Saturday 24 January 2009

Nashi

It was Damien that led me to meeting Nashi.
He had gone out one afternoon and was really fussing around a lot near the back door and the wheelie bin. I had tried to give him a fuss but he was not really interested - just sniffing around and miaowing at me incessantly. I had just put it down to my own stress levels at first, and though he was just picking up on my anxiety. I had been busy helping make arrangements for a community planting day as part of my neighbourhoods "in bloom" entry and was due to be interviewed by a local newspaper later that afternoon about the project. Knowing that a photographer might be present I was trying my best to not only do my housework, make the arrangements for the planting day and prepare for the interview but was also doing my best to look presentable despite the hot weather and my rising stress levels. So with Damien acting funny I was nearly ready to snap.


I had gone back into the house for a few minutes determined to arrive for the interview calm, composed and on time when I heard my neighbour round the back of the house.
At the time we were living in a small red brick terrace and to access the rear of our property we had to cross the gardens of four other houses. Luckily we were fortunate in having good neighbours, especially our closest neighbours who have become close friends of ours.
The back gardens of the houses were south facing and would get very warm in summer, so the backdoor was often open and I always put a large bowl of water on the patio for the cats. When I heard my neighbour sounding slightly concerned I popped my head out of the door to see what was going on.


It seemed that Damien was right to be fussing around the wheelie bin, as a very small, very ill little cat had crawled out from underneath and this was who my neighbour was talking to.
Now, this little cat was not in a good way at all. He was only a small cat anyway, but he looked like a skeleton wrapped in dirty fur. His coat, which was white with small tabby patches was grey with muck, totally matted and riddled with fleas. He was so weak he could barely stand and he looked absolutely pitiful.


I looked down at my smart clothes, realised I should be setting off for my interview and decided to sod it all. It looked like something more important had just come up.
I fetched one of the cats food bowls and put out a generous portion of biscuits and pured some water over the top. Once I saw that the cat was eating I phoned another neighbour who was working with me on the "in bloom" project and asked him to go for the interview instead and explained what was going on. I then got out one of my cat carry boxes and put the little cat inside with some bedding and some water in a bowl and contacted a well known animal charity. They said they would send someone out to see to the cat and I quickly set about giving both my cats, and this little one a flea treatment.


When the lady from the charity arrived she wasn't impressed, telling me that the cat was old and ill and that they would put him to sleep. Looking into the box at this pitiful little creature I decided to send the woman away. The cat already seemed a little better now he had eaten and taken a drink and I thought I would see if I could help him. I knew it was likely to be an expensive undertaking and that it might not have a positive outcome but I felt that I had to give him a chance.


Once the lady had gone I took him out and sat with him on my knee to look him over. He was obviously quite old, seriously malnourished and had hardly any teeth. His fur was matted beyond belief and he only had half a tail. He was so unwell that even the fleas seemed to have given up on him and I made a mental note to buy some flea killer to put down on all the carpets and furniture. Watching him relax slightly I vowed to do what I could for him.
That said I was dreading by boyfriend arriving home from work to discover that we now had 3 cats to look after. I needn't have worried though - as soon as he saw him he realised that I didn't have any other choice.
And so now there were 3 cats in our home...

Friday 23 January 2009

settling in

We had got sorted into a regular routine with Damien and Lucifer. They were becoming more relaxed all the time, although Damien was still pretty unsure of everyone he met and he did have a tendency to bite. Most disconcerting was when he would come to you for a fuss, stand on your knee and then attempt to bite you. That said, he has bitten virtually everyone he has met but has never bitten me. So it's all OK really.


It was pretty clear that he didn't think much of Lucifer though, so much so that I actually rang the shelter to check if we had taken the right 2 cats. I mean apart from the differences in their coats and colouring they did look pretty similar, but Damien despised Lucifer. But no, they were the right 2 cats so we just set about making sure that they could each gain access to a bit of defensible space. I don't really blame Damien for disliking Lucifer though - he was a big cat weighing about 1.5 stone when we got him and he would climb onto a high surface, wait for Damien to walk past and just launch himself, belly flop style onto his unsuspecting brother.
He soon gave this up though as Damien became wise to it and Lucifer decided that it used too much precious energy.
Over time his nickname became "the hungry cushion" for very good reason.


Lucifer is an incredibly lazy cat. He has been on a diet since we got him, but his willingness to eat anything, however inedible plus his rather limited energy expenditure meant that it took him a long time to get down to a respectable weight and he is still on the tubby side even now.
The less you feed him the less he moves. Put him on a really restricted diet and he just lies all day on the sofa, not even lifting his head up as you approach. Instead he will just whimper the tiniest of miaows. He of course forgets to act all pathetic when he hears the food cupboard being opened at which point he will move like greased lightning and we discovered that his hearing was excellent - he could detect a can of cat food being opened from 2 streets away. When he used to go out he would stagger as far as next doors garden where he would sleep for hours until he mustered the energy to stagger back home again, overheated from an afternoon in full sunlight.


He is also not very good at being a cat. He is utterly terrified of spiders, insects and mice. When we had mice in our last house he refused to come downstairs for weeks until we had managed to solve the problem. If he sees a spider he fluffs up his tail and legs it to another room.
He also has no balance and has often fallen asleep on his back at the top of the stairs only to roll over and bounce all the way to the bottom where he usually just licks a paw and looks at you as if to say "yes, and? I meant to do that you know."


Damien is far better at being a cat. He can catch anything smaller than him that moves - mice, birds, insects, spiders, kittens...
Fortunately as he no longer goes outside he doesn't have the opportunity to harm the local wildlife, but when he did go out his favourite pastime was to sit by the Valerian bush at dusk, spring himself into it and then try and catch all the huge moths that flew out. He would catch them out of the air and crunch happily away. As soon as all the moths were re-settled he would leap again.


Lucifer would sometimes sit on the windowsill of the office and spy a bird on the wall at the end of the garden. With no concept of perspective or distance he would launch himself from the window, legs flailing in the air until he landed with a bump on the flat roof of the bathroom below. The bird would still be hopping around at the end of the garden and Lucifer would sit there, not quite sure why the bird was not in his tummy.


Just when things had finally got settled Nashi came along...

bringing the first cats home

When we brought the cats home we thought it would be best if we limited their experience of our house to just one room to start off with. Not that we lived in a big house, but we thought it might make the transition easier after being at the shelter.


When I said I would take on problem cats who were old, fat or hated children I got almost exactly what I asked for.
They were both huge - big cats anyway but also overweight. They were quite old, at least 6 when we got them. Lucifer was fairly friendly but within minutes the once green carpet was covered in long white fur. Damien simply hated people. We also quickly discovered that he hated his brother as well.
When we let them out into the office Lucifer started exploring while Damien crawled under a desk and growled. We were really careful with everything we did but within a few hours both cats had escaped.
I was totally stressed out. They had only been with us for a few hours and I was convinced I would never see them again. I was cursing myself for being so stupid, and when I went to bed I decided to leave the office window wide open in the hope that the cats would come in overnight, but that no burglars or bogeymen would find their way in.
The next morning I was amazed to see both cats asleep in the office. I closed the window, Damien crawled back under the desk and normal life resumed.


Damien spent most of the next 2 weeks hiding under the desk, occasionally attacking any toes that came too near. Lucifer made himself at home, declared the bed his own and tried to convince anyone who came near him that he was starving to death and needed food, instantly. And he was a cat that would eat anything. Bananas, raisins, cereal, soup, chips, bread...any scrap of food that he discovered he would eat. Damien was more suspicious, convinced that we were trying to poison him. We soon learned that he is a cat with issues.


We soon encountered another problem with the cats. They are far bigger than the average moggy and as a result they would get into the litter tray, make sure all 4 paws were in the tray - and then do their business straight over the edge of the tray onto the floor. I sent the boyfriend to dig around in the attic until he found the plastic base of the old rat cage and we ended up using that as a litter tray instead. We also discovered that even though the cats went outdoors they would come racing home in order to do their business in the litter tray in the house, before racing back outside again. Which I really appreciated.

After a few weeks though they both seemed fairly settled, Damien was less neurotic and we thought we could settle down into a quiet life with 2 friendly cats to share it with us...

getting a cat

A few years ago I decided that I would quite like to get a cat. Growing up we always had cats, and they have long been my favourite animal. Once I had my own place I thought it would be nice to get a cat, but my long suffering boyfriend had other ideas. After lengthy negotiations I got two pet rats, which wasn't quite the outcome I was after, but it was fun for a while. However as most of you will know rats are not particularly renowned for their longevity and Fetish and Dave Angelmouse were no exception and after a couple of years I was a lady with no pets again. I briefly flirted with the idea of keeping fancy fish and set up a tropical tank in an old gas measuring jar from an old chemistry lab. I started off with a lovely tank full of interesting fish, but one of them, Horace, was a bit of a psycho killer type and before long I just had the one fish. He resisted any attempts to add more fish to the tank by eating them. After a while I was desperate to get a cat, there was a little lad across the road who was desperate for a fancy fish but whose parents could not afford the start-up costs and after some careful negotiations my boyfriend finally relented and said I could get a rescue cat. Result!


There were of course some provisos - the cat would be my responsibility. That meant I would cover all associated costs for food, litter, toys and veterinary bills and look after the cat. I soon learned that a cat, when being lovely and affectionate would be "our cat" but the moment it did something wrong, like shredding the newly papered wall, or vomiting on the bed it would be my cat without question.
Well, I could live with all that so off we trundled one afternoon to the local shelter.


I had explained to the warden that I was in a position to take a "problem cat", one that was old or fat or that hated children as it would not be a problem for me. The warden asked if I would consider taking two cats, that needed housing together. "Of course" I replied, while boyfriend sputtered slightly.
The shelter we went to was actually a large old house, with each room shared by several cats. The first room we went into I spied a beautiful semi long haired cat lounging in the corner. He was an apricot birman cross with huge blue eyes and it was love at first sight. However he didn't look like he would have any trouble finding a home so I carried on and met all the other cats. He stayed on my mind though and at the end of the tour I asked to go back and see him again. When we entered the room I went to see him and my boyfriend, resigned to his fate sat on the floor in the middle of the room, where he was joined by an overweight, raggedy looking old tomcat with torn ears, dandruff and the grumpiest face you have ever seen on a feline.
"ah" explained the warden "he is actually the brother of the birman cross, believe it or not. I am amazed he came to see you though, he usually just hides or attacks anyone who comes in."
Well, I was sold, especially when he told me they had been here months already as nobody was prepared to take them both.
I agreed to come back the next day ready to take them home.


we duly returned the next day with two carry cases and that was where we hit the first problem - not only were these cats hugely overweight they were also pretty big anyway, so we ended up driving them home with them wearing, rather than sitting in their boxes. And they howled, oh they howled all the way home. So much so that I jokingly said "it's like having 2 demons in the car. I didn't realise we had just adopted Damien and Lucifer" the names stuck, and although we thought about changing them we soon decided that their new names suited them well.