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).

Hey

Name Calling etc

Ready To Find A Home.

 

Ted is back from overseas. He’s in a more cheerful frame of mind than he was when he left. On Election Night last year, as he sat amongst our merry crowd, he confessed that he’d moved to our Labor Stronghold here is order to covert as many people as possible to Liberal Policy. We asked how many converts he’d made.

‘None at all,’ was the rueful answer.

He accepted our teasing well enough that evening, but as Labor’s early weeks became months his cheery attitudes changed. He got the snarls. If any one told a funny story, he’d shout,

‘I hate it when people put people down!!!’ 

Yet he willingly put us down all the time. Gradually all his former friends departed his presence.

At the point at which he referred to me as a ‘cat lady’, I also stopped talking to him.

I don’t mind being teased. As an Aspergian, I’m so literal in conversation, it makes me an easy target and, well, now that I know about the Asperger’s, I can laugh at myself.  Even though Ted explained that he has a habit of naming people, I felt that in his case the allegation was essentially malicious and a springboard for ridicule.

When I was a young mother with a few too many cats I was never described so. We lived in the country in those days. For a time after the first two cats came, I didn’t have a car and couldn’t get to the vet in the next bigger town.

Eventually (this was the Seventies), enough of our many visitors departed with a feline friend to relieve our problems. Initially in that place I’d decided not to have cats there, right up until the time that we were invaded by rats.  Our cats then helped us.

When we finally got our cats, I discovered that Anna adores cats, thinks of herself as a cat person in a totemic sense.

Then, later, when I lived with my ex and his daughter in Bondi,  we got the child a cat and allowed one litter. Princess was born into that first Bondi litter almost nineteen years ago. There were disruptions, money shortages, a house move and Squeak, Princess’s sister was pregnant by the time we’d finally found and shifted into the new flat.

Eventually, money matters improved somewhat and we had Squeaky and her kits de-sexed. Mama Tottie, already de-sexed, hadn’t wanted to move in with us. She found a place halfway between the old place and the new one.

The old place was situated in a back street with its own tiny private backyard. Cat’s Paradise.

In the newer street, in the bigger place, there was more communication between neighbours, some of whom we’d already met. Some of our new neighbours had children who told other children and pretty soon there were quite a few kids trooping around to the new place to visit and view the kittens. Many said they’d have loved to take one home, but pressures of a small flat away from the ground was a bit much.

This was the time that I realised that, unlike us kids who grew up in the bush in the Fifties, many city kids don’t know how to handle small living creatures. Fluffy toys and cartoon animals on TV aren’t the same thing at all. It’s the first time I thought that slowing down and sensitising oneself to a small creature’s centre of gravity, range of movement, freedom to breathe and to feel safe with person, might in some cases be a helpful teaching aid in terms of some childish emotional problems.

Again, it was an environment where there was a large circle of friends and most kits eventually found homes. Apart from Princess, their sagas don’t relate here.

I wasn’t called a cat lady in those days.

The fact is that I’m now an older person and I live alone.

Thus do appellations attach themselves via hostile attitudes. 

I love to read about these creatures who developed with us and civilised some of us. I read all the time about this cat tribe who shares our Earth. One of my favourite books is Tribe of Tiger by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas (which is only now on my booklist). Before all these things happened, I’d already read her book about The Gentle People, the Bushmen of South Africa before I read Tribe of Tiger.

Apparently when EMT was doing her anthropological studies in Africa, (and she is a most sensitive anthropologist), she also fell in love with Lions. Her book deals with how the cat tribe is different from all other animal groups in their playfulness and their independent terms of co-operation. She speaks of Lions, Tigers, the American Puma, as well as the domestic Moggie who apparently believes itself to be as big as any Tiger. 

Which I believe is why, when there are several to deal with in a smallish space, the best human adaptation is to respect them and to move around them.

This most recent time when the cats accumulated was caused by serious dental illness and the loss of an ability to cope with the every day. Frightful really, but then my Dental Treatments were interrupted by Bureaucratic bullies and there’ll be legal redress eventually.

I didn’t sit around dotingly watching these recent ones breed or letting them run wild as the poor ladies in California did with their rats, saying that since they’d never had children they just loved to watch the little faces and so on. Check Barista & the 'all creatures great and small' post to discover how mad things can get in times of loneliness!  I wondered, why the neighbours didn't get cats themselves, but it all went pretty mad much too fast.

I made the mistake of thinking that two of them were boys and they weren’t and …

A mistake I’ve got to take responsibility for. The latest lot weren’t intended, but then, as I explain in my opening blog, I later read my dream books, & how for some time in the previous years there’d been cats in my dream life asking me to hear them speak, and here it all is!

If I don’t have quite as many very close friends as previously, what I have here is a range of vivid and interesting personalities, (although it will also be very good when a few more of these little furry critturs find a home for themselves!).

Stanley’s sister Lucibelle would love to find her own place, for example, and three of her siblings have already done so. One of them, Feather, stars in a video clip which I think is pretty good. Her co-star is Sylvio’s brother Fred. The clip is on you tube and I haven’t learned much about the recent video stuff yet. I can post the address to anyone interested though.

‘Cheese toast = warm tummy later.’ Lucibelle.

Lawn

 'What Lawn, Pray?' (Balanchine)

Slowly but surely, the diachondra lawn is taking over centre front garden. 

Diachondra is a mass of round small leaves, a soft and comprehensive ground cover, which grows in many of our local bushlands. 

I’ve been slow with the garden here. When I work I use Bush Regeneration techniques, weeding around the plant which is central to the pattern, taking out the weeds before they go to seed and so on.

 

I’ve named the main lawn weed here ‘Sticky grass’. The long tall seed heads are sticky and the weed itself has a deep solid stubborn root.  It’s much more difficult to reduce than erhata which we called Bush Regenerator’s weed Up The River. Erhata also has small sticky seeds, the kind which stick to the hem of one’s jeans and then the weed pops up along the trails we walk. Jay, who taught me Bush Regeneration, told me that she’d found secret Special Weed plantations from following erhata trails.

 

I’m glad that there was no ‘sticky grass’ up the river. It’s a nightmare to shift.

 

In late summer I collect the whole plants with seed heads and throw them in the Green Bin. As the plant reaches the seeds into the light, it’s also easier at that time of the year to pull the entire plant. The rest of the year, it’s a matter of patience to pull and dig out by the roots the sticky grass that turns up through the diachondra and at the edges. So, especially after rain when the earth is softer, I’m out at the front for hours on end pulling stubborn little weeds.

 

Two of the cats have become fascinated with this phenomenon. Stanley, believe it or not furiously digs the sticky weed and doesn’t do this on the diachondra. He’s loosened several clumps of the sticky and can make it easier for me to pull.

 

Sylvio attacks my hands as I work, either biting (the hand that feeds him) or pushing my hands into position to pat Sylvio.

 

I don’t weed for very long if Sylvio is around and I do spend more time at it if Stanley helps. As for Sylvio, the only way to get much gardening done is to shut him in the Spare Room.

 

I told Anna about all this yesterday when I was showing her the lawn.

 

She suggests an essential difference in outlook between the two cats.

 

She says Stanley wants to be human and Sylvio wants me to be more catlike.

 

Could be something in it.

 

We went to see Princess Ariel across the road. She’d removed herself. She didn’t want company. She spent the day on Jos’s roof as it turns out. Jos called this morning from work, said that it’s getting colder again and maybe I should bring Princess back. I’ve just returned from looking for her. As it happens I can’t climb the Mulberry Tree to get to her on the roof.

 

I’m supposed to give her her medication. I guess I’ll try again a bit later.

pics and events

Sylvio & Carla

Sylvio is an alpha cat also.

He likes to meet people and he's insistent on attention, as much attention as possible.

Bally, the eldest boy isn't alpha. He's timid, always looks for reassurance.  Bally is the biggest size wise, and was formerly the runt of Scrap's first litter.

This morning Ariel went out to sun herself on Jos's verandah which faces east. The day is warmer than expected. Jos is going to bring Princess across the road before she sets out for Church at ten.

At 9.30 am, there's a knock at the door just as I start up on the net. 

It's Jos: "Have you got Princess?"

"No."

Princess has a good breakfast, suns herself, converses with Jos at length, and then disappears in an instant.

Her old tricks.

We wander around calling. I come back and finish my tea and Jos heads off to heartily pray for Princess in Church.

I try to go across the road to look around while Jos is at Church. Sylvio follows me up the street and penetratingly yells at me to come back as soon as I try to cross the road. 

I give in and return. It's all right. Jos comes dashing across the road to tell me that coming up the street, returning from Church, there is Princess, washing her face on the verandah.

It's a warmer day today. With cats, you go with the flow, or try to do that.

Sylvio Likes To Watch The Watchers