Cat Tales, 15

While the pernickety old woman pruned the rosebush in the front yard, a cheeky tom pranced along our back fence. I streaked over there, intending to see him off! I ran up the fence, made to dance along the top, thinking to tip the top crossbar every couple of paces with my right side foot and paw. For balance.

I was stuck! My rear claw too deep in the soft old timber! I wrenched and jerked to get free, tore my toe almost from my foot. Hurt! Hurt!

I miaowed and wailed and screamed for help. “Hurt! Tearing! My foot!”

My human came running. “What are you doing? What are you doing?”

“Oh no!” she said. “I’ll have to cut you loose and there’s blood already!”

“Hang on!” She pulled my leg back at the same time as snipping my claw through with the secateurs.

I screeched, would’ve jumped down and run, but she gripped me by the scruff of my neck. She moved me onto her shoulder and kneeled down to where she’d dropped her gardening apron. Moved me onto that and had me rolled up in it in a flash.

“Phew!” she said. Got to her feet. “I know I can’t trust you not to get free so you’ll have to come.” She took me into the garage. “We’re looking for the cat carrier. Give me a nudge when you see it.”

Me give her a nudge? I hate the cat carrier!

“Found it! Don’t move now!” She lay me on the work bench and slid the cat carrier out from under it. “It’s dusty! Where’s a rag?”

I wrenched and wriggled. Just about got myself free when she grabbed me and fed me into the cat carrier.

Yowling, I hung onto the doorway as usual but my heart wasn’t in the struggle. I smelled my blood. I wanted to be licking my foot. Let myself be pushed in.

She shut the little gate and barred it. “Well, let me think,” she said. “I doubt that I can carry you—carrier and all—all the way to the vet.”

I pressed into the back of the carrier. Really not interested. Found my wound and started licking.

The pernickety old woman went to the garden shed. Got out the wheelbarrow and lifted the carrier onto it. Trundled me down the drive, left turn into the street, across the road. Another left turn and a couple of blocks along. Right turn into the bad place.

I yowled. Felt sick. The turns and trundles dizzy-making. Give me peace and quiet. I don’t like it at the vet’s. They have pointy things they stick into me. They have rules. Dogs on their leashes, cats in their carriers. I wailed as the pernickety old woman carried me into the waiting room.

“Oh dear,” the secretary said while I took a breath. “Bleeding?”

“Yes, quite a bit of the red stuff,” the pernickety old woman said. She explained what she thought had happened.

“Come through,” one of the vet nurses said.

My human picked up the carrier and we went into the scary place.
————
Yes. They stuck me with something. I spent the night. Refused their food. In the morning, I was bandaged up. When we got home, the carrier and the wheelbarrow again, my human locked me in the shed. “Go to sleep,” she said. “They said you would want to. I’ll be back in a jiff.”

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, 11

Me, Hand-of-God, hunting skinks in my backyard

Finally I could learn to hunt, and me a large middle-aged cat with a low-slung belly. As a kitten, and with my mother and my brothers and sisters, we were ‘contained’ in a cattery yard. Where my mother could teach us only how to hunt flies and cockroaches.

As a teenage cat, I was contained in the basement of a large house. A large basement that meant, but all of it indoors. Cockroaches there, too. Then I came here.

After studying my new territory, I decided that my first prey animals up from cockroaches would be garden skinks. About the length of my foreleg including my paw, and very fast.

These little lizards live on all the fences surrounding my backyard, about one per metre, but come down onto the ground to catch insects. Where I’ll catch them. When I get fast enough.

The first time I was nearly successful the pernickety old woman took a photo of me, as above, and then laughed.

She laughed at me?

“Too slow!” she chortled. “They know all about big black and white marauders, and have evolved to be very fast!”

I set out to prove her wrong. Days later, I managed to snag with my paw a look-alike from the house wall. I laid it proudly outside the laundry for the pernickety old woman to inspect.

“An Asian Gecko,” she said. “Very good! You can eat as many of those as you like. They’re not native and starting to be a real pest, running over people’s faces at night, and the like.”

I ate it but it was nothing like my kibbles. The tail had spines on it. Yuck!

Cat Tales, 10

I love curling up in a warm plastic potplant dish

Escaping from the house, I rapidly got into new habits. I’d sleep most of the day. On weekends, I’d spend the day on the deck with my human.

Weekdays, when the builders arrived at 8.30 AM and went home at 3.30 PM, I slept somewhere warm but out of sight and out of mind.

From about 4.00PM onward, I got to know my backyard. Because, of course, the pernickety old woman put every kind of barrier up to stop me wandering. More on those later.

At approximately 5.00 PM, the pernickety old woman would open the screen door and stand there shaking the kibble tin.

The kibbles rattling was her sign that I should come inside for my dinner. She’d lock the screen door after me. Keep me inside during the exciting hours of the week.

After only my second night inside ready for anything, because I’d slept all day, I started planning my escape.

Watching for wildlife with the deck still a bit wet from rain during the night. I’m on the lookout for intruders.

Cat Tales, 9

Now came a bad time in the house. No peace in the daytimes. Builders tramped past all day, talking and laughing when I scurried for my water bowl or my litter box in the laundry.

They took over the garage and used it as their base. I watched them stormy-eyed as they trekked in and out through the screen-door with tools and materials.

I blinked. Didn’t hear the click of the lock that time. Started watching carefully. Listening too. The men grumbled.

The pernickety old woman came in with an armful of dry washing. “What’s the problem?” she said.

“We’re spending too much time looking out for that animal,” said one of them. “It’s maddening having to open and close that damned screen door every trip.”

“Can’t you board her somewhere?” said the other.

I didn’t wait for my human’s answer. Nipped to the screendoor …

Me, Hand-of-God, making my escape