Felis Catus

Which is not, as some of you may think, the spell Harry Potter uses when he needs a little furry companionship (leave it!) But the Latin name for the common housecat.

I was watching the news this morning before leaving for work and caught the end of a story, (well, I say story...) that the Cats Protection League have produced a guide to cat behaviour.  It seems that some people don't know what certain cat behaviours mean.

They include (and I kid you not)

If your cat is purring - It is contented.
If your cat is walking towards you with its tail up - It is greeting you.
If your cat is wiping its cheek on the furniture - It is scent marking its territory.

You would, in my opinion, be very special (In an 'I ride on a special bus with a five-point harness and specially flavoured windows for me to lick'  way) to not know all that already if you'd ever spent more than five minutes with a cat.

There was one thing that I thought 'Oh, that actually makes sense.' However, and it was:

If your cat lies down, stretches onto it's back and presents its belly to you, it's letting you know that it's so comfortable in your presence, that it feels like you are no longer a threat to it.

It does not mean 'Yay two-legs, tickle my belly.' as anyone who has ever tried this will testify... What you get if you do is the whole 'Did you think that I was a cat? Sorry, I usually describe myself as a furry bag full of razorblades' treatment and your arm looks like something out of Hellraiser.

There are some very odd things about cats which aren't so obvious though, especially to a dog person like myself - Although we do have a cat, called Pop, I have slowly trained her to become more dog-like so that I don't get so easily confused.

Here are a couple things to look out for:

Cats are attracted to people who don't like cats - This is perfectly true, cats will indeed be attracted to people who don't like them, do you know why?  If you watch a cat for any length of time, you'll notice that they do a kind of slow blink every once in a while and then turn away... Go and watch one now, You see, it did it... Unless it was asleep, then I'd have to question why you were watching a sleeping cat for twenty minutes.

Anywho, that slow blink is a gesture of approval, it's the equivalent of John Thomson's Fast Show character 'Louis Balfour, the host of Jazz Club' turning to the camera and saying 'Niiiice!'.  So, picture the scene, you're at someone's house, they've got a cat and you don't like cats, you don't even like to look at cats, you'd never think of even sniffing, licking or playing a melodic harmonica solo to a cat. so you close your eyes and look away.

Cat thinks 'Hey! a new friend, and he likes me enough to have learned my language!'  then it jumps on your lap, nestles down in your nether regions and slowly pumps its claws into any area where hair mysteriously started to grow during puberty.  Because you're polite and don't want to offend anyone, you just sit there like a swan... Unmoving on the outside, but screaming like a lunatic on the inside - That is Swans right?  Actually, thinking about it, I might have swans confused with something else - Not sure what, it'll come to me probably.

The headbutt is another cat thing that has a meaning, it's kind of a question.  Your cat is saying 'Are you mine? you used to smell like me, but you don't anymore.'  The initial 'butt' is the question, if you don't push the cat away, squirt it with one of those plant spray bottles or hit it with a telephone directory, then it will assume that you are its property and re-scent you with its cheek glands.

This is the cat marking you as its property, confirming your status as a chattel, something that the cat wholly owns, but allows to move around within certain boundaries, known only to the cat.

Our cat does this to our dog, often.  Here is a picture of our dog, trying to tear my throat out in a loving and caring manner.

He is not as kind to the cat... There is chasing, and a little light, occasional biting.

But when you get down to it (No, not with the cat you skanky pervs) cats are simple animals with simple drives for everything they do.  If you look into it deeply enough it tends to be because they despise you with all of their black little satanic hearts.  You are just there to service their every whim.

There, I said it cats are evil.  I think Terry Pratchett might have said it best: 'If cats looked like frogs, we'd realise what nasty, cruel little bas*ards they are'

And they are, if a child plays with its food, it means that they're making the word 'Bumholes' with their alphabetti spaghetti, wheras if a cat's playing with its food it means that it's biting the leg off a baby bird and then jabbing it with its claws while it flails spastically about until one of its eyes pops out. (And yes, I have given myself extra points for using the word 'spastically' correctly and in context)

You can, and I have seen this happen to Mrs Dandy, feed a cat a plump, juicy prawn... Which it will proceed to eat, wash itself all over and then hunt you down and kick your ass by jumping from the ceiling fan, grabbing onto your ears with it's front paws and slicing your face open like an over-ripe beef tomato with its hind ones.

There is anecdotal evidence that they smother babies in their cots. According to Japanese sailors, they can bewitch you with their tails (I guess this really depends on how long you've been at sea). It was a commonly held belief that black cats are an incarnation of the Devil, which is a little racist, but I applaud the basic sentiment. and in the 9th Century, King Henry the First of Saxony was so seduced by a cat (History does not record whether he'd ever sailed on a Japanese boat) that he made it illegal to kill cats, a crime which carried a fine of sixty bushels of corn.  If that isn't evidence of witchcraft then I don't know what is.

This is our cat, Pop

She look like a perfectly normal, fuzzy little animal, until you realise... That her eyes don't have any pupils...

I leave you with a bit of ugly Feline doggerel.

There once was two cats of Kilkenny,
And each thought there was one cat too many.
So they quarreled and fought
and they scratched and they bit
Until there was only their nail,
and the tips of their tails
Instead of two cats, there weren't any.

And I think that sums it all up perfectly - Cats? Just say no.

I'm all about the Kid-Lit

OK, so most of you know by now that I'm writing a book, I mean, I shoehorn it into into pretty much every conversation I have, with anyone.

For example, I was in the Doctors on Monday, and my sun was lying on the floor in the waiting room reading the manuscript and pointing out grammatical and logical errors (He's eight by the way - And he's forced more re-writes than anyone else in the history of history) and the Receptionist called out someone's name and I just automatically stood up and shouted 'But I'm writing a book!' and then went a bit red, and sat down, and then tried to crawl into the upholstery.

But it's not the first thing I've started to write. A long time ago I had the idea of writing a children's book.  I only got as far as writing one page of A4, but maybe I could develop it.  Let me know what you think.

It's about cats, maybe I'll just release it on the Internets, the Internets likes cats.

-oOo-

Mango yawned, the conservatory was warm and sunny and everything, but he couldn't shake the feeling that there was a draught coming from somewhere.

'Feeling that ghost draught again?' Said Clem.  Clem was a full head taller than Mango and about a coat of varnish paler, but he was still a Ginger Tom and as such was due some respect.

'There nothing ghostly about it,' snapped Mango, 'One of the Talls must have forgotten to close a door somewhere, if they're not forgetting to close them, they're trying to shut my tail in them.'

Clem shook his head slowly and set about cleaning himself up, the long journey down from the top of the TV, along the bookshelf and onto the rocking chair was tiring and dusty at the best of times - and this particular spring afternoon was not one of those times.

Mango look accusingly at the doors, frowned, blinked and then settled back to sleep.

The Talls had been acting oddly all day; furniture had been moved, curtains had been taken down, the washing machine had been going all day and most important of all, every time either Mango or Clem had got comfortable on something, it had been snatched out from underneath them with a cry of 'CAT!'

Now, there was only so much of this behaviour that any tomcat worth his stripes should be expected to take, but it still came as a surprise to the tallest of the Talls when Mango bit his thumb when he tried to pitch him off a perfectly comfortable pile of cushions.  They had both been relegated to the conservatory by the scruffs of their necks and they could tell by the scowl on the Tall's face that it might make sense not to argue.

Clem stared through the glass at the Talls as they busily moved things from one place to another.  He couldn't understand why  they always had to do so many things.  Tomcat life was simple; You woke up in the morning, ate, washed, went for a brisk walk, scared some birds, came home, slept, ate some biscuits, slept, annoyed the dog and then slept until breakfast time.  If you could fit in some extra sleeping, washing and eating, then that was even better, but there was certainly no moving of furniture, or making loud noises.

'Do you think they're making a nest?' wondered Clem out loud.

'Mmm?' mumbled Mango, not really paying attention.

'The Talls, they're moving everything around and cleaning it.'

'Why are you trying to work out what they're doing?' Mango was trying his best not to be interested, but was failing miserably.

'Because - I just noticed that your ball was under the sofa that they just moved.'

Mango was suddenly VERY interested.  His ball, his wonderful, bouncy, difficult to chase ball! He'd lost it ages ago during one of his hunting experiments.  He was trying to see how many times he could pounce on the ball, knock it across the room, catch it, bite it and bat it away again before it got away from him and went under the sofa.

Unfortunately, the answer was one.

-oOo-

And there you go, it's all I wrote.  Later episodes would involve Saff, the vegetarian but ultimately dim dog, appearances by Enna, Fog and Pop the kittens - And if it were 'have legs' maybe Morty the tail-chasing Staffie.

Something to think about in the future.

Ahhh, what a cutie... Argh! Get it off me!

You know what's great?

Dogs, dogs are great.  Everybody loves dogs... Actually, I do know there are people out there who don't like dogs, they're odd people, but they are out there.  There are even people who are allergic to dogs, but then there are also people who are allergic to water (Yes, there are - The condition's called Aquagenic Urticaria) so we'll leave them out too I think.

I'll try that again... Everybody who doesn't not like, or isn't allergic to dogs, loves dogs.  I've had dogs myself pretty much since I first left my parents' home some twenty-five years ago and I wouldn't be without one.

Don't get me wrong, they're not all sweetness and light, they wreck your stuff, eat your stuff, urinate and defecate on your stuff, run off with your stuff and get hairs all over your stuff.  In fact they often do combinations of two or more of these things simultaneously.  But even when you come home and your dog has torn all the stuffing out of your new sofa cushions, eaten it, then vomited it all up over your other new sofa - All it takes is that tilt of the head to one side, lolling of the tongue and wagging of the tail and all is forgiven... And it's even more adorable if the dog does it to you, and not the other way around.

I seem to have always had, what the media likes to class as 'Dangerous' Dogs.  So I've had a couple of Rottweilers and a couple of Staffordshire Bull Terriers and they've all, to a dog, been as soft as grease (cue cries of 'it's the owners' from anyone who's ever had one of these)

As you can imagine, after so many years of dog ownership, I have a couple of stories.  These few are about my first dog.

-oOo-

My first Rottie, Saffron was a vegetarian. No, really, she was - Couldn't keep normal dog food down at all, made awful smells out of the other end too - But I think that that's a feature of the breed.  She is also the dog that provided the sauce for this famous recipe.

Now, that particular dog was with me through some pretty bad times, where I was associating freely with people who may not have been regular churchgoers, and had more than a passing interest in recreational pharmacology.

It was after a long, hot, Summer's day that one of my confederates was, how should I put it? Using my small living room mirror for purposes other than that for which B&Q supplied it to me.  Despite no financial transactions taking place, he was in possesion of a credit card and a rolled up £20 note.  All was going well, he had divided up a large amount of... Erm... Product... Into a number of longer and fatter than average lines and absently offered them to the person next to him.

The person next to him however, had gone to the toilet, and had been replaced by a 90lb rottie who proceeded to inhale the lot.

Ever seen a rottweiler that's just ingested a large amount of benzoylmethylecgonine? I have... And I don't want to see it again thank you very much.  They're a strong dog, but not hugely bright, and intoxication doesn't help.  We locked her in the porch, hoping that the lack of stimulus would help her to calm down, it did eventually, a couple of hours later, after her walking straight through the wooden door as if it wasn't there.

-oOo-

In fact, when I first bought her as a pup, the breeder warned me that 'Rotties don't go around, they go through.'  She displayed this admirably one day whilst I was training her to 'Stay'.  Simple trick you might think, make the dog sit, tell it to stay, walk a few yards away from it and then call it - very important thing for her to learn.

But I got cocky, and made the distances that I would walk away longer and longer.  100 yards passed without much of a hitch, I mean, she'd start crying and stuff, but she wouldn't move.  Then I got to about 200 yards, and she adopted that 'hunched' pose where you could tell that she wanted to run towards you but still didn't.  I thought that I'd take it to the next level, so I did the 200 yard stay, turned, called her, and then as she started running, I turned and ran. This is the last thing I can remember, but piecing various eye-witness reports, what happened next was that she sped up, to a point where she became a blur and people in the surrounding area claim to this day, that they heard something like the noise the Starship Enterprise makes when she engages warp-drive.

Then she hit me in the back of the legs and I flew up into the air, summersaulted through 270 degrees and landed on my face.  I awoke some minutes later to hysterical laughter from my co-trainer and ferocious licking from a very apologetic dog.

-oOo-

I was gardening once, no, that's a lie, I was in the garden, with a beer, and things were being gardened around me.  I found a couple of chunks of Aerated Concrete block buried in the soil, a bit like breeze blocks, but for girls... So I threw them into the pile of junk that was destined for the skip.  Moments later, I heard what my Mother (before she died) used to describe as a 'graunching' noise.

Turning around, I saw that Saff had eaten most of one of them, and was starting on the other.  Don't remember it effecting her teeth at all, but I tried to take it off her anyway.  She made it clear that she wanted to keep it in that particularly rottweilerish way of rotating her backside around what she was eating, so she was between you and it and, whilst not exactly growling, grumbling quite forcefully to stake a claim for ownership.  I was having none of this and took it off her altogether, but wherever I put it, she would find it and start eating it.  No where was out of bounds... In the end I gave in and let her eat it, it was easier in the long run.

I could go on all day about this, there are stories involving deck chairs and ice-cream and motorcycles, but I'll save them for another time.

Have a nice weekend if I don't see you before.