I had always said I would never have another cat, not after the loss of my beloved Fluffy. He was the most beautiful feline I had known and, as is often the way with cats, it was he who chose to come and live with me. That November it was dark and dismal and I had reluctantly gone to the supermarket, battling my way through driving rain. As I turned into my road, I heard the sound of plaintive meowing and finally traced where it was coming from. Sheltering under a parked car was a beautiful brown tabby with a ruff of fur and fluffy ‘boots’ and tail. His amber eyes gazed at me beseechingly. He made no attempt to struggle when I picked him up and carried him inside.
I opened a tin of pilchards and he wolfed them down. The next day he was still with me. It wasn’t until several days later that I discovered he belonged to a woman who lived across the road. Instead of being annoyed with me for this catnapping, she asked me to come and talk to her. Fluffy, she told me, was about two years old. She’d had him from a kitten and he had been a family pet. Lately, he had spent a lot of his time hiding or sitting on a high shelf. Then he refused to come into the house. This stressed behaviour had begun ever since she acquired a dog.
‘I’ve been leaving food out on the doorstep,’ the woman said, ‘but it’s not a happy situation.’
By then I had fallen in love with Fluffy and I think he was quite partial to me too. The solution, we agreed, was that he moved over to my house.
It is no exaggeration to say that I worshipped that cat and grew very close to him. He was a little monkey about coming in at night and my voice could be heard, echoing through the night, as I called and called him. But once I’d coaxed him in, he slept on my bed close to me.
Over the four years I shared my life with him, he used up several of his nine lives. About a year later, as I sat tapping away on my computer, Fluffy rushed in and sat quite still on the back of a chair. Sensing something was wrong, I examined him and found he had an eye injury. I rushed him to the vet and for a while it was touch and go as to whether he would lose the sight. I don’t know how it came about but suspect it was someone with an air rifle. It took a lot of care and treatment before the injury was healed.
It took a while longer for Andrew to fall under Fluffy’s spell. Unlike me, he had not been brought up with many cats. But soon he was as captivated as me. In the summer, we used to sit in the garden under an umbrella and there the cat would come striding up the garden in his ‘boots’ and demand that one of the chairs be vacated for him. Of course, I jumped to attention. In winter, he loved to lie close by the coal fire. I can see him now, my little lion with his fine tawny coat.
‘He’s like your child,’ a friend once said. And I couldn’t have loved him anymore if he was.
The second alarm came when once again I was working and Fluffy came silently into the room. I happened to glance round and was horrified to see that he lay on the carpet bleeding profusely from his back leg. We raced him to the emergency vet, where stitches were put in his deep cut and plaster cast. I still remember the joy when I picked him up the following morning and brought him home. It was just before Christmas and I abandoned all plans in order to stay in with him. I brought a mattress into the sitting room and slept beside him for several nights, the risky bond of affection forged ever more strongly between us.
Four years after I found Fluffy under that car, I was on the point of leaving for a holiday in Greece when I realised there was something very wrong with him. The vet said he could feel an obstruction and at first thought it must be a fur ball. Medicine was prescribed but he seemed floppy and lethargic. My sister Susan said she would look after him but I was in tears as I arrived at Gatwick. On the beautiful island of Kefalonia, I walked on the beach with Andrew but my mind was constantly on my beloved cat. When, two days into the holiday, my sister phoned and told me Fluffy was probably suffering from cancer, I made up my mind to return to England. The holiday turned into a nightmare. After a day trying to contact the rep who was nowhere to be found, we decided to take matters into our own hands. I packed my case and we went to the airport where we tried to find a flight. I was reduced to tears but Andrew was determined. Finally, when all attempts to get to Gatwick had failed, he managed to buy the last ticket for a flight to the West Midlands and literally pushed me through check-in. From there it was a three-train journey back home, during which the wheels on my suitcase broke. I was able to spend Fluffy’s last two weeks with him before he collapsed and, in spite of all attempts to save him, died. Unless one has experienced the loss of an animal, especially in such traumatic circumstances, it is difficult to understand its effect on me.
I finished up with a nervous collapse.
‘No more cats,’ I said, the day we buried him in the garden. ‘I will never go through this again.’
Seven years later, in 2006, Sheba came into my life.
‘I have three rescued cats in my shed,’ Susan, my sister, told me. ‘Why don’t you come up and have a look at them?’
Their story was an awful one. A man in Worthing had, for unknown reasons, sheds of cats and dogs on his premises. Several of them were black. What was his reason we will never know, although there is evidence that people use black cats in demonic rites and Halloween was fast approaching. Susan and some friends had taken the cats away.
Sheba chose me without a doubt: she climbed on my lap, settled there and began to purr. As I gazed into her beautiful emerald-green eyes, I was hooked. I don’t know what had happened to her in that time with the man. Her tail hung in a strange way and she constantly coughed and sneezed streams of mucus. She wouldn’t come out of the bed I’d bought her and so we nicknamed her the ‘Igloo Girl’.
‘We might have to amputate her tail,’ my vet concluded. ‘And she will have to be on antibiotics for the rest of her life.’
So I took her away. I treated her with homeopathic remedies and watched her thrive. She stopped sneezing and started to go out in the garden. The tail improved, although, to this day, it still has a slightly odd curve. Love was the magic wand and animals respond to it so well, but there would be other hurdles to cross in the years to come.
Fluffy’s personality was very different to Sheba’s. He was a neutered tom so the search for a mate was not the reason why he liked to wander. At the end of my road is a railway station and once I found he had strayed as far as the little railway garden tended by neighbours. The back garden and those backing onto it are Sheba’s territory. If she manages to get round to the front she usually panics and meows to be let in. Fluffy and Sheba were not related, but Toby and Richard, two of my sister’s cats, were brothers. The contrast in nature couldn’t have been more defined. Richard, a tabby, was afraid of his own shadow. He was never happier than when curled up on my sister’s lap. Black Toby, with his aristocratic nose, was a very confident cat and a hunter. Yet they were born of the same mother and, presumably, had an identical kittenhood.
So what is the reason for this? Is it Nature or Nurture? As always, genetics are one of the driving forces. Their influence can be seen most clearly in pure breed cats. Generally speaking, Maine Coon cats are very laid back. They are not overly dependent on their human family either. Instead of pestering you for attention, they will remain close by for companionship. I always thought Fluffy, with his ruff and ‘boots’, had a touch of Maine Coon about him.
Typically, this relaxed breed develops slowly, until maturing around the ages of three or four. Ageing does not eliminate their playful, kitten-like temperament and reputation as ‘gentle giants’ of the feline world. There’s no denying the popularity of the Maine Coon. Even those who know very little about cats know this breed by name.
Siamese cats are very different and have a certain similarity to dogs. While many people see cats as very stand-offish, the Siamese is very friendly and loves to be part of the family. You can even walk a Siamese on a lead, if you want.
In ancient times, the Siamese cats were often used as guard cats. Their very loud cries were more than enough to alert everyone in the household to intruders. And, friendly and affectionate as they are with family, your Siamese will be much more stand-offish with strangers.
From my experience of my own cats, I know that, even if their beginnings were far from ideal, they both responded to love and attention. I have seen a remarkable change in Sheba over the years. Her response to human beings, even those she has only met for the first time, is outgoing and affectionate. When, two years ago, she underwent extensive surgery for cancer in her ear, the staff were amazed by her first reaction on coming out of the anaesthetic: wanting to be stroked. She will do anything to get attention, rubbing her head against visitors’ legs and, when that doesn’t work, lying sprawled on her back. This is a far cry from the nervous cat who for weeks stayed in her ‘igloo’ when she first arrived. It has proved to me that cats, far from being aloof as so many people think, respond to us not only because we feed them.