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!
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.
All that the pernickety old woman expected me to live on until morning …
First thing this morning the pernickety old woman called me ‘Maggy’. Huh? Well I know she meant me, no one else present. I ignored her. I am Hand-of-God.
What the pernickety old woman and I are engaging in now, I’ll call the struggle for dominance, because that’s what I am about. You thought that was a dog thing? Ever seen a cat and dog stand off?
I overheard her say to a friend that she’s getting me accustomed to being awake in the daytime, and if that wasn’t enough, she’s getting me used to spending the majority of my waking hours indoors?
Well! We’ll see about that! I lay down on the mat in front of the backdoor—where sunlight beat through the glass and warmed me wonderfully. How could I not sleep for hours?
I did. I woke in the late afternoon. We could’ve had another stand-off about me going outside except that the woman distracted me with that red feather on stick.
She twirled the stick and I jumped and leapt and rolled at the twirling feather. We had a great time but that can’t happen again. I can’t let her win me over like this.
Then she showed me where she will feed me, in the kitchen. A white ceramic bowl filled with my favourite kibbles. Water right there beside them. I felt mollified and ate far too much.
I had another sleep and when I woke, I vomited up my kibbles. What a waste! Despite that I’m feeling wobbly in the middle, the old woman scooped me up, and ran me to the laundry.
She set me on the litter tray and waited expectantly. “Go on,” she said. “Sick up the rest.”
How embarrassing. I walked back to the drinking bowl in the kitchen. I drank. Waited by the food bowl for her to refresh the kibble supply.
Grumbling at herself, she cleaned up the vomit. “No more kibbles today,” she said.
What??!!! I’m telling you I created havoc that night!
Me, the Hand-of-God, trying to get out of the house
The pernickety old woman has many unnatural ideas about me, as I said. They cause a lot of strife and strangering between us, as you might expect.
Strangering is when someone pretends they are a stranger and they stalk away with their tail high and their self-respect intact.
Our first great struggle was about me intending to do my Hand-of-God work in the night. Let me tell you, I have stood hours at the back door, miaowing sternly, or piteously, begging, or forceful. “Open the cage door,” I would cry. “Let me explore the night!”
The first few times she told me about the nocturnal critters native to her backyard. She’d sworn that they’d go unmolested.
“I’m the Hand-of-God. I wanna get to know them,” I cried. She turned her back on me, got on with getting dinner.
The following dozen stand-offs at the backdoor, she told me about the little deaths delivered to her by a neighbouring tom. The morning he brought her a snakelet in three pieces, she decided that none of her pets would ever join in the nightly carnage.
“Pets?” I snarled. I’ll show her who the pet is in this house! I stalked into the bedroom and hid under the bed. Causing, I might add, a lengthy battle at her bedtime, with the easily deflected indoor broom.
“Go! Have the run of the house,” she said.
My last 20 or 30 attempts to gain the night, she served up several more excuses, the weakest one about the busy road out front where two of my predecessors met their demise. “I’m a super cat,” I cried. “The Hand-of-God!”
She apparently thinks she can wean me from my instincts. “If my instincts can be dampened down with enculturation,” she said. “So can yours!”
I showed her my teeth in disgust. Predictably, she laughed. “Like it or lump it,” she said.
Hi, I’m the Hand-of-God. So called because I was born with a hand-outline, two hairs wide, on my back. But which was only my second name. At the cattery they called me Zorro.
The hand is hard to see now because I grew, and grew, and expanded and the hand expanded too, and became a blob.
Which is how the ignorant old woman now looking after me, calls it.
Hand-of-God? she says. You wish! Go on! I dare you go do something that God told you needs doing.
She obviously doesn’t know God is another name for Life, or Nature, if you’re pernickety like she is.
That night I hunted and ate all the cockroaches in the house. If that isn’t nature, what is?
What else can a Hand-of-God do locked up in an old house?
Good grief! The number of ‘blocks types’ available already boggles my mind, and that’s before I’ve invented any because I don’t see any that I can relate to. No, wait! A masonry gallery? What can I do with a masonry gallery? I’ll have to see …
Herewith my so-called Masonry Gallery …
Animals I Have Known. Some were adopted into my family, some were animals I photographed while out walking, and some of the images represent animals I’ve known.
My idea was to have captions. I haven’t working out yet how to do that.
Clockwise from top left: Jesse, at attention; Tibby, saying: “Ha ha, I’m lying on the dog’s bed, get me off if you dare”; Snowy, here as Tintin’s sidekick, dressed in his spacesuit. When I knew him he was the dog of Mr and Mrs Ballantyne, the elderly couple living on my street in Sydney; Shirley Dog, from my home town; Mingey, a fast mover, a friend from walks at the Mullumbimby Cemetery.
Rita de Heer 