19 April 2020 - Getting a kitten

Kittens - Michael Hewerdine

The other day I was talking to our cat MauMau about things, especially catching rats, because cat is getting on a bit and still motivated but a bit under pressure.

I’ve been putting it out there that I’d be keen to have another dawg, I can visualise one of those big Irish Wolfhounds looking at me, but until a few days ago it didn’t seem fair with both of us working days.

How things have changed. Lockdown, seeing more of the cat and hearing the yowls of cat politics as one or two locals try to move in on us.

More home time for a dawg.

Cats with attitude are for me, none of this soft feline cuddles. Back in the day my Grandad was famed for saying if there’s a cat on the farm it has to work for a living. On the other side of the family my Great Granma was a cat wrangler, she only had to look sour at a cat or raise her finger and it would bolt. I got both genes. I am boss cat. Perhaps I like a challenge.

The other day I was thinking about those hairless cats, what they were; how it happened. And Manx Cats, Granma’s favourite, they appeal to me too. As reinforcements for MauMau.

In the hours before lockdown we met friends Dora and Jazz at Café 414, Jazz works in kennels and is keeping an eye out for me, meanwhile MauMau will have to hang in there.

I never knew bald cats were a genetic accident, there were only one or two of them first that got discovered and bred up, like roses, I guess. Maybe they could even be tattooed, that would be really cool. Add a few piercings and you would have a Steampunk cat. Call it IRON.

I can feel the dawg, wherever he or she is, still out there hopeful. I know how powerful intention is, so one day Irish W just might come ambling up the drive, we’ll see.

And so it became the days of IRON and SHASTA, (what I’ll call the dawg), following the valiant times of Schitzo (our black cat that was) and MauMau, as they pass into family legend, loved and feared.

Schitzo lies in the garden alongside SARNA, our faithful hound of those times. But that is another story.

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