Writer and planetary modeller David Angus shares a feline story of deception and aggression.
Spring had arrived and the warmth of late March brought the trees out in bloom, then cold winds in April inhibited leaf development so a lot of the ornamental trees were masses of flowers but no leaves. As time went on, the wind loosened the flowers into blizzards and drifts of petals.
The feline population was abroad. Several tried to explore my place and one got as far as the bathroom. Like last year, Becky’s goofy cat was precariously perched on her balcony rail and sitting on my fence watching my television through the back door again. Others appeared on the shed roof such as one who wanted to perch on the roof apex; but up popped the head of another moggie who bopped the first one. A regular Punch and Judy show.
The star though was one of Tony’s cats. He owned the tortoiseshell who befriended me when I first moved in. His other one had been a kitten with markings like a Snow Leopard. Spring brought adolescence and activity. The neighbourhood was his gymnasium and I often saw him working out by dashing here and there and playfully pouncing on anything with acrobatic speed and skill.
The biggest cat was about too. A heavy grey tortoiseshell tom whom I nicknamed the Fat Thug, who’d given me a look of outraged culpability when I caught him coming out of my shed last summer – (How dare you! I’ve crapped in your shed!) – and then tried to tear the fence up climbing up it to get away.
Matters came to a head one day when, while crossing the forecourt, I heard the sound of a feline punch up upstairs near Tony’s place. Two furry things hurtled along the access balcony to the far stairwell. One of these was the Fat Thug who was probably bullying the snow leopard so I went to the stairwell and waited for the loser to appear.
But it was the fat thug who appeared, cowed and beaten and I was cutting off his escape. His look this time was one of ‘Oh shit.’ I let him go to skulk disconsolately around the rear of the block while the new kid on the block arrived, the Snow Leopard, growling with flue brush tail. ‘Alright, you’ve made your point.’
The Snow Leopard was a kitten no more, but growing all the time, a beautiful physical specimen, with speed, power and a killer punch. This new kid on the block established his reign through a series of moggie wars, which sounded like choirs of demented babies, and probably involved beating up the Fat Thug again. I once saw him sitting outside the Fat Thug’s front door as though he was wondering why he wouldn’t play with him? I drew the line when he picked on Becky’s cat which I felt was uncalled for.
‘Stop murdering every cat on the block!’
The Snow Leopard’s values involved his opponent’s size and assertiveness, so his reply was a pathetic unconvincing mew.
‘What me? Wouldn’t hurt a fly.’
Picture ‘A montage of cat pictures using images from Wikimedia creators’ re-used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
