.

Misty in retirement

Unfortunately, however, he’s taken to his retired status rather more seriously than I had expected. We recently had a mouse hanging around, to our irritation. Misty seems to have decided that tolerance is a virtue, and that particularly in retirement, it’s important to live and let live. There are many living beings on the planet, he seems to be saying, and why not let the others enjoy their corner of it, just as long as they don’t try to limit the enjoyment he gets from his?

Now, generally, I feel this is excellent thinking. But I do believe that like most rules, there must be exceptions. And I make one for mice. I do feel that a house with a cat in residence should be spared that particular annoyance.

Well, since it was clear Misty wasn’t going to help, it occurred to me that the new cat might do just the job. Why, I even gave her (or him) a name, Sooty, which has the advantage of being applicable to either gender. It’s also a good name for a black cat, though slightly less humorous than the name we gave our last one, Chalky.

Now when you start to anthropomorphise an animal by, say, giving it a name, you’re pretty much lost. I was clearly going to be disappointed if Sooty vanished again. Still, things seemed to be going well. When Toffee, the smaller but yappier of our toy poodles, noticed the new arrival she naturally flung herself yappily into pursuit, but Sooty (wow, it’s nice not to have to use a pronoun) just jumped up on top of a shed and went no further, coming down to eat some more food just as soon the source of the noise had been removed.

Then Misty came out. That went less well. He took no action – I told you he’s become intensely sedentary in his old age. But somehow the simple fact of staring balefully at Sooty had the desired effect, after a while. This time, the newcomer didn’t just retreat to the shed, but went back out over the fence. When I came outside again, Sooty was gone.

Oh, well. It was a pleasant contact while it lasted. Especially as it was probably a repeat visit. Danielle thought it was likely to be the same cat as last year. So it sees we’d had another brief encounter with the same visitor. Sad that it had been so short, but warming that it had happened at all.

Things, though, weren’t over this time. I saw Sooty again two days ago, emerging from a house at the end of the street. Since a woman who works there emerged immediately afterwards, I asked whether it was their cat.

Reappearance

“No,” she assured me, “it comes to be fed from time to time. I think it belonged to a young woman.” She said “chica”, so it could have been a girl. “But she moved away and left the cat.”

Then today, when I got back from walking the dogs, Danielle was in the front garden, having her lunch. A few metres away, Sooty was having hers (unless it was his).

Sooty satisfied with service at lunchtime

Now, Danielle has a series of skills that I’m far from possessing. She’s really good with living beings. She has green fingers with plants, more than once bringing back to life plants I thought were irretrievably dead. She establishes easy relations with little children, in a way that is far beyond me. And what she doesn’t know about household animals, isn’t worth knowing.

If she’s involved, we may at the beginning of a beautiful relationship with Sooty. It may not be adoption as a front-garden cat. It may not give us a means to inflict terror on the mouse population.

We may, though, have a new friend who comes around occasionally. I suspect the cat that I think of as Sooty is many things to many people, dropping in on different households for a meal from time to time. Our house may now be on the circuit.

And I’m fine with that.

Note to self: next time try to find out Sooty's gender