Help! ‘Smudge’ isn’t cutting it for a name. The old woman keeps calling me ‘Mag’ and ‘Mags’ and ‘Cat’, which were all names of her previous feline. She complains because she can’t say ‘Smudgee-Smudgee-Smudgee’ fast enough. The man suggested ‘Moggy’. The name I came with is ‘Whims’. Is that a name, the boy said. What’s wrong with ‘Whimsey’? When will they make up their minds?
I have a black nose as you can see, and a black chin. And I’m not, NOT, a tuxedo as I heard someone say. I have stripes over my back hidden among the black. The kennel had a special name for that, but that seems to have been left behind as well.
My first night went very well. After diligent scratching and meowing, I finally got the old woman up from her bed at 4 a/m. She thought I was too cold in my shed. A mistake on her part as I then escaped her easily when she–after adding an old polar fleece jacket to my bed–tried to shut me back into the shed. She went back to bed and I roamed the house.
Every so often I reminded her of her failure to catch me by jumping onto her bed and breathing into her face. At her alarm at 6 a/m, I startled but jumped from the bed as if I’d been going to anyway, and hid under it where she can’t reach.
My shed is a weird little room right in the middle of the apartment. Nothing like the cattery sheds in the backyard of the kennel owners’ house. So the new shed has large white box in it with a lid that I can sit on. My litter tray beside it. There is also my open-fronted sleeping box, with blankets in it, although due the draft running along the floors, I prefer to sleep behind the box. Near to the little sink are my food and water bowls.
The door is a slider. Good for me, bad for the old woman. She dragged the cage out, muttering she’d be redesigning it. Not sure what she means by that. At about noon, the old woman caught me and tried to shut me into the shed. I turned on a coin and escaped from her intention to shut me into the shed while she went shopping. I got away easily. Under the couch is another comfortable place to hide.
At 4 p/m I let it be known that it was my dinner time. The old woman served me two teaspoons of salmon in a dish separate to my kibbles. This was the time at the cattery that we cats were served our dinners and shut up in our condos. I’m going to try to stay loose all night tonight! Wish me luck!
Rita de Heer 