Sex and the Kitty Read online

  I found the humans much easier to manage, and it soon became evident that cat/human relations were my natural forte. I learned that there were certain taboos that had to be respected (bodily excretions deposited anywhere other than the litter tray, for instance, and attempting to eat from people’s plates while they were in the middle of a meal), but in most other respects they were a doddle. I also worked out very early on that it is, in fact, the little people who rule the human home, and that the key to successful cohabitation with humans lies in keeping on side with the children. Their techniques for manipulating their elders could form a master class in psychological warfare, in particular their ability to get what they want through dogged persistence alone. If they wanted to play with me, I would play, for I had discovered that once I had reduced them to helpless giggles they were putty in my paws. In exchange for a quick session of kitten-trapped-under-a-duvet, for instance, they would happily fill my bowl with cat treats. (And, unlike the adults, they took no notice of whether there was already a pouch of food lying untouched in the dish.)

  By observing Pip’s behavior I also picked up a few attention-seeking techniques. One of his ploys was the “scratching the TV screen while people are watching it” maneuver, which for a while was an effective way of getting himself a top-up of crunchies, but had to be abandoned when our owners bought a water pistol to keep by the sofa. In retaliation for the soakings he received, Pip came up with his “killer move”: scratching at the bedroom mirror in the middle of the night. He was smug about this technique, and with good reason. It had a 100 percent success rate at getting someone to feed him, with the added benefit that a half-asleep human stumbling around at four a.m. was invariably more generous with the crunchies than a fully conscious human in the middle of the day.

  I challenged myself to devise a method of waking the humans to outdo Pip’s. One night I waited until all the humans were in a deep sleep, and then I jumped onto the wardrobe in the children’s bedroom and began to knock toys off the top. I correctly deduced that by waking up the little people first, and allowing them to do the necessary shouting and hollering, the grown-ups would respond just as quickly as they did to Pip’s scratching but, crucially, without blaming me for the disturbance. Sure enough, one of them stumbled in to settle the children and—coincidentally—tripped over me at the top of the stairs on the way back to bed. I assumed an air of “ just passing,” when the thought apparently crossed my mind, “I don’t suppose you could top up the crunchies, since you’re up anyway?” Bingo. A full meal at three a.m. without the people realizing I was the reason they had been woken in the first place. That’s black cat intelligence in action: getting someone else to do your dirty work for you.

  It was also quite early on in my kittenhood that I developed my talent for comedy. It was a discovery I made purely by accident, when I tried to run across a freshly mopped wooden floor one morning. A lesser kitten might simply have given up upon realizing that the usual grip effect of its paw pads was failing. I, however, decided to keep running, pumping furiously with my hind legs while my front legs splayed out in all directions, claws desperately scrabbling to grab hold of something. Before long I was adding to my slapstick routine with new tricks, including the “reverse backflip in pursuit of dangled piece of string” and the timeless classic “rolling off sofa while asleep.” Seeing the hilarity my antics induced in my owners gave me my first inkling that a career as a performer might suit me.

  Around the time I became aware of my own nascent ability as an entertainer, I began to notice another cat with precocious talents. This was a cat who appeared on the television, often several times a day, in a cat food commercial. The cat in question was an orange-and-white tom, clearly in his physical prime, who was filmed in various high-energy pursuits—running underneath a waterfall, jumping over a stream, outwitting a (particularly dumb-looking) dog who was trying to block his way, all to the pumping soundtrack of Destiny’s Child’s “Bootylicious.” Having dodged all obstacles the feline hero rushed through a cat flap into a farmhouse kitchen to feast on a bowl of delicious-looking food. He looked straight to camera in the commercial’s final shot as the words “Kit-e-Licious: Are you ready for my chunks in jelly?” appeared on the screen.3

  This was not the only cat food commercial I had seen, but something about it got to me, maybe because it depicted a world I had yet to experience—the world of the great outdoors. Apart from the journey to my new home (during which I had been enclosed in a cat carrier), I had never been outside.

  That, however, was about to change.

  After about a month of routine in which I would sleep, eat, play, wash, and sleep again, the cat box reappeared in the hallway, alongside an additional identical one. Before I knew it I was scooped into the familiar-smelling receptacle, and Pip was similarly dispatched into his. Now, this is exciting, I thought, although judging from the look on Pip’s face he did not share my enthusiasm. In fact, if anything, Pip looked decidedly downcast. In the car I was placed on the backseat between the children, and Pip traveled up front in the passenger seat. And I hope he won’t mind me saying that, once in the car, he cried like a girl.

  A short while later we were both placed on the floor of a large room. Unable to see anything other than my owner’s legs, I assessed my surroundings using my other senses. Smells: antiseptic, humans, unfamiliar cats, dogs. Sounds: assorted mews and yelps, claws scraping on hard surfaces, Pip’s piteous yowling. After a few minutes of waiting we were ushered into a smaller room, where a man placed Pip’s box on the top of a table, leaving me to observe proceedings from my box on the floor. The man (a vet, as you have probably deduced) proceeded to examine Pip, checking his mouth and ears and squeezing his tummy, before finally sticking a needle between his shoulder blades, which I could tell from Pip’s body language was not a pleasant experience.

  In my cat box awaiting the inevitable, my eyes were drawn to a poster on the wall. It was a photo of an orange-and-white tom smiling at the camera, displaying two rows of gleaming white teeth.

  “For a bite that’s bright, use Feli-Fang toothpaste!” read the text at the bottom. I’m sure I know that cat, I thought. Then it dawned on me—it was the cat from the Kit-e-Licious TV commercial.

  He certainly gets around, I thought, but before I knew it my box was being hoisted onto the table, and the vet’s face was peering at me through the door.

  My memories of what followed are what you might call impressionistic: a bright light, what I would term “groping” by the vet, a needle. I understood why Pip had looked so morose on the journey over. But it was all over quickly enough and we were soon inside our boxes, being put back into the car.

  Perhaps it was a coincidence, but I found that when we returned home, for the first time in my twelve weeks of life, the back door was left open. After three months of doors being slammed in my face and cat flaps being hastily locked, the outside world was suddenly made available to me. I could take my first tentative steps into the great outdoors.

  CHAPTER 2

  Beyond the Back Door

  A bird does not sing because it has an answer.

  It sings because it has a song. And because it is trying to annoy me.

  —Chinese proverb (amended by me)

  It was a sunny day in early September when I nervously ventured out for the first time. Remember I was only twelve weeks old and small for my age, and until now the outside world was something I had only ever seen from the safety of a windowsill or through the door of my cat box. Now I was at one with the wilderness (or at least, with a rectangle of lawn surrounded by a herbaceous border), and I don’t mind admitting that I was daunted by the scale of it. I sat on the patio. I sniffed. I jumped unexpectedly when a loud noise or sudden movement took me by surprise. I sniffed some more. Pip observed my uncharacteristic timidity with wry amusement.

  I was mesmerized by the birds in the trees. Allow me to tell my human readers something about the birdlife in your gardens. Their chirps, tweets, and
coos may sound like pleasant musical wallpaper to your ears, but to cats, it’s a form of aural torture. The dismal, mindless monotony of it! Approximately 80 percent of all bird dialogue consists of:

  “I’m here! Where are you?”

  “I’m here, see! I’m here!”

  “Oh, there you are! I can see you. Can you see me?”

  “Yes, I can see you. I’ve moved. Now I’m over here!”

  The utter inanity of it is enough to send a cat into a murderous rage. You wonder why cats kill birds and don’t bother to eat them? We’re not playing; we’re not offering you gifts; we’re not suffering from the delusion that we can teach you to hunt; we’re just trying to shut the feathery bastards up!

  As if the updates about their own location weren’t bad enough, I noticed that birds spend the remaining 20 percent of their waking hours reporting on the whereabouts of cats.

  “There’s a cat! There’s a cat!”

  “I know! I can see it!”

  “It’s moved! Watch out!”

  “Is it coming my way? Where is it?”

  Can you imagine what life would be like if your every movement were noted and discussed by a dozen feathered commentators? Trust me, if humans could understand what the birds are saying, you would want to take the lot of them out with an air rifle.

  But I’m not here to talk about the birds. Cats are the plat du jour on my autobiographical menu.

  I quickly realized that a handsome gray-and-white tabby called Dennis was our street’s alpha cat. He was one of the few unneutered toms in the area and an old-school “unreconstructed male.” In other words, he wasn’t afraid of getting into a fight. His ears bore the scars of countless territorial battles, and he carried himself with a confident swagger. Alpha cats patrol their domain on a daily basis, spraying at least one point in each garden along the way. Observing this behavior in Dennis, I was struck by the Sisyphean futility of the alphas’ ritual. No sooner had a tree been sprayed, but the scent had faded and needed to be resprayed, or another cat had come along and oversprayed it. What was the point, I wondered. What higher purpose was served by this endless spraying? Perhaps, I pondered, from my vantage point on the patio, this was another example of the nature vs. nurture debate. No matter how much you humans “domesticate” us, there are some instincts cats are unable to suppress, and unfortunately for you, it’s usually the ones involving bodily excretions. Such questions did not seem to bother Dennis, however, as he aimed his hindquarters at our forsythia and delivered a dose of scent into its branches.

  At the opposite end of the personality spectrum from Dennis was Brambles. Brambles lived a few doors down from me and occasionally visited our garden. He was a tabby-point Siamese of small build, with a delicate bone structure. I could see he was a young cat, but there was something of an “old man” quality in the way he carried himself. I would watch him tiptoe down the path with a haunted expression on his face, as if expecting someone to pour a bucket of water over him at any moment. He would embark on a circuit of the lawn, sniffing the shrubs to see who had visited previously, but as often as not the pollen would trigger a fit of sneezing. If he saw me watching him he would smile shyly, before carefully re-treading his steps and making his way back to his own garden.

  One day I caught him unawares by the flower beds.

  “Hi, I’m Nancy. I’m Pip’s stepcat.”

  He leapt back, startled, then said, “My name’s Brambles.”

  He paused for a moment, looking me up and down.

  “You look young. How old are you?”

  “About fourteen weeks, I think.”

  A look of concern flashed across his face.

  “I hope you’ve had your vaccinations. You wouldn’t want to catch anything nasty out here.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m fully jabbed up,” I replied, to his evident relief. He lifted one of his front paws to inspect his paw pads.

  “Urgh, look at that mud. I knew I shouldn’t have come out today,” he said, more to himself than to me.

  “I can’t see any mud,” I commented—his paw looked pristine.

  “Germs!” he exclaimed, making me jump. “Just because you can’t see them, doesn’t mean they’re not there!”

  “Oh, okay. If you say so.”

  Brambles suddenly gasped and clutched his stomach with his paw.

  “Gotta go!” he said urgently. “I think my IBS is about to flare up. I knew I shouldn’t have come out today!”

  And with that he scurried through the trellis, not wanting to entrust his delicate constitution to the unsanitary conditions of anyone else’s territory.

  Hmm, I reflected. I guess I’ve just met the neighborhood eccentric. Still, at least Brambles actually spoke to me, which was more than could be said for Pip. I knew it would take time to get to know my new feline neighbors, but gradually the pieces of the jigsaw began to fall into place. Who lived where. Who was related to whom. Who once had a thing with so-and-so (usually Dennis—that cat gets around). My human readers probably have no idea of the feline soap opera that goes on in their back gardens. You obsess over your own relationship dramas but remain completely oblivious to what’s going on under your noses among your cats. Take my word for it, it’s like a human soap opera, just with fur. The feline population of a neighborhood is in a permanent state of flux. Cats move away. Cats acquire step-cats. Cats have kittens. On the positive side, all cats know that it is a rite of passage to be the “new cat on the block.” What I didn’t realize at the time was that the way you handle your first social interactions on the street will decide your place in the feline pecking order.

  Take Bella, my next-door neighbor, for instance. Bella was an eight-year-old calico who was re-homed to our street at age six when her owners emigrated. Bella had a choice. She could either make the most of her chance to reinvent herself in middle age, throwing off the shackles of her old life, or she could dwell on the perceived rejection by her previous owners and mope around feeling sorry for herself. Bella chose the latter. Her conversational icebreaker when first meeting the neighborhood cats was “My owners abandoned me.”

  Can you imagine?

  Needless to say, Bella was thereafter referred to as “poor Bella” by most of the cats on the street, which did her self-esteem no favors.

  I call cats like Bella “sob-story cats.” I’m sure you know the type. They’ve always got a tale of woe:

  “My mother died giving birth to me!”

  “My dad is also my brother!”

  “I lost my tail in a car accident!”

  Pick any street in Britain and you could find tales of feline tragedy and abuse to fill the daytime TV schedules for a year. I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic, but we could all come up with a sob story if we wanted to. Happiness is about how you handle what life throws at you. Deal with it and move on.

  What Bella’s tale illustrated (although I didn’t realize it at the time) was that my future reputation hung in the balance. It was all up for grabs. Was I going to be a leader or a follower? A Simon Cowell or a Piers Morgan? You only get one chance to make a first impression, and if you had seen me sitting on the edge of the lawn watching the ants crawl over my tail, you could have been forgiven for thinking I was not destined for great things. A life of mediocrity seemed mine for the taking. Fortunately for me, fate intervened.

  On one of my very first expeditions beyond the boundary of my own lawn, I crossed Bella’s garden (she was too timid to impose territorial restrictions on others) and jumped over the far fence, to find myself face-to-face with a puce-cheeked Jack Russell. This was not my first encounter with a dog, as my mother had shared her home with an Alsatian. But, as I have subsequently learned, it’s the small dogs you’ve got to watch. Like playground bullies, they choose smaller victims. I was not familiar with “small dog syndrome” at the time, but I could tell from the way a vein on the Jack Russell’s forehead was throbbing that he was not about to offer to take me out for dinner. I instinctively assumed the arch
ed back and fluffy tail stance, but to any dog (even one of abbreviated stature) a kitten, albeit at maximum fluffiness, does not pose much of a threat.

  Picture us, reader, squaring up to each other in the middle of the garden. It goes without saying that the birds in the surrounding trees were going ballistic.

  “It’s a cat!”

  “It’s a dog!”

  “It’s a cat and a dog! Oh, my god!”

  Meanwhile, for me, things seemed to be happening in slow motion. The dog’s top lip peeled back into a snarl, the vein on his head still pulsing. I glanced around the unfamiliar garden to assess my options. Should I aim for the tree to my right, the house to my left, or the fence behind me? And why wouldn’t those birds shut up? Before I had time to make a decision, the dog lunged at me in a frenzy of bad breath and slobber, and without thinking I spun on my heels and dived into a gap under the fence. Being a kitten (and naturally petite) was definitely to my advantage, as I was able to squeeze through the gap without so much as a whisker out of place. My adversary, on the other hand, succeeded only in wedging his head into the opening, finding himself stuck with his body on one side of the fence and his snarling face on the other: the perfect vantage point from which to view me race across Bella’s garden and clear the fence back to my home turf in one bound.

  In a state of shock, I rushed into the house and headed straight for the sofa, where I did what any cat would do after such a trauma: I had a wash and a nap.

  When I woke up, Pip was sitting on the carpet smiling at me.

  “So you’ve met Bruce, I gather,” he said.

  “Er, I might have,” I replied, amazed that Pip appeared to be initiating a conversation.