Occasional Scribbles

Wow!  There’s an enormous thunder storm going on.  There was one last night too.  The entire night sky lit up with sheet lightening and deafening thunder followed.

I love storms.  I find the lightening fantastic to watch, an awesome sight and the tremendous sound of thunder that sometimes shakes the house, quite scary, but in a good scary way.  The animals hate it of course and it is easy to see why.  They don’t know what is happening and it must seem like some giant monster is coming to eat them up or something.  Skinny, the Whippet, being only a year old, has never experienced such a storm and was alarmed initially.  She started whining and wondered around in a restless way, unable to settle anywhere.  She followed me everywhere and leapt up into my lap when I sat down, smothering me and poking me with her gangly legs and elbows.  I tried to be very relaxed about the storm so she would feel calmer and surprisingly, before long, she was asleep and not really bothered at all.  Our cat on the other hand, who is now eight and has been through many storms and fireworks has never got used to it.  She’s had a difficult time one way and another.  She came to our family as a dear little farm kitten from nearby at about the same time as Skinny’s predecessor.  Puppy and kitten got on fairly well, though people told us that the dog would eat the cat.  It was in her nature and breed to do so, they said.  This turned out not to be the case, as fortunately, one day when the pup poked her nose into the kitten’s business, the kitten biffed her one right across the nose, claws out and the pup was very wary ever afterwards.  The same thing happened with the chickens.  The pup attempted to chase the hens and the Cockerels pecked her hard on the nose and she left them alone from then on too.  All was working out quite well really since the ducks also pecked her.  She was properly put in her place.

Unfortunately, though, as the kitten and pup grew up, the dog who was now bigger, started to chase the cat.  The dog had her bed near the cat flap and each time the cat attempted to go through it, she had to pass the dog.  There would be a frantic race between them, the cat hoping to escape through the flap and the dog hoping to get there just before.  They never actually came to blows thank Goodness, but the cat started to get very nervous and spent more and more time out of the house.

I felt very bad about this.  The cat is quite the most delightful cat I have ever known.  Whenever we go for a walk, she will come with us and behaves more like a dog, but surreptitiously.  We might be walking in the nearby churchyard for example and will look around to see the cat perched on a grave stone or peeping out from behind the Yew tree.  But she always comes with us one way or another.  She also talks to you.  She really does.  When I come down stairs in the morning I usually say hello and there follows a conversation between us about what she wants for breakfast, remarks about the weather and so on and all the while she makes noises in answer.  Quite extraordinary.  She’s a real chatterbox.

And then the dog got some sort of cancer aged five and we had to put her down.  After that, the cat, which had almost moved out suddenly had the run of the house.  It took her a while to realise that the bane of her life was no longer with us and she would creep very quietly around looking to see if the dog was behind the sofa or in one of the arm chairs.  Sometimes she would sit on the threshold of the sitting room until she was quite sure that there was no dog anywhere around, before quietly and carefully coming in.  We didn’t get Skinny for a whole year after the dog died and during that time, the cat became bolder and bolder, confidence at a supreme level until one day I brought home a tiny pup.

Poor cat, she was absolutely appalled.  She wouldn’t come into the house again, slept on an old sack right on top of the oil tank in the spidery, cobwebby shed outside. Her fur smelled of oil and was grubby looking and unkempt. I was so distraught to put her through all this again and I felt I had betrayed her.  I know that if I had said to her, ‘hey cat, what do you think about us getting another dog’?  She would have said, ‘not on your life, it’s me or the mutt!’  It took ages and ages, months and months of living rough in the oil shed and the garage, nights spent huddled in the straw, before she finally, tentatively started to come back inside.  The shame of all this, was that by then, the pup was firmly established.  She had not had her nose biffed and been put in order and she wasn’t scared of the cat.  She found her a source of amusement, annoyingly playing with her tail and sticking her nose where it wasn’t wanted.  But gradually, painfully slowly, the two have reached a working, living relationship that works for both – just. 

On occasions, the two actually play together.  The cat sits on a chair; the dog grovels on the floor in a mock scaredy cat fashion, eyes looking up soulfully just before leaping upwards.  The cat will then swirl around on the chair, stretch her arms cunningly under the seat and launch a swift attack with an upper cut from the left and then right.  It’s so funny to watch.  Once the cat has executed this move she sits up straight, licks her paws and looks down on the dog with utter contempt and boredom as if any further play would be thoroughly beneath her and the dog sidles off.

The storm however is another matter.  The cat wants to sit near me, under the table but the dog, jealousy personified, will not allow the cat more attention than herself and chases her off repeatedly.  I scold her but it makes no difference.  So while I love the storms, they cause a bit of a storm in my family.