Toe in the Water

The Wild One

The Wild One

I don’t remember how we acquired this cat. All I know is that he came to us with the assurance that he was the result of an affair a domestic cat had with a bush cat, the wild cat of Africa from which all our tamed cats came. This was supported both by his size (he was not enormous but considerably larger than most cats) and his character (we did not appreciate initially how wild he was but it became apparent in time).

He was certainly different from other cats. He had that aloofness of all cats but added to this was a complete disregard for the rules. This became apparent when several steaks disappeared from the kitchen. It was an impressive feat for a cat to carry them off, let alone devour them.

I must admit that I have forgotten the name we chose for him. It hardly matters anyhow, since he never acknowledged it any way. This was a cat that went his own way and made few compromises with his alleged owners. He appeared at mealtimes and occasionally would submit to being petted for a while, but that was it - in the main he was still wild.

At the time, we were living in a cottage in the grounds of a larger house where lived the landlady and her family. She also had several labradors trained as hunters and these became our cat’s playthings.

There was a thick hedge that ran from the cottage to the far side of the property and the cat had several holes at the base of the hedge where he could get through. He would saunter up to the big house, tantalise the dogs into chasing him, and then run down to the hedge. In a flash he would be through one of his holes. The dogs would crash into the hedge but could not get through the small holes that the cat had made.

That was embarrassing enough but the cat would sit just out of reach on the other side, looking back at the dogs and smiling. And I must admit that I was a little proud of our tough and devious cat.

Eventually the dogs gave up and ignored the cat in his expeditions into their home territory. This became important later on.

The landlady kept rabbits in a row of hutches against the fence at the far side of the yard. These were used in training the dogs. I never witnessed how this was done but am fairly sure that it didn’t end well for the rabbits.

And then the rabbits started disappearing. We received a visit from the landlady and she claimed that our cat was killing and stealing her rodents. I couldn’t see how the cat could break into the hutches, extract a rabbit, and then carry it off to be eaten. The rabbits were almost as big as the cat, after all. We promised to keep an eye on the culprit even so.

Yet those rabbits continued to disappear and never did anyone catch the cat in the act. It was not until there were no rabbits left that the landlady managed to prove her assertion. The evidence was undeniable.

I was really impressed. What a cat we had!

But we did have to find somewhere else to live. Landladies can be so unreasonable at times.

And that meant finding another place to live. I changed jobs at the time and had managed to find work in another town, so it was going to be a long move. When the time came, the last thing we had to do was catch the cat. This was not that difficult and we duly inserted him into the cardboard carrying case the veterinarian had given us.

It took the cat all of thirty seconds to burst his way out of one end of the case and head for the trees. We had to give up on him that day.

The next day, we were back with catfood and succeeded, after hours of trying, to get him back into a stronger case we had bought for the task. Then, at last we could set out for the new town.

Three hundred miles with a cat yowling in protest in the back is not a pleasant experience.

We followed all the rules of moving a cat into a new home, keeping him inside for over a week. But you have to let them loose eventually and, when we did, he was off into the blue distance and we never saw him again.

I’ll bet he made his way back to the old place and continued his war with those labradors. They get very attached to their territory, cats.

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