Talk to the Tail: Adventures in Cat Ownership and Beyond Read Online Free Page B

second cat flap might be in order. But Dee’s bird-loving, feline-disliking mum, Oriole, disagreed. ‘It seems like a lot of bother, and quite expensive. Wouldn’t it be easier to just get rid of all your cats? You probably won’t miss them in the long run.’ A more novel, if still impractical, suggestion came from my friend Liz, who is not only very good at sorting out cat problems, but pretty good at sorting computer problems too. ‘Have you tried letting him in and out again?’ she asked.
    When I suggested inviting Vicky to the house to meet the cats, Dee seemed apprehensive. ‘But she’ll find us out, and tell us we’re terrible owners.’
    ‘Yes, well, I suppose it might be an idea to take the padlock off the airing cupboard and let Bootsy out before she comes.’
    ‘You know what I mean. She knows stuff.’
    Vicky calls herself a cat behaviour counsellor, and has also been referred to as a ‘cat shrink’ and – not her personal favourite, this – ‘pussy doctor’. If you were someone who visited up to 250 different cat owners’ homes a year it would be forgivable if you started not just to think like a cat but to incorporate a repertoire of growls, purrs and disdainful sniffs into everyday discourse. However, the last thing you think upon meeting Vicky is ‘here’s a person who probably owns kitten-faced place mats’.
    Arriving at the house in a sports car so low-riding it had trouble climbing the not particularly steep ramp onto my driveway, she did not exude cattishness and, if anything, seemed more likely to be mistaken for a Labrador owner. She knows cats better than anyone I know, but only owns one, and, much as she loves Mangus, her Devon Rex, she is not afraid to slag her off. ‘She can be a bit clingy sometimes,’ she told me, placing a leather bag on the living room floor. ‘And, you know, I’m not really that big a fan of pedigrees. I prefer moggies.’
    There was something about the leather bag that didn’t quite fit in with the sharp business-lady attire and the fast car, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Actually, it would probably be more accurate to say I was slightly afraid to put my finger on it, for fear of what might end up on my finger. The last time I’d come across a piece of hand luggage so weathered and aromatic of a full and varied life was my old school bag, shortly after I’d made the misguided decision to use it to transport a chicken curry back on the school bus after a Home Economics class.
    ‘It’s a bit grungy, I know,’ said Vicky. She told me she had no idea exactly what combination of various different types of catnip, catmint and valerian had given it its magic, but knew it worked, and that she could not recreate it if she tried. ‘If any problems are there, this tends to bring them to the surface,’ she said.
    As if on cue, Shipley appeared and plunged snout-first into the bag’s heady depths, while Bootsy appeared right behind him, and plunged snout-first into the heady depths of Shipley. Almost instantly, from the floor below, we heard the crash of the cat flap and a ‘SCREEEOOW’ noise and rushed to the window to see Pablo’s retreating form. A moment later, Ralph appeared, sporting an expression that seemed to speak of manifold grievances, chief among them possibly being ‘someone has stolen my mittens’.
    ‘They have these scraps about four times a day at the moment,’ I told Vicky.
    ‘Sometimes it’s good if they fight,’ said Vicky. ‘It means it’s all out in the open. The big worry is when they internalise their problems.’
    This was an unexpected piece of wisdom, and it led me to ponder a whole set of problems I hadn’t even imagined, then thank my lucky stars I wasn’t experiencing them. Okay, so it was a shame that Pablo sometimes clawed Ralph’s bottom so viciously he removed a chunk of fur big enough to wear as a tabby war bonnet, but at least he wasn’t putting his foe down with sarcasm, pretend pleasantries