Tigger (22 page)

Early summer is an amazing time of year here. It makes you forget that you've just spent an eternity curled up by the heater, gazing out on to bare branches of uniform brown and a tired, waterlogged lawn. Once the sun warms the soil, a veritable explosion of greenery transforms the world outside, turning stark branches into waving green clouds. The borders fill with all kinds of colourful shrubbery, and when Mum's flowers open up you know that the good times really have begun: sleep-on-the-terrace time is on!

That's in between the hunting, of course: the abundance of greenery is matched by the proliferation of rabbits and mice in the field next door. Alas, new humans have moved in across the field, much livelier than the ones who lived there before, and they have a dog, so my forays over the fence have had to be restricted to very early mornings, but no matter: entire families of small bunnies come over to us through a hole in the fence. All I have to do is sit there and pick them off one by one as they emerge. It's almost too easy. I take them to my secret hiding place behind the house, where I can munch them undisturbed, substituting my poor diet of dry food and a bit of fish in an effort to put some meat on my ribs, while keeping our garden rodent-free.

At the start of our first summer in the new house, Mum decided to stop working so she could spend more time with us. She also wanted to plant more flowers and make various other changes to the garden. This suited us fine: we enjoy watching her work. Tammy likes to stretch out on her back near Mum, wriggle into the smooth soil and soak up the sunshine. She was delighted with the new rhythm of Mum's life. Mum's friends were, too. We had a constant stream of visitors, and as a special surprise Caroline came back for a little while. We were all keen to spend time with her. Mishka, over-eager to get more attention than the rest of us, hyperventilated and ended up getting a bloated stomach, so she had to go to the vet and missed out on a whole night of Caroline's visit. It served her right.

A little later Robin returned with all his things and moved back into his room for a while. We enjoyed long, lazy lunches on the terrace under a big umbrella. Cocktail hour was resumed when Dad found another yard arm somewhere behind the shed, and sometimes the hammock was put up on the lawn – always a magnet for Tammy, who loves to snooze on people's stomachs as they rock from side to side. It was a long, warm summer, and we all made the most of it.

Once the shadows began to lengthen again, Mum and Dad announced they were going on holiday. Needless to say, this filled me with misgivings, given our track record of poor cat hotels in countries other than Australia. I quizzed Mum thoroughly to ensure she had thought this through, and by the time they packed their bags, it seemed she had. We were to stay home with a house sitter.

While this was unquestionably the lesser evil, several concerns remained: would this house sitter know where our food was kept and when to feed us (I am quite particular when it comes to food times)? Would this human be able to handle the dogs, or would I yet again have to do everything myself? For a while, I fretted, imagining all kinds of disastrous scenarios. Then I remembered Lily and relaxed a little. If luck would have it, we might just end up with someone really nice like Lily with the long hair back in America. Now
she
had been a lot of fun. Best to approach Mum and Dad's departure with an open mind.

The house sitter Mum had chosen for us this time turned out to be a kind, conscientious lady called Betty, who stuck meticulously to my schedule and never once forgot our dinner time. Full points to her for that alone. She didn't have long, brown hair, but I reckon you can't have everything.

Betty groomed the dogs with great abandon. They loved their regular beauty treatments so much that Tammy and I longed to have a turn ourselves. Next time the brushes came out, we lined up behind the dogs and were duly slotted into the grooming programme. The feel of the tough dog brush bristles on our skin was surprisingly pleasant. We asked her to do it every day from then on, and sometimes twice.

I made Betty feel welcome from the start by bringing her little gifts and leaving them outside her bedroom door. Had she left her door open like everyone in our family always does, I would have taken my mice and bunnies right up to her bed. As things stood, my gifts risked getting stepped on and squashed by an unobservant foot – and did, twice, to begin with. After that, she was more careful when she opened her door first thing in the morning, and my gifts remained intact.

Tammy took a long time to get used to the presence of a stranger in the house. She ventured out from under Mum and Dad's big bed only when Betty wasn't around and refused her fish at dinnertime. I didn't really mind that, because it meant two dinners for me, but Betty was worried. She sat down at a safe distance from Tammy and spoke to her quietly for ages, until Tammy's eyes returned to their normal size and she agreed to try a little dinner. Regrettably, it didn't agree with her: she vomited everything up again in the night, in front of Betty's bedroom door. It ended up being quite a mess when she stepped in it in the morning, having looked out only for my gift, not Tammy's, but we kept her company while she cleaned the carpet.

Sadly but not surprisingly, the dogs tried to play tricks on Betty. They pretended that Mum and Dad always fed them treats from the table and that Mishka slept upstairs at night, but I explained that they were lying. As an extra precaution, I saw to it that no food was ever left out on the kitchen worktops, particularly in the middle of cooking if Betty ever had to leave the kitchen. She was amazed when she returned from a phone call and found everything cleared up, spick and span. Encouraged by my example, Betty became almost as good as Mum at putting food away immediately or covering it up.

Our days without Mum and Dad passed very pleasantly. Betty was nearly always home with us, cleaning, grooming, wandering around the garden accompanied by us or cooking interesting meals as I watched. In the mornings, she took the dogs for a walk one at a time – wisely, she didn't trust them when they were together. Even on his own, Max proved quite a handful for her: he took her for a really long walk one day, so long we didn't think they were ever coming back. Betty looked hot and a little scruffy when they returned and went straight upstairs to have a bath and a lie-down. Another time, Max attacked another dog and we had its owner banging on our garden gate, promising revenge. I felt a lot of tension in Betty's legs that night as I sat on her lap when we watched TV.

By the time Mum and Dad came back, looking tanned and relaxed, Betty seemed ready to get back to her own home. I reckon she was looking forward to having a rest. We all lined up by the front door to say good-bye and to thank her for all she had done for us. Sadly, we didn't see her again for a very long time.

When eventually she did agree to look after us again, I sensed the kind of wariness in her dealings with our dogs that most humans tend to develop around them. She no longer took any chances at all with them on walks and watched them like a hawk even at home. I helped her by alerting her to any irregular behaviour during those brief moments when she nodded off on the sofa or was otherwise distracted, so while she may not have had a relaxing time with us, things worked out fine.

Until, that is, Mishka decided she wanted Max's dinner as well as her own and attacked him viciously one night as he was happily crunching on his dog food. The attack came quite suddenly, the only warning a snarl and a hoarse bark, before she was all over him. Once recovered from the first shock, Max defended himself bravely, and within seconds my favourite time of day had disintegrated into a noisy bedlam, the two dogs hell-bent on killing each other by tooth and by claw, while Betty wrung her hands and Tammy hid behind the kitchen bin. I reckoned my bowl was out of harm's way up on the worktop, so I continued eating while keeping one eye on the battle, which raged for some time. It was impossible to say who was winning until Max aimed a decisive bite at Mishka's cheek. Suddenly there was blood everywhere and Mishka ran off, howling, on a tour of the house.

Betty remained admirably calm: she went to find Mishka, washed her wound with camomile tea the way Mum does, and cleaned all the blood off the tiles and off the living room carpet. Then she phoned a number of people to get advice on what to do with Mishka, who seemed to be at death's door. I told her not to worry too much: Mishka is pretty tough. But that didn't stop her playing the dying swan for several days, while her wound healed. I could tell by then that Betty was fed up with our dogs.

The next time Mum and Dad went on holiday, we got a different house sitter, Danielle, who was strict and somehow managed to keep one step ahead of the dogs, like I do. They behaved like lambs for her when she took them out for walks, always together and sometimes even with other dogs! I fully expected more bloodshed and possibly a death or two, but they always returned looking docile, their long tongues lolling happily. She clearly had the magic touch. Minor incidents in the house – such as Mishka gobbling up her food too fast and then bringing it up almost immediately on the living room carpet – marred Danielle's time with us a bit, and on one or two occasions she just wasn't fast enough when I announced an urgent call of nature in the night, which began to be a bit of a nuisance for me around that time, but otherwise she did well.

All in all, both our house sitters looked after us well whenever Mum and Dad decided they needed a break, and being able to stay at home made up for minor inconveniences, so we hardly missed them at all.

Autumn brought more and unexpected visitors to our garden. A large, colourful bird flew in one morning, uttering a warbling screech of alarm as he crash-landed on our lawn. He wasn't a very graceful flyer. His size may well have been a hindrance to his flying skills: he was bigger than next door's chickens. When he had regained his composure, he strutted about and painstakingly inspected Mum's flowers one by one, shooting his beak forward at each careful step to peer at a bloom in great surprise, only to retract it disapprovingly before moving on.

I waited, well camouflaged by the autumn foliage, to find out what the bird's final verdict on Mum's efforts would be, and used the opportunity to observe him from a safe distance. I had little experience with large birds beyond the cockatoos of Australia, whose beaks were so sharp I was never tempted to take one on. This one had a much smaller beak, though it looked sharp enough, and fairly big claws. But the really startling thing about him was his truly magnificent plumage: the feathers on his body gleamed in many shades of gold and ended in a long, slim tail which he carried at an arrogant angle. His neck shimmered in dark blues and greens, quite at odds with the general colour scheme, while his face was a splash of bright red. I'd never seen any creature quite so strange, yet so beautiful. I sat and admired him as he continued his assessment of our garden.

Up and down he pranced, peering closely at the pink flowers, taking stern objection to the purple ones and preening his shiny feathers a little in between. On second thoughts, he seemed a bit vain and indecisive. Mum's flowers are pretty as far as I'm concerned, and she's certainly worked hard to make them grow. I thought they deserved at least
some
praise.

I was getting a little hungry in my hiding place. It was time to go in for dinner, but the bird was taking his sweet time, very much in my path. I waited until his back was turned before I emerged from under my bush and crept slowly across the lawn, taking care to avoid any noise or sudden movement, my ears rotating towards the bird for surveillance. A sudden screech made me jump. Looking back, I saw the bird running after me, his slim neck and red-faced head now elongated menacingly in my direction. I broke into a trot, but the bird's long legs worked like pistons to catch up with me. In the end I had to take great leaps in order to stay out of range of his beak and made the cat door with no time to spare. As I dived through, my ears rang with the hysterical warbling of the bird as he charged past. Stunning though he looked with his gleaming feathers and elegant tail, the bird would have to go on my list of undesirable visitors, along with the fox and the fluffy black cat.

I barely had time to get over my encounter with the bird before a small dog invaded our garden and peed on every tree. I saw it from upstairs, where I'd been snoozing on Robin's window sill. Where were our dogs when you needed them? I went to get Mum and Dad. While the dogs snored peacefully in the living room, Dad went outside to meet the vagrant, who was absolutely delighted to see him, jumped high, yapped and panted. It took Dad ages to get a grip of its collar to see its tag and who it belonged to. When Mum opened the door, the dog cheerfully transferred its attention to her, jumped up to give her a big kiss on the lips and a black mark on her white shirt, then ran into the house to greet
me
.

Now, being chased by a bird in the garden is one thing; having my home invaded by a wayfaring scruff is quite another. While I may be half the weight I was back then, my claws are as sharp as ever and I can still fluff myself up to a good size. A couple of yowls and a few right hooks later, the dog was happy to go back outside. Dad used one of our dogs' leads to take it away; Mum washed her face and shirt; I felt ravenous after the adrenaline rush of my defence of our realm and tucked into my food with gusto; the dogs continued to snore.

Mum has always been resourceful when it comes to providing me and Tammy with comfortable sleeping places. In every house I've lived in – and there have been many – she's created cosy corners and interesting viewing platforms for us. From the little fleecy bed placed next to the big black box that is Tammy's all-time favourite on cold winter nights to the folded baby quilt on the window sill with views of the garden, she has excelled herself many times.

Sadly, there have been failures, too. She tends to get carried away by glossy leaflets from pet shops showing cat models enjoying all kinds of useless beds. I don't think she realizes those cats are getting
paid
to look pleased, when in fact they loathe, like I do, beds with raised sides that allow no views of the surrounding area, even if – or maybe precisely because – they have pictures of me printed all over them. Or the raised platform bed precariously suspended from the radiator by two thin brackets. How do I know it's safe? It doesn't look it. I might be warm up there, but I might equally well drop like a stone in mid-snooze. No way am I going on there. Tammy has tried it a couple of times – she doesn't think ahead the way I do – but even she couldn't take to it long-term.

The truth is: custom-made beds are bad news. They cramp my style; they
will
me to get into them, and I feel trapped straight away. It's as though they were made expressly to lure unsuspecting felines into fake consumer cosiness. I won't have it. Why spend money when it's far easier and vastly more comfortable to improvise with what is readily available naturally: a pile of clothes, casually thrown on a bed; an open newspaper on the breakfast table; Dad, asleep on the sofa. All perfect – and free! In Australia, I used to find the washing basket really comfortable, particularly when it was filled with clean, dry clothes either waiting to be ironed or already folded into neat, sweet-scented piles. Then Dad remodelled the laundry room and the basket disappeared, though to his credit he replaced it with a draught proof corner under a cupboard that was almost as good.

Pillows make excellent resting places. Mum's, preferably, but just about anyone's will do if she's not available. Ever since we moved here, Mum and Dad's bedroom door has remained open. In other houses it used to be shut, but there we had other bedrooms and other members of the family to sleep with. Now we just have Mum and Dad, so they had no choice but to let us in; I made sure of that. One large pee on the carpet in front of their room, and the message seeped through – literally. So now I can sleep on Mum's pillow whenever I want to and purr into her hair, which smells reassuringly of all kinds of things I like.

Absolute sleeping perfection, however, was not achieved until Mum went on a shopping spree and returned with a purchase which fulfilled all the criteria for a perfect bed: it wasn't a bed; it was flat, allowing 360⁰ views, while also being luxuriously soft and warm; it went on the floor in Mum and Dad's bedroom; and nobody expected us to sleep on it. We've both been sleeping on it ever since. It's white and fluffy like a big, silky-smooth, furry friend, and we love it. It's absolute indulgence. Full points to Mum for this one; she can take all those other cat beds away.

Our new sleeping quarters didn't come a minute too soon. As it turned out, I was in need of a good rest almost as soon as our new furry friend made its entrance into the bedroom.

One memorable day in late summer we were taking our usual stroll around the forest when a man and his dog stopped to have a chat. I faded into the bracken as usual, but the dog picked up my scent. I knew straight away that my cover was blown and took off in the direction of our garden with the dog in hot pursuit. He was fast, for a dog. I weaved in and out of trees, dived under bushes and flew over fallen tree trunks, the dog's rasping breath never far behind. I knew I couldn't afford any wrong turns or hesitations – fortunately, I knew the forest well by then. But I realized I wouldn't have time to stop, take measure and jump up onto our fence with the creature so close behind, so I chose instead to use a convenient rabbit hole under next door's wire fence for my return to safety. From there, it was an easy few strides to the top of our wooden fence and down in between the conifers to the wide expanse of our lawn, while the dog sniffed up and down the path, whimpering and wondering how I had managed to vanish like that. It felt good to have outwitted him, but it had been a close shave; I was desperately out of breath and my heart took a long time to stop thumping in my chest. Should age be catching up with me a little? Surely not. It was simply a matter of not venturing out quite so far in future.

Yet I had to admit to myself that I hadn't been able to run as fast as I used to. Sure, I'd outrun my pursuer – he was just a dog, after all – but I wasn't at all sure I could do it again if the need arose. So it was with a heavy heart that I decided not to walk in the forest again. Instead, I took to staying behind when Mum, Dad and the dogs went out and called after them to remind them not to stray too far; they are so careless when left to themselves. I was always relieved when they came back unharmed and I was able to greet them at the gate.

Over time, even my forays next door to my mossy wood pile became fewer and fewer as I chose safety over adventure – a totally new concept for me, but one I felt I was ready to embrace now that the furry rug in the bedroom beckoned so enticingly on sunny and rainy days alike.