It was a nice
summer day two years ago. All the doors and windows were open. Gizmo just appeared, looked
around, checked out everyone present and stayed all day and eventually for the night. She
was wearing a collar with a phone number so the next morning we rang it. Gizmo's owner
came round quickly from half a mile away and unceremoniously stuffed her into a cardboard
box. Apparently this lady had two cats. After the arrival of a baby recently Gizmo's nose
had been firmly put out of joint. The other cat was fine but Gizmo was being very
difficult. We were really sorry to see Gizmo go. We had lost our own two cats the
previous year and although we had promised ourselves a few cat-free years ("they are
such a tie") the short time that Gizmo had been in the house was a pleasant reminder
of the soft-footed nosiness and general langourous affability that all cats seem to
display. We need not have worried. Gizmo came back the next day, and the next, and the
next .....until eventually her owner unhappily accepted the new reality. Gizmo had voted
with her paws.
Being chosen by your pet does create a
different sort of relationship which was new to us. There's a kind of unspoken threat
lying behind everything..."if you don't treat me right, I shall probably move
on". The gratitude is shifted to our side. "How lucky we are to be
honoured". But Gizmo has settled in fine. She prefers voles to birds so the tit
population in the garden is on the increase. She has finally (and it seems irrevocably)
chosen the three flavours of Felix she is prepared to eat. She will occasionally sit on
your lap - at a time of her choosing. She moves around selectively between a few preferred
spots in the house which combine the warmth of a radiator with real sunlight. In the summer she lives in the
herbaceous border behind the asters.
Like all cats she knows every single thing in
the house and gets upset by changes. Anything new is inspected and logged. This includes
paintings so at exhibition times when fifty parcels are brought in, unwrapped and their
contents hung - Gizmo becomes a kind of obsessive cataloguer. After the paintings are all
hung a new familiar order is restored in her life..but then...wham... all the
pictures disappear again - leaving a puzzled Gizmo to check out the empty spaces. She has
a noise for this - a soft, tortured kind of whine - which I guess is the sound of sheer
frustration. Let's hope this unfortunate and frequent disruption to her sense of good
order doesn't make Gizmo give up on us because she's great to have around. |
