Cat People Proper

Stanley Brings Breakfast.

I’d call Maria a Cat Lady and I’d name her so honourably. I met her several years ago outside our local Library in the days when I could manage more walking. I’d already noticed a healthy colony of cats in a nearby building who weren’t responsive to passers by. Then several weeks later I met Maria with her basket full of cat food. She was feeding this lot.

 

I asked her about them. It turns out that Maria ranges through three suburbs, visiting each one twice a week to leave food and organise vetinary work for the on heat and the sick among groups of ownerless cats. It’s a worry when the population gets out of hand. Life on the streets is cruel and awful for all stray creatures.

 

Maria is doing something about the problem and my cats won’t be joining hers.

 

I am a writer and a communicator who owns several cats. I am not a cat lady. Not all cat ladies are mad. It’s true that some people love cats well and not wisely but there are also those who care enough to take practical steps.

 

Sarah from Up The River is one of those. She’s taken on the task of paying vets to de-sex all her little local strays.

 

Cats are beautiful and they maintain their wildness. In Bondi I worried about our local birds because there weren’t so many protective trees. Eventually I saw more of the smaller birds killed by currawongs and magpies than by cats.

 

In our suburb, cats are put off birds by the harassments of Myna birds and the fact that we back onto a very long block reaching almost to our local partially cleaned river, and all the old houses have huge trees of all description, many with branches too closely woven for cats to enter.

 

When I first moved here there was an infestation of tall Night Jasmine trees growing along the side of the fence.

 

My friend John helped me get those trees out which was good because the roots had invaded the drain and were threatening the water pipe. The trees had been a gathering place for dawn songbirds and for a time I missed the early birdsong and the lovely shading patterns in my room from the afternoon sun. Eventually I put a hakea in. It’s well away from the pipes and it’s grown fast enough to cast pretty shadows into the room again. However, it’s too prickly for either bird or cat! Indeed, it’s almost too prickly to prune enough to maintain a path past it.

 

The dawn songbirds have moved to the native tree in the street outside.

 

I’ve seen an incredible variety of bird life here, more than I ever previously saw in a suburban environment. Yesterday, a little flock of yellow winged finches escaped the back yard as I let the cats out. I wish I could identify some of the others, but the bird book went during my time of homelessness.

 

On Sunday, as I saw Anna off on the bus, we noticed two Rosellas perched on nearby wires and no, we didn’t have our cameras.

 

Bob Just, who lives in Fern Rouge, densely inhabited by both people and cats, recently sent me these pictures of Rosella Jusef, a frequent visitor to his back yard. It’s Jusef’s relatives that Anna and I had noticed happily settled on the wires above. Bob who likes cats and who has previously owned some wonderful characters, says that these days he’s taken to watering cats who wander into his yard with the garden hose (for Jusef’s sake).