Julia Field - Cats and Their Tales

J ulia F ield

Austin Macauley Publishers

2021-01-08

Cats Protection

RSPCA, Godstone

Benny and TC

I can still remember the cats I had when I was younger and living with my parents. Fortunately for me, my husband liked cats too. Our first two cats were black-and-white (or more white-and-black) and ginger-and-white. My mother-in-law knew someone who had kittens, so we went along to see them.

Although the kittens were quite tiny, they were darting around the owners garden, and they seemed quite confident. We fell in love with them straight away, and called them Benny and TC, after the cats in the cartoon series Top Cat. They loved to play together, and had the run of the house.

They were, of course, quite different in personality. Benny, the white-and-black cat, was outgoing and affectionate. He would always run upstairs to look for me, whilst TC was more aloof. The name TC soon fell by the wayside, as we could not stop calling him Ginger or Ginny.

We used to shut the kittens in the kitchen at night, but they always managed to get out. We had a folding door in the kitchen, and they discovered that if you leant on it a couple of times, it would fold up, so that there was enough room to squeeze out.

We even left a chair propped up against the door to prevent them from getting out. But they soon worked out how to squeeze past the chair, and those tiny little feet would quickly make their way up the stairs, into our bedroom again.

The kittens enjoyed going in the garden when they were big enough. They had a very unusual habit of looking for earthworms, bringing them back and playing with them, while they were dangling from their mouths. It was something I had never seen before.

After we had been in our house for a few years, my husband decided to install an alarm system. This involved going under the floorboards, to lay the cables. The first thing my husband did was to get Benny to go under the floorboards to see if there were any nasty surprises there, such as spiders, mice or rats. But Benny did not need any coaxing. He could not wait to go down and have a look around.

After a while, we forgot that Benny was under the floorboards, and he suddenly popped up through the gap in the floor, and gave us the fright of our lives. It was like something out of the film, The Alien.

Benny had some strange tastes in food. If I was peeling potatoes, he would sit by the side of the sink, scoop out the potato peelings, and sit there munching them. He was very fond of crisps and peas too.

As far as playing was concerned, he loved jumping into cardboard boxes. If I was unwrapping something in a box, he would jump inside it straight away. For some reason, I always felt closer to Benny than TC.

TC loved to sleep in our bathroom sink. His ginger fur looked good against the pink sink. I think TC was my husbands favourite. My husband used to pick him up, and drape him round the back of his neck. TC was so chilled out. Unfortunately, I do not remember much more about TC as we had him for such a short time.

We lived on a fairly busy road, and after about a year, a neighbour knocked on the door, and said that TC had been run over. I still remember it to this day. As my neighbour told me the news, my body lurched forward, and my neighbour put his hands out to steady me. He even had a glass of brandy ready, as he knew it would be a shock.

My husband had the unenviable task of picking up TCs body, and burying him in the garden. I was too distraught to do anything. The only consolation was that Benny did not go out to the front of the house, or near the road. And Benny was the one with whom I had formed a closer bond.

Spook and Choo-Choo

My husband brought Spook home because he thought that Benny might be lonely, after TC had passed away. I was surprised when I saw Spook. He was the tiniest black-and-white kitten I had ever seen. He must have been the runt of the litter. I think he was even too small to be away from his mother. He seemed to want to be near Benny all the time, treating him like a mother substitute.

Unfortunately, Benny did not feel the same way, and although he tolerated Spooks presence, he was not particularly affectionate towards him. He remained rather aloof. Wherever Benny went, Spook would follow. Up on top of the kitchen cupboards they would go, and Spook would cuddle up to Benny. They even went up on to the garage roof together, and snuggled up in the corner.

Every now and then, Benny had this strange habit of flying into a rage, and chasing poor Spook round the garden at 100mph. I think he just liked to assert his authority, and show Spook that he was the boss and the alpha cat.

I think Spook was quite highly strung anyway. He purred when he was happy, and he purred when he was nervous. On top of that, he always seemed to be cleaning himself. If I had to guess his star sign, I would say that he was a Virgo!

We had Spook for just five years. After being in our current house for six years, we decided to move to a house round the corner, to a quieter road. The irony was that Spook went back to our previous house, and got run over crossing the road. A passer-by spotted him and phoned us.

I can remember the phone call to this day. When my husband and I went to the spot to look for him, his body was no longer there. I think the Council had moved it without letting us know. If it had not been for the kind lady who looked at the name disc and phoned us, we would never have known what had happened.

I think that councils are under an obligation now to inform owners of accidents, if cats carry a form of identity. There is nothing worse than not knowing what has happened to a cat or dog that has disappeared without trace.

Our next cat was Choo-Choo. He was a stripy, brown tabby cat, and one of the sweetest and most gentle cats I had ever come across. He was not quite fully grown when we got him, so we guessed his age to be about six to nine months.

Apparently, he used to wander around with his mother, visiting different offices where my husband had business contacts. The office workers in the area said that he had a very sweet nature, and was like his mother in personality. We called him Choo-Choo after another of the cats in the Top Cat cartoon. But Choo-Choo soon got shortened to Choo-ee.

So now we had three cats. Unfortunately, my other two cats treated Choo-ee like an outsider. As a result, Choo-ee never wanted to eat with them. When it was feeding time in the morning, he would run straight out of the back door to avoid them.

His eating habits were very strange too. He did not like normal cat food, and would only eat dried food, such as Go-Cat biscuits. Because I felt that he was missing out, I used to cook some pigs kidneys in gravy for him every weekend. He loved it so much, that he used to jump on top of the worktop, while it was cooling down.

Choo-ee made friends with a kitten next door, or the other way round. The kitten used to regularly come over to play. When Choo-ee saw him, he would shake his head from side-to-side in anticipation. He also liked to ambush him in the bushes, and chase him across the garden. It is strange how cats choose their friends. I have noticed how some cats can also take an instant dislike to other cats.

Although I felt very alone in my marriage, I always had my cats to comfort me. They never judged me or criticised me, and their affection was constant. I always looked forward to seeing them, and it kept me going through the difficult, dark days of my marriage.

Some years later, my husband and I decided to separate and divorce. Choo-ee was our only cat at the time. I was moving into a maisonette on a large estate, and we thought that it was better to leave Choo-ee in his current home, with my husband. He was not a very confident cat, and we felt that moving to another location was not in his best interests. It was a difficult and heart-wrenching decision for me to make.