I just looked out of the window and saw one of the many neighbourhood cats. He is a big black beast that I like to call Beelzebub. I call him that because he shows no affection or even any interest in the humans that reside in his territory and I think a cat that big, that furry and that indifferent to creatures that so obviously try to pander to his every whim, must have a touch of the devil in him.
Of course he could just as easily not be Beelzebub and instead be the Beast of Balham (Balham being the area of London I am currently wide awake in). He could be a panther or maybe a puma. After all, the story that dominated the headlines this week was the Essex Lion. For those of you that did not follow this most exciting and dramatic news story and were perhaps doing more important things than reading news items about cats (you silly people), I will enlighten you. A couple while holidaying in Essex looked out of their caravan window at their lovely view of a field and spotted a big cat. Well, what they though was a big cat. They even took a photo. Then they decided what they were looking at was a lion. Then they called the police. Surprisingly the local police took this couple very seriously and launched a massive search for the supposed lion, which included armed police, two helicopters and even some zoologists, who had perhaps petted lions before.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the police were being gullible. I saw the couple interviewed on BBC news and I believe they genuinely thought they saw a lion, they seemed so convinced. I think they seemed so sure and their photo looked quite a bit like lion, so that the police probably thought that they could not take the chance of neglecting to organise a search, well...in case the lion turned up in a local village somewhere and ate some school children..or a postman. Just in case you wanted to know the above photo is not the photo they took but it is what I imagine an Essex Lion would look like if it existed (complete with trendy haircut and dye job). Which of course, it doesn't!
The lion turned out to be a local domestic cat, who lived in the Essex area, called Teddy Bear. Teddy is a ginger Maine Coon (which traditionally is a very big breed of cat). He did not seem to relish his new found fame and had to be dragged out from under his owner's bed in order to be presented to the BBC reporter who had turned up to interview him. The end result is that the owner of Teddy is sure that the Essex Lion is him, the police are refusing to disclose how much their helicopter search cost the British taxpayer and the holidaying couple still maintain there is a lion on the loose in England.
So hey, for all I know Beelzebub could be the real deal. I better go get my camera.
A cat that definitely has a connection with me is Lulu. Lulu is a long-haired fluffy tabby with a desperate high pitched meow and cute little face. She has especially funny round paws that hide long and sharp claws that snag on everything. She also belongs to my downstairs neighbour. Through one way or another Lulu sometimes ends up stuck in the hallway of the building and cannot get back into her owner's flat. The first time she did this, my husband came home from work, startled Lulu and was met by a hissing furious ball of fur at the bottom of the stairs to our home.
'She's evil.' he stated to me the next time we came across Lulu in the hallway after coming home from the cinema one night.
But they don't call me The Cat Whisperer for nothing! I made friends with Lulu right there and then. She loves being stroked and I think perhaps she does not get much attention from her owner. Okay, I don't actually know that for sure. Lulu does love to follow me up and down the stairs and I suspect she is actually really an attention-whore and would never be satisfied. She is one of those pets that would wake you up at 5am with a carefully aimed claw to your nostril just to make sure you fed her some more really expensive cat food.
Then things escalated. Lulu started following me up the stairs and into our flat. Then she started clawing huge holes in our carpet. 'I TOLD YOU! She's evil!' cried my husband with exasperation. So I developed a system where I clapped my hands loudly every time she used our floor as a scratching post. That seemed to work and she lost interest in our carpet.
Then one day I found her rolling around ecstatically and scent marking my husband's swimming shorts. Then she climbed into our bed and licked one of our pillows. Then she climbed into our fridge and tried to eat my favourite cheese. Then she chewed one of my bath towels. Let's just say having Lulu around was fast beginning to lose its charm. And yet still I loved her little furry warm body sitting on my lap, her ridiculously sounding purr and the false innocent wide-eyed little looks she gave me. She is really a rather pretty kitty. I just wished she left my bed pillows alone.
The problem is that she does not belong to me and my neighbour does not know that she is in my flat. Every once in a while Lulu's owner calls into the hallway. 'Lulu? Lulu sweetie, where are you? Here pussy pussy...' I obviously freak out and desperately try to shove Lulu out my front door and into the communal hallway, lest I be suspected of cat kidnapping. Lulu, the little betrayer, the adulterer, the feline Jezebel, ignores her owner's call and purrs her way round my legs and back into my flat. The second problem is that Lulu's owner has never been that friendly to me. Even though we have lived in the same building for almost two years, she barely says a word to me and makes no attempt to clean up the junk mail that comes through the letter box every day. (I'm not sure what junk mail has to do with this situation but my neighbour's lazy attitude to it, rankles me)
So obviously I suspect my neighbour would not be happy to find out that Lulu has been hanging out with me.
'So what did you do?' asked my friend Roco, when I met her and our other friend, Lyns for dinner last week. I save all my best cat stories for Roco and Lyns as I feel that they can really appreciate them.
'Well, Lulu would not leave the flat and she scratches if she is picked up so....I enticed her out of our flat with pieces of cooked chicken.'
'Oh no. You didn't!? Now she will never leave!' Roco exclaims with both a conflicting mix of disapproval and admiration in her voice. I can tell Roco and Lyns are secretly impressed that I have turned to a life of crime and stealing other people's cats.
'And what if your neighbour sees you feeding chicken to HER cat. She won't like that!' Lyns reminds me wisely shaking her head.
Well you see my neighbour almost caught me the other day. I had got Lulu to the front door by feeding her chicken on every landing of the stairs and I was just about to lead the cat outside when Lulu's owner opened the door and exclaimed 'Lulu! There you are!' As usual the neighbour saw me and said 'Oh hey' with an unimpressed coldness. She tried to get Lulu to come into her flat, but of course I still had chicken hidden in my hand behind my back, so Lulu just sat at my feet, gazed at me adoringly and begged. That cat! She knows which side her bread is buttered on.
'I just don't understand her,' my neighbour said to me, 'She never comes when I call her.' She scooped up Lulu, who moaned in protest and slammed the door to her flat in my face.
I smiled guiltily and backed out the front door. On my way up the street I tossed the rest of the chicken in my hand to Beelzebub, who was lounging on the pavement like he owned the place. He looked at it and then turned, nose in the air and haughtily walked away.
Ungrateful furball.
No comments:
Post a Comment