Thursday, August 10, 2006

The faithless cat

A man is on trial in Britain for shooting his neighbour at close range with a shot gun. She is dead, of course.

And what drives a man to such extremes? Well, cats and pigeons, apparently. And beer chased with whisky.

You see he loved birds, he was a pigeon fancier. And she loved cats. And cats and pigeons don't mix. Her cats were poisoned with antifreeze and his pigeon hut was burnt. He told her son "I'm going to kill your mum."

"I thought it was an idle threat," said the son in court testimony.

-o-

Cats don't really keep boundaries well. Most don't respect property. We had to pay a vet bill of 60 quid recently because a cat attacked our Fancy. I often see the "two brothers" in our garden and I've seen Lion Cat especially go after my poor, tiny little Fancy. He lies in wait, hidden in the foliage above the shed until the train goes by at the bottom of our garden. He uses the noise as cover to spring a surprise attack from behind.

Not that Fancy's particularly a homebody. She loves to roam and to visit. She often scrambles over the fences and rooftops to survey her (disputed) domain.

She's been gone a lot of late. She used to go and visit the young Poles two doors down (gone now, thank goodness, along with their impossibly loud Baltic pop). She's taken up visiting their much quieter replacements (still youthful, but by my reckoning medical students who came by one day warning of a party and complimenting my garden). She also visits with our divorced next door neighbour. It's not him she likes - I've seen him whistle to her and she ignores him (not a cat person clearly - who whistles to beckon a feline?) But she loves his teenaged daughter, who visits not infrequently. I've seen Fancy scramble over the fence to greet her when she hears her voice.

I was petting Fancy the other night in our garden when the daughter stepped out into theirs. My little cat sprang away from me and popped over. I heard the girl's boyfriend say "Look who's back."

Faithless feline. But I guess that's what you get when you name your cat after a whore.
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