Around November/December last year, we started getting visits from a young ginger cat that we’d seen knocking around a few times. I initially shooed him away, because God knows we have enough mouths to feed without encouraging an all-you-can-eat feline pop-up restaurant on a daily basis, but then I started noticing something weird.
(This post was written in March 2014, but never published because I forgot to add photos to it. I’ve added pictures in for publishing; the text remains unchanged. Ginge is still very much a part of the family and very naughty but very lovable).
Sure, he’d shovel food in his mouth at any opportunity, but he was also starting to sleep on an old blanket in our conservatory every night. That room is either the coldest (practically icy) or the hottest (literally feet-burning) in the house, depending on the time of year. Whilst our cats love it in the summer, they only tolerate it for breakfast in the cold, dark winters. This was the first hint I got that this cat had no other options to escape the frost and rain. Our garden is incredibly difficult to get into, and for a cat to manoeuvre his way in and be willing to take on a fight with our lot, he must be pretty desperate.
Whenever I came downstairs to feed the cats and he was still asleep, he’d jump up guiltily and immediately run out of the cat flap. One day I happened to be in the kitchen and saw him outside. I threw him a bit of bacon rind and he looked startled, amazed and then grateful in quick succession. He picked it up as fast as lightning and jumped over the fence with it still in his mouth to protect it from anyone else who might want to steal his prize.
Gradually, we made him more and more welcome. Over the following months he started wandering into the house, sleeping on the cat beds, then the sofa, then our bed. At first he didn’t understand duvets (lying only on the sheet at the very edge at the bed), or stairs (awkwardly going up or down), or crunching his food properly (quietly sucking chunks of dry cat food), but he’s learned a lot. He’s even made his Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook debuts, so he’s like a real person now ;)
He’s still young (the vet thinks maybe between 1 and 3 years old), and weirdly, he acts a bit like a dog. He’s very expressive with his tail, but in a dog-like way, he rolls on his tummy and asks for a tummy rub with his paws tucked up under his chin, and he’s attracted to any dog owners who visit. He’s cheeky and adorable in equal measures, and he’s almost always first in line for breakfast. He also ‘talks’ a lot, doing a weird chirping thing. I don’t really understand a lot of what he’s saying, but I’m slowly getting there with working out what he wants.
For various reasons, we didn’t end up taking him to the vet until a few weeks ago. We have a friend who’s a vet, and she said there was a good chance that as an unneutered male he could well have feline HIV or leukaemia. We were already so attached that we couldn’t face finding out…but when we took him to get checked out, the test results all came back negative. As a double bonus, he wasn’t chipped either, so we got him chipped and had the first round of vaccinations after waiting a while and looking around and advertising to see if anyone was missing a cat.
Despite the vet saying that he’d be sleepy from the anaesthetic after his visit, he was awake enough to punch through the catch on the cat carrier and start running round the bus on the way back home (!) Once home, he had to stay in for 24 hours…after unsuccessfully trying to dig through the window frame, he when proceeded to sit on the windowsill, lean over, and use his paw to press the door handle down (!!!) He would have escaped if I hadn’t noticed and bolted it – the strange thing was that he – very reasonably – thought he wasn’t applying enough pressure and tried to use his chin and paw together to apply enough force! I don’t even know how he understood how doors work. This cleverness is balanced by the incredibly dumb things he does as well though; like walking straight past me and heading upstairs to ‘wake me up’, assuming I’m in my bed. He’s batshit crazy. So he fits right in :D
He gets on with some of the cats better than others, but we absolutely love him and he’s a great addition to the family. Welcome, Ginge!
1 Comment
What a beautiful cat! You cay Ginge is dog-like,well my Chihuahua is cat-like. I swear she meows sometimes. She spends a lot of time with my parent’s five cats. lol
03/12/2015 at 7:53 am