This one’s for you Dad – I miss you.

Cats, Dogs and Dad

I’m adopted. It’s official. I only realized this last week when he followed me to a friend’s house and bashed against the door demanding to be let in. Once in, he gave me steely look, sat down with us, said not a word, and proceeded to wash.

Oh, did I forget to mention “he” is a cat?

In our complex, small pets are permitted, and the residents who choose to have a pet seem to prefer cats. There is one little dog, who is kept out of sight, and is not allowed to romp in the communal garden – perhaps because of the potential results should he encounter one of the cats . 

 There is quite a selection of cats here. No high-falutin’ Siamese, only local pavement specials or SPCA editions, who are generally far more interesting anyway. One unit had six cats, now down to two – both spayed females, beautifully cared for and groomed. Both cats are equipped with flea collars and little bells as an early-warning system for the hapless doves, so we’ve had no fatalities yet, and the cats’ diet remains sans fresh dove. The long-haired one seldom ventures out, but when she does, seems to spend her time unsuccessfully stalking the doves gathered around the tall cypress tree in the communal garden. The other one is quite a friendly cat, but spends most of her time in quiet dignity atop the wall of her back yard, surveying her domain – or that’s the impression she gives.

 But then cats are like that, aren’t they? Someone once commented that dogs have owners whilst cats have staff : how true. There are exceptions of course, but most cats will come when called only if they choose to do so, or if food is obviously on offer. Mostly, cats are competent, lithe creatures, seemingly in total command of everything they do and every move they make. On the rare occasion when a cat stumbles or falls off a wall, it usually recovers with an air of “Sowhatchulookinat?  I meant to do that complicated landing manoeuvre -  been practising for weeks, see?” Their air of supreme indifference makes it easy to understand why some ancient cultures worshipped them as gods.

 Another cat here is Jinx, a white cat with black patches, who seems always to be in trouble – in a fight, injured, sick, clawing his owner’s upholstery or just otherwise getting underfoot. He has calmed down over the years, and seems to stay close to his home lately. Then there’s Flapjack, so named because he survived being run over by a car. Amongst the other cats whose name I don’t know, was an older, thin cat, who kept a low profile,  always just sitting in the garden, and who would regularly drink from the swimming pool. This puzzled me, because the pool has a salt-water chlorinator, so the water can’t be very palatable. But there he was, every day, lapping at water near the steps at the shallow end. One day I found him sunning himself in my back yard, but he wouldn’t allow me near him, and fled in obvious terror at my approach. Over time, our encounters progressed to the point where he would let me stroke him, and I got my first good look at this cat.

 He is one of the Tuxedo variety – black, with white paws, bib, tummy and moustache. Poor cat. Stroking him, I could feel his ribs, and he was covered in scabs under his thinning hair.  He seemed so neglected, and yet must have been a pretty cat once. Having overcome his initial fear of me, he seemed an affectionate, pleasant animal.  The speed with which he finished the saucer of milk left me in no doubt that he was starving. Not wanting to entice away someone else’s pet – if he had a home, that is – I chose not to feed him, but watched him carefully, only offering the odd saucer of milk from time to time. His reaction to sudden noises and certain movements made me think that this old man might have been abused at some time, and was apparently abandoned, or at least fending for himself. It is a sad reflection on our society that people so readily abandon their pets when they move house. Considering the flux of tenants in the complex, it is quite possible that he was one of these unlucky cats.   

 Before long, he learned to wait for me – as soon as I arrived home from work, he would appear at the back door, waiting for his milk, and the inevitable day dawned when I could no longer ignore his obvious hunger. The bowl of cat food disappeared at the speed of light, and he came up for air, asking for more. This poor cat was famished! Well, you guessed the rest.  He is now lord of the manor, with his own kitchen window left permanently open so he can come and go as he pleases. His range of food bowls includes some for water, dried cat food, and a special one for his evening meal of brown rice mixed into a sachet of meat and gravy. He has filled out, and is now a solid specimen of cathood, with the scabs nearly all gone, and his coat soft and shiny as it must once have been. He has had deworming and anti-flea muti sneaked into his food, so his odd sleep on my bed is not a disaster. The result of his constant grooming has already left my kitchen floor littered with hair-balls and their accompanying gastric contents, and I watch his continued licking with a feeling of incipient doom. Next time it may be the bedroom carpets, and not so easy to clean up! He is still a nervous animal, and I have no illusions about cupboard love, but his purr and rub routine are most heartwarming.

Our relationship is realistic, without being non-committal. I recognize that he will come and go as he pleases, and may choose to ignore me for a day or two. But I must admit that it is rather comforting to be met at the door by a welcoming purr, and to have him sit on the desk watching me work. In a way, it’s almost like when your kids leave home: you miss them, but are actually quite okay on your own, and yet always pleased and grateful when they do visit.

As far back as I can remember, there was always a cat in the family. When I was very little, around four years old, I can recall that we had a large black cat. We lived in a tiny flat, but both my parents worked, and I was in a day care quaintly named “The Little Children’s Hotel”.  Needless to say, the cat soon found a retired couple in the building who were home all day, and though he came home in the evening, he spent each day at his other home, sitting in the sunbeam on their window-sill, and generally enjoying the benefits of dual citizenship. He stayed on with the couple when we moved away into our own home, so we acquired a new cat to go with the new house.  Chippy was a black tuxedo cat, whom we got as a tiny kitten, and had the pleasure to know for almost ten years. Then came Chippy II, whom we found in our garden as an abandoned newly-born.  I have photos of me as a teenager, feeding a straggly scrap of a kitten with a glass dropper. Pronutro had just been invented, and we hit on a mix of this with egg and milk which the kitten seemed to like, and clearly thrived on. Today I wonder what it must have done to his metabolism, but it seemed to work, and he survived, growing into the most wonderful family member. Hand-reared from birth, I’m convinced he thought he was human, and had no idea that he was supposed to be a superior being of the feline variety. Chippy lasted for nearly 18 years, surviving two house moves.

In all of this, the most amazing thing to emerge, was the cats’ relationship with my father.  Dad came from a very poor home, with a background of parental alcohol abuse and desertion – so bad that he faked his papers and joined the army at the age of 14, choosing to go to war rather than remain at home. Despite – or perhaps because of – his experiences, my Dad was a gentle loving soul, and had a particularly soft spot for animals. And animals responded to this, sensing, I’m sure, that they were safe with him. Over the years, we had several cats and dogs as pets, and Dad seemed able to communicate with them in a unique way. He could get them to do almost anything, and they seemed to want to please him, thriving on his words of praise and affectionate touch.

Once we children had left home, Mom and Dad set about building themselves a new house, but the inevitable builder’s delays meant that the house was only half built when they had to vacate the family home they had sold. Their only solution was to live temporarily in a caravan park near to where the new house was being built. Luckily, we had been a keen caravanning family, and already owned a large 6-sleeper caravan. So, with most of their belongings in storage, Mom, Dad and the cat moved into the local caravan park, where they lived for 9 months while the house was being built. The cat, though old by now, didn’t turn a hair at the move – after all, he was a human was he not, and didn’t need the butter-on-the-paws-when-you-arrive routine used for cats!! His diet changed dramatically too, as the bird population dwindled much to everybody’s disgust, and as did the mouse population, to the camper’s relief. On balance, they decided that he was earning his keep, so he was allowed to stay on.

Every evening, Dad would take a stroll around the park, and Chippy would stroll along with him, tail held high, stopping here and there to check on a spot he had found earlier in the day. Sometimes, he would climb a tree, and when Dad got tired of waiting for him to come down again, he would call out “Let’s go home now, boy.” At that, the cat would shoot out from the foliage like a launched missile, seemingly unstoppable as he galloped ahead. Getting back, Dad would find him waiting at the caravan tent, looking intensely bored with a “What took you so long?” attitude.

My parents’ new house was built on an acre of pristine bush hillside, overlooking the golf course. The bush was alive with hitherto undisturbed mice, lizards, and birds of all description. This was Chippy heaven. Mom and Dad moved into the half-finished house, completing the rest in stages themselves over weekends. And then came Bino. Our 20year-old maltese poodle, Chippy’s lifelong companion, died just before they moved to the caravan park, and my parents felt that both they and the cat would benefit from another dog. They returned from the local SPCA with the tiniest scrap of ginger fur I have ever seen. This creature was allegedly a dog,( breed unknown and obviously very mixed) and had a stubby, almost triangular tail, nothing like any dog we had ever seen. However, he was chosen from the litter because of his friendly nature, so home he came. He was called Bino because Mom said his facial expression reminded her of her cousin in Italy – I don’t know what cousin Bino thought of this, but Mom felt it prudent not to tell him.

Bino’s little legs were too short to negotiate the staircase, so for the first few months he had to be carried up and down the stairs. Fortunately (in view of the adult size he reached) he grew tired of this, and his adventurous puppy streak soon saw him racing up and down the stairs at will. As he grew, he changed shape, and was soon the size of a sheep, and just as wooly, but with straight ginger fur, which exploded into a lion’s mane around his head and neck. He looked utterly ferocious, with his loud bark at anyone daring to venture within a few metres of his property. Even the postman refused to deliver mail until the wall and gates had been erected. What they could not know – and my parents were not going to let on – is that the worst fate that could befall them was to be knocked to the ground by this huge dog, and suffer being licked to death by his warm, smooth tongue.

Although Mom did the feeding, Dad and Bino were inseparable. Whilst my Dad still worked, Bino made no attempt to join him in the car in the mornings. Once Dad retired, though, no car trip was possible without the brown furry passenger in the front seat. He became a familiar sight around the town, sitting bolt upright, staring straight ahead, and leeeeaning into the corners as Dad drove to the shops and back. If Dad pulled over under the shade of a tree to read his newspaper, Bino would jump into the back seat for a quick snooze, resuming his co-pilot seat when the car started up again.

No matter if Dad worked in the garage, house or garden, Bino was just quietly there with him. He would even wait outside the bathroom door while Dad showered – no matter what, Dad was seldom out of visual range. Bino loved to sit on the hillside and look out over the golf course way down there. Rarely, if it was too hot, he would choose to stay in the coolness of the verandah while Dad worked right down at the bottom of the steep acre plot. During the morning, Mom would tie a little bundle around his neck, and send him off: “Go to Daddy!” – and down the hillside Bino would go, bearing Dad’s morning snack, flask of coffee and packet of cigarettes, returning half an hour later with the empty flask. The other thing Bino loved to do was to bring in the post, especially if there was a nice fat newspaper to carry. The first few attempts yielded a rather soggy newspaper, but he somehow learned to make a dry delivery.

Bino was great pals with our two border collies. They were much older, and one was clearly top dog, but our visits saw the three dogs playing together like old chums. And because Bino was used to Chippy’s successor, one crazy cat called Elvis, and our dogs were used to our cat, the cats were also included in the games regardless of who was visiting who. Dad could watch the dogs playing all day, and he would often join in, getting more fun out of it all than they did.

When they moved to a smaller suburban house, and Mom succumbed to the physical and mental ravages of Alzheimers disease, Bino became even more special to Dad, especially as Elvis – the cat – had died, and Bino was now like an only child, and often Dad’s only real companion in the silent house. Now, Dad had to rely on Bino to safeguard Mom while he went out to do the essential shopping, so Bino’s car trips became fewer, and each one more special when he could go along with Dad. One awful day, Dad felt the huge lumps in Bino’s abdomen, and was devastated when the vet confirmed that it was a cancer, so far spread that surgery would not help. When Bino became obviously in pain, Dad and I went to the vet, where we held Bino in our arms for his final sleep. The look on my father’s face that day is permanently etched in my mind, and I felt his loss as if it was my own.

Now totally without a companion, and having to care for a bedridden wife,  Dad aged very rapidly, as all the spirit seemed to have gone out of him. We got him a kitten, but she never settled in and ran away when they moved into a retirement centre. Not to be put off, we got him another one, and we watched as Dad came to life again with this young playful kitten to liven up his days. Sadly, three months later, Dad died in his sleep. I hope he’s with his precious Bino, Chippy and Elvis now, walking under shady trees, and sharing the strips of biltong they all loved.

Grandpa’s relationship with his animals was a source of joy to him, and a wonderful experience for my children. He taught them little secrets of how to really love and care for their pets, how to handle animals gently, how to talk to them, and how to listen to them. Somehow, coming from their beloved Grandpa, this was special information, and it has made them better human beings all round.

Now, as I deal with my latest cat, I am slowly relearning the joys of pet ownership. I can appreciate what Bino meant to Dad, when he lived alone (my mother’s presence at that stage being physical only). I too have someone to share my day’s news, or can have the pleasant surprise of a sudden visitor to the study, black tail up and purring. Dad would have loved this cat, and I know he would have made it a fulltime mission to “de-stress” him, and that he would have succeeded. Somehow, every time I see the cat, I think of my Dad, and that makes him even more special. While he chooses to visit me, I shall enjoy every minute, because he may not be back tomorrow. After all I’ve been through, it has taken a stray cat to really bring that lesson home.  

One day, I may even get around to naming him, once I’m sure that he will stay. For now, he is just Kat.

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