FURTHERMORE
By Gerry Moran
Saturday 1.05 a.m. approx. I’m bedding down for the night. I switch off the inside lights, switch on the outside ones and check to see if there are any unsavoury characters lurking in the dark. There aren’t but what I do see is a black cat sitting outside my backdoor. A black cat that I have never seen in my entire life. I open the door expecting the cat to scamper off into the night. It doesn’t. Instead, much to my surprise, it approaches me with pleading eyes and a pitiful meow. I know that meow – it’s a hungry meow. A very hungry meow. I talk to the cat – who are you, where did you come from and what the hell are you doing here in ‘my’ feral cat’s territory who has only just vacated the patio after a feed of beef in gravy. The cat, needless to say, doesn’t answer but comes nearer and meows more hungrily. This cat, I’m realising, is starving. Is desperate. So desperate in fact that it is practically in my face and much to my amazement, allows me to rub her/him (or should I say ‘they’) Which I do. (‘my’ feral cat, by the way, which I’ve been feeding for five years or more has never let me get near enough to rub it) Anyway, as the hungry meow grows louder I go to my feral cat’s stash of grub and rip open a pouch of chicken with gravy which the black cat devours as I am literally emptying the pouch damn near ‘taking the hand off me’. I open another – devoured in seconds and another, ditto. Starving might have been an understatement. At last, hunger sated the cat then gives itself the most vigorous cleaning I have ever seen a cat indulge in. And then – off into the night leaving me with several unanswered questions: where has this cat, which is obviously, domesticated, come from? Has it been abandoned? And why is it so hungry? Puzzled, I lock up and head to bed.
Sunday, 12.30 a.m. approx. Well holy God as Miley used say – but the black cat is back, sitting outside my backdoor and meowing as hungrily as ever. More pouches of cat food but this time when finished it comes over to me and slithers in between my legs into our hall! Oh, Oh! This cat is really missing home. Much as I’d like to offer it a home, or at least a bed for the night, I am not in a B&B cat-zone right now. And besides what would ‘my’ feral cat think – knowing that a black stranger, literally, has wormed its way into my affections and home! Something it never attempted, or seemed interest in. But still. Indeed there could well be blue murder if the black cat and the feral cat cross paths outside my backdoor. Furthermore – I would most definitely be in the dog house if my good wife came down to breakfast and found a strange black cat curled up on the couch. Because that is precisely where the black cat would park itself. This cat is used to its comforts, a bit of luxury even which is why I am perplexed as to why it’s ‘out on the street’ so to speak, hungry, lost and looking for a bed.
Homeward bound!
I do hope the black cat (I refuse to call it Blackie, too clichéd while I have never given our feral cat a name – we just call it the Cat) finds its way home and why not considering that Howie, a plucky Persian, traversed 1000 miles (1600 kilometres approx.) of desert, rivers and wilderness in the Australian outback to find his owner when she moved home. And then there was Tom (how original) who traversed the United States, travelling approximately 2,500 miles (4000 kilometres approx.) from St. Petersburg in Florida to find his owners in their new home in San Gabriel, California. It took him just over two years and his journey is thought to be the longest by a cat on record. In the meantime, anyone out there missing a black cat?
