Cat Tales 18

When it rained lots and lots, and it was close to summer, the pernickety old woman ran around putting buckets in the backyard to catch rainwater. Even when it stopped raining, she left them standing where they were.

Even as the Hand-of-God, I was mystified as I went round smelling at them. Just rainwater, half a bucket full, that I couldn’t reach to drink. What were they for? Couldn’t be for animals to drink from. I just proved that.

When the buckets were about half-full of rainwater, the pernickety old woman dipped her hand in the frog pond, scooped up a handful of azolla water weed and carried it dripping to the buckets and dripped a bit of the weed in each.

I think there were five buckets. The stuff grew like—well, a weed—and soon all the buckets had an island of green floating in them.

That evening, a clap of thunder! I raced for my favorite hiding place in the bottom of the bookshelves. Another thunderstorm. More rain.

The pernickety old woman loved a good thunderstorm. She stood laughing in the open laundry door, only slightly sheltered. “Smell the petrichor?” she said.

When the storm faded away, and the rain fell only mistily, the down-pipes from the roof started to boom. Or maybe call it a belling. A loud insistent kind of ringing echoed from ours, and all the ones in the neighboring yards on both sides. A racket!

“That’s them,” the pernickety old woman said. “The green tree frogs. The rain woke them, flushed the leaves from their hidey holes, and they’re sitting there—each under his own pipe—calling loud enough to bring any green tree frog female happening to be about.” She laughed.

Ah, I thought. They sit under the down-pipes to have their calling amplified. Smart. I miaowed and joined my human at the laundry door.

“Tomorrow we shall see what we’ll see,” she said. “The buckets will be in all night demand, I’m thinking.”

It was a dark night. I didn’t see a thing peering through the glass doors in the sun-room. I was so curious by the first morning light, I scratched at the pernickety old woman’s bedroom door. She didn’t let me sleep with her for this very reason. She being a night owl and I preferring to be up at the crack of dawn. All I heard was a groan. I think she meant for me to go away.

I did. For about five minutes. Scratched at the bedroom door again. “Fine!” I heard from the bed. Then it creaking.

The pernickety old woman grumbled from near the wardrobe. I understood her to be clothing herself. Humans are so bereft without fur. I skipped back to my position at the glass doors.

My human came bleary-eyed from the bedroom. Dressed in her usual long pants, cotton shirt and kimono loose over the top. She yawned. “Let me put on a pot of tea first.”

“Miaaoow!” Let’s go see outside first, that meant.

“Might as well, I suppose. Water won’t boil for a bit. Beautiful sunrise, all said and done. Wait till I grab my camera.”

She walked. I pranced to the first bucket. We peered into it. “Ah ha,” my human said. “I think we have a jackpot. Look at that! I think a whole clutch. Green tree frog spawn for sure.”

Cat Tales, 14

Despite the danger of the currawongs, I got used to doing my proper Hand-of-God work, and revelled in the thrill of seeing off intruders.

Small dogs, magpies and kookaburras all took flight when I ran at them. My large belly flubbered and wobbled as I ran, was one visitor’s unkind remark, after her little dog hid under her chair. My human glazed a stern glare over her face.

I am big, I accept it. Comes with being a daytime cat, apparently. My size helps me stay on top of the heap.

When even the pheasant-coucal stopped coming, probably because I chased him from the premises one too many times, I started to look for more excitement.

I had a go at climbing a tree. Got as far as the first branch, not more than a metre and a half from the ground.

The pernickety old woman, moving very fast for a human of her age, slapped an aluminium ladder against the trunk.

While she tied a denim apron round her waist I did not have the good sense to keep climbing. Always a sticky beak, I stopped to see what she was planning.

She climbed the ladder and lifted me from the tree. “Forget it,” she said. “You’re too heavy. Lucky for you I saw you before you got too high.”

“I’ll explain why one day,” she said through my complaints.

She continued wrapping me in the apron, tying the corners tightly round her waist. There’d be no getting free.

She climbed down and took me back to the deck. Where I lay about, sulking, and licking my wounded pride.

Cat Tales, 13

Now came the time of the big birds. They made me so mad!

I could sit inside on my chair, or I could sit with my human on the deck under the awning. Whenever either of us went into the yard, a pied currawong would chase us back onto the deck or into the house. Currawongs are like large crows I’ve heard it said, except they are black and white.

We had some Bangalow Palm trees in our yard, and when their berries turned red, all the currawongs in the neighborhood congregate in our other trees where they wait their turn to eat the berries.

Too bad I can’t show you. My human tried to take a pic and they swooped her. She came running back in under the awning. We had to make do with just the one that lives nearby and sometimes comes by itself.

Yellow eyes. Fierce-looking. It even has a berry in its beak.

There’s another sort of black-and-white bird around, as well. They have red-brown eyes and grey-white beaks, and aren’t as big or fierce. They’re Australian magpies. One of them comes into the yard to listen for worms traveling underground. When it hears one, it pokes its beak into the grass to catch them.

When I chase the magpie, it just jumps up higher than I can jump, and comes down again when I’m not looking. I’ve given up on it. I don’t like worms.

Cat Tales, 12

That big fluffy white rug is me of course, relaxing in the sun, while the pernickety old woman has her coffee and catches up on her social calls.

“Frog eggs?!” she said excitedly. “I have some too.” She laughed. “They’re no problem in my frog pond. I have an old cast iron bath now, that someone was tossing out in the white-goods recycling event.”

I pricked up my ears. Rolled over and sat up. Stared at the frog pond in the back of the yard. Reeds and a yellow flowering plant showed above the rim. On the white ledge nearest lay a bent piece of wood.

My human went on with her conversation. “There’s not a canetoad on Earth that can jump backward and over the lip. And they are not that good at climbing. Yes, I’ll teach my cat not to hunt them.”

Huh, I thought. We’ll see about that. I’ll hunt whatever catches my eye. And something did catch my eye just then. I stared.

The piece of wood on the lip of the pond moved! All by itself! Not a breath of wind!

This I needed to investigate. I hopped down from the deck and stalked silently toward the frog pond using all the cover at my disposal.

“Won’t do you any good,” the pernickety old woman called from the deck. “It’s the Frog Pond Guardian at her post.”

Her words made no sense. Belly to the ground, I leopard-crawled nearer, the nasturtium patch grew densely to well above my head.

I peered around the corner …

A large water dragon stared implacably back at me. I’d heard rumours about this lizard. In the backyard nextdoor it was supposed to have bitten off the head of a hen sitting on a nest of eggs.

The lizard moved! I backed up in a hurry! Waited there in the protection of the nasturtiums. Peered round the corner.

No. It just changed position. Lay there, immoveable.

“She’s just sunning herself,” the pernickety old woman said from behind me. What is it about her? She is always, always, giving away my hunting position.

Cat Tales, 6

That’s me, Maggy Cat aka Hand-of-God, flashing down the roof

In the dawn while I was still comfortably hidden under the slope of the front roof, I heard a far-off rooster crowing about the sun about to rise. He at his natural work.

I had no time to compare my state to his as human, the pernickety old woman, thumped her feet onto the timber floor, as she always did, so that the whole house vibrated. I heard her stump to the bathroom.

Aaahh!!

She screamed? She never usually screamed going into the bathroom or slammed the door so hard and instantly. I pussy-footed from under my eave.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” my human said. She stumped to the back of the house and completed her ablutions in the laundry.

Oh dear oh dear what? My curiosity ballooned. I ran to the back of the attic, along one of the beams that held up the ceiling. I miaowed into the gap between the inner and outer wall, that the people installing the insulation hadn’t got to yet.

Silence.

“Is that you, Maggy Cat?”

I miaowed again, as loud as I could.

“Come along. Come along,” she said as she walked back to the front of the house.

I followed her voice.

She went out the front door

I went out the owl’s exit.

“There you are,” she said. “Run down the roof, along the porch roof and into my arms. Have I got a treat for you!”

My curiosity got the better of me. See me running down the roof?

She caught me in an old towel, ran into the house, shoved me still bundled into the bathroom. Shut the door with her on the outside.

When I’d wriggled free, a toothsome sight greeted me.

What can I say? I put the poor creature out of its misery. I’m not one of those cats that play with their food. Besides, I was hungry!

Cat Tales, 5

Me, Hand-of-God, sleeping in the contested red chair. On a towel because I shed black and white hair.

Last night, creating that havoc I promised, I ran and slid and skittered in the moonlight and shadows on the slippery wooden floors.

I took a running jump and leapt to the top of the tall wooden shelves in the living room. Lucky for me that they’re fastened to the wall. Dislodged books and ornaments thumped and clattered to the floor.

After each big noise I expected the pernickety old woman to come running from the bedroom in her nightdress. Shouting, maybe. I didn’t know her very well yet.

She stayed stubbornly in her room, the door stubbornly shut.

Is she deaf? I suspect that now. After a while I stopped my argy-bargy. It’s not much fun when there’s no reaction.

The pernickety old woman spooned in her usual breakfast fare while standing at the kitchen bench. Drank her tea as if she listened for something.

“Be a good cat today, Maggy,” she said.

But … yesterday’s doings were small stuff compared to my adventures to come! And there are no photos of any of it. Just our memories.

To help me be good, the pernickety old woman spread an old towel in the red velvet chair. “Sleeping is good,” she said.

Fine. I settled.

Then a man’s voice called from the front. “Okay if we bring a ladder in?”

The pernickety old woman went to the front door to talk with the man. He brought in the ‘ladder’ whatever the thing is. They decided that he could set it up under the guest room ‘manhole cover’. Another thing I’d never heard of.

A lot of to-ing and fro-ing followed, stumbling, swearing and apologies, and knocking on the wooden walls. The pernickety old woman stayed in the corridor while the person and his apprentice hauled in gear from their truck parked on the front lawn.

After a long time of barely dozing, I woke with a start. Silence in the corridor and guest room. I could hear the pernickety old woman talking at the washing machine, telling it what-for. My chance.

I soft-footed through the corridor. In front of me in the guest room stood a metallic set of saplings, with little shelves rising between the front pair, toward a yawning hole in the ceiling.

The aromas coming from the hole spoke of mice! And rats! And even birds! I climbed of course, and from the top little platform, jumped into the roof space.

While I explored up there, the men came back from their ‘smoko’. I ran to a little nook I’d found. Hid there, with my black back toward the men, making an extra shadow.

They worked at their mysterious project for hours. I have no idea what they did. High-pitched power saws came into play. They used chisels and hammers to ‘smooth edges’. Finally they left. They pulled the manhole cover back over the hole.

Then I heard the pernickety old woman calling me. “Maggy! Maggy! Where are you?” She rattled the kibble bin. “Dinner time!”

She stood at the back door. I was over the front corner of the house. She didn’t hear me and her feet went into the house. Small thuds. Cupboard doors clattered.

The roof space darkened with night. The pink fluffy floor was littered with tools and boxes. I explored a little longer but the animal aromas were overburdened with the chemical smell of the pink fluff and the tools.

So I hid away. What else to do? I listened to the night. I watched flitterings and an owl stalking a little bat. Eating it.

Then I saw where he’d come in. I growled, just a little. Owl took off, back into the night, flapping slow silent wings. I began to wait for dawn.

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While this event is already past, I want to learn about the outcomes. Just reading the first few paragraphs, I’m sure I can learn ways to rephrase my messaging which seems to be falling on deaf ears at the moment.

Prior to my cancer scare I was a deep green greenie. I volunteered as a Landcare committee member, biodiversity co-ordinator, group leader and the local ‘fungi lady’.

Did talks in science week at schools, talk-and-walks about fungi in the local arboretum. Joined Knitting Nannas, an activist group. I fitted my house out with PV and a watertank.

When I woke after the end of the treatment, about July 2021, I was ecstatic that I had survived. And a few weeks later, very confronted by the seeming lack of concern about the climate emergency. My usual sources had dampened right down.

I had nothing left of any of the above, apart from an abiding fear for plants and wildlife and above all, how my very young grandchildren, and everybody-else’s descendents are mean to survive.

I had to relocate to the next state for the treatment, which all happened during covid. I’m in a rental with no control over the utilities. I have very little energy. No local contacts. But am still largely online.

My flavour of activism is being rejigged …

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How Art Catalyzes Change—Join Us for a Livestream Event on September 20