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

Cat Tales, 8

That’s me looking stoic, prepared to wait it out

Some time later … my human looked at a thing she calls a calendar and had turned quite a few pages … I just knew a lot of days had passed.

In the early morning, the pernickety old woman said, “Ha, I hear the truck. I better go tell them where to park.”

Remembering the whole business in the roof that time ago, I hid.

The pernickety old woman came back inside with two men following her, both grey hairs like my human.

Neither of them took their boots off at the backdoor as is the custom. They walked in and out all through the kitchen, the living room next to it and the sunroom behind both.

The pernickety old woman darted in front of them, rolling up the rugs and getting things out of their way.

When they helped her move the refrigerator into the living room and parked it right in front of my hide-out, I’d had enough.

I scooted out of there and ran zig-zagging like a dervish-cat, circling them, then in front and then behind them. Thinking that if I could trip them over, they’d pick themselves up and go away.

The men just laughed and continued with their flicking measuring devices, pens and notebooks.

You’re surprised? I said they were grey hairs!

My human scooped me up and tucked me under her arm. She slid open a cabinet in the sunroom, took the drawer out completely, and put me in that cave.

“Stay there,” she said. “You out of their way and them out of your face.”

This is me looking taken aback. Did my human just tidy me out of the way?

Cat Tales, 7

The next day, while the pernickety old woman and I sat friendly in the red chair–me on a towel on her lap–I could feel little things crawling around on me. I scratched. Aah! So satisfying. I scratched more. Then I saw them! Little black specks jumping from me to my human.

“Eeeh!” the pernickety old woman said. “Fleas! I should’ve known, shouldn’t I?”

Unexpectedly, she flapped the ends of the towel over me, and started to struggle up out of the chair with me tight in her arms. I was so surprised that she didn’t just push me off, I didn’t struggle.

“Have to take some stern measures,” she said. “Hope you’ll forgive me.”

I couldn’t act out yes or no, because I didn’t know what she meant.

She took me into the bathroom, a hard, shining, tiled place, and shut the door behind us. She opened the taps that make the rain and waited, still holding me, until the water falling from the overhead thing steamed a little.

She stuck her hand under and said, “Well. Here goes. Clothes and all.” She stepped into the warm rain.

Fleas jumped off both of us and were swept down the drain.

When I got water up my nose, I sneezed and started to struggle. I miaowed. Got more water up my nose. “I want to get down!”

The pernickety old woman set me at her feet where I sneezed some more. I walked from the rain stall and shook my wet fur. Brrr. Cold down there at floor level. That warm rain was lovely, I realized. Walked back in.

The pernickety old woman had taken off all her coverings in the meantime and spread flower-scented suds all over herself. Then she let the rain wash it off her. There’s no logic to humans.

She turned off the taps. The rain stopped. She dried herself off with a pink towel, and then me with a washed-out green towel. She slung on her dressing gown and led me into the sun-room at the back of the house. Where she set the little kindergarten chair for me to sit there and continue to dry myself.

She tackled the remains of the flea plague by spraying the red chair and the rug and the couch with an insect-killing fog. She opened the windows and turned on the overhead fan to lift the sickly lemon-scent, and finally she set out a treat for me.

If all that’s what happens as a result of walking in and out and in and out of the warm rain she organizes, count me in next time. Though I will tell you, it will need to be a sunny day, just like it was today.

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!