pets – Debbie Young's Writing Life

Where Do Cats Go For Their Summer Holidays?

Posted on July 5, 2013July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

The calico cat and its new bed — The calico cat and the lesser-spotted girl

Like most parents of school-age children, I’m counting down the days till the end of term. I can’t wait to ditch the school-run/clubs/homework routine in favour of the anarchy that is the school summer holiday. But planning for the holidays this summer will be more complicated, because we now have a cat.

Dorothy Purrkins, as my daughter christened her, moved in on the snowiest day in January. An adaptable, sociable animal, she’d go with the flow, whatever our chaotic household threw at her. So quickly did she adjust to our routines that I wondered whether she’d previously had us under surveillance.

When other cats entered “her” garden, she’d chase them off her territory with gusto. When we had human visitors, she’d greet them on equal terms, confident that they would be pleased to see her (which they always were).

After six months in residence, she’s calling the shots. When her food bowl is empty, she sits next to it, politely but firmly pinning me with a laser-like look until we replenish it. After an outing to the garden, she stands on the window-ledge staring with the intensity only a cat can muster until we open the window to let her in. Seated companionably in the sitting room of an evening, her eyes follow us proprietorially around the room. We should have called her Mona Lisa.

But what will happen when we go away to Scotland in the summer? I worry that, thinking we’ve abandoned her, she’ll move on in search of a more dependable home. I could send her to a cattery for the duration, but a cat with a huge rural territory would not enjoy a fortnight penned indoors. Even with a kind friend happy to feed her while we’re away, it’s a tough call.

Or so I thought until this morning. After despatching husband and daughter on the school run, I was standing quietly in the utility room, enjoying a calming cup of tea before work. Dorothy Purrkins sauntered confidently past my feet, heading for the cat flap. Strolling leisurely up the garden path, she chose the best vantage point before settling down on the lawn, surveying her territory. She was a tortoiseshell Monarch of the Glen. Spoiled for choice by the many pleasurable opportunities that the garden held in store, she lay quietly considering her options. Snooze in the hammock in the shade? Warm up with a sunbathe in the greenhouse? Gaze at bits of blossom falling from the fruit trees? Chase butterflies fluttering around the gooseberry bush? Sprawl on the patio, absorbing the sun’s heat stored in the stone paving slabs?

Whatever was on her agenda, Dorothy Purrkins looked utterly contented with the prospect. And so my decision was made: for her it will be a holiday at home. In fact, I might even join her. Who needs travel anyway?

The calico cat on a cushion — As Dorothy always says, there’s no place like home

This post was originally published in the Tetbury Advertiser, July 2013

If you liked this post, you might enjoy:

the story of Dorothy Purrkins’ arrival: Enter the Snow Cat
my daughter’s Search For The Perfect Pet
the notion of Garden Birds As The Perfect Pets

Family, Travel

Close Encounters of the Belgian Canine Kind

Posted on April 14, 2013July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

Sign in a Belgian park — Unsure whether it’s compuslory or prohibited

(Further adventures in our motorhome tour of France, Belgium, Luxembourg & Germany)

As we travel through Belgium, my nine-year-old daughter Laura is enchanted by the constant parade of dogs that pass by our camper van.

“Ooh, look at that cute doggie!” she coos in Dinant, as a low-slung white one waddles past, sporting a red knitted waistcoat. The words “cute” and “dog” are inseparable in Laura’s vocabulary. She never met a dog she didn’t like.

But her enthusiasm is diluted when she realises that Belgium’s dog owners lag behind Britain’s in terms of doggy hygiene. By the second day of our stay, she has become adept at navigating poo-strewn streets, especially after she has, with a regal air, designated Daddy as “Dog Poo Detector”. His role is to walk several paces ahead of us, issuing necessary warnings. Daddy immediately regrets his earlier explanation of the importance of the Groom of the Stool in the court of King Henry VIII. What starts out as a casual stroll soon turns into a balletic gait as we prance along pavements, deftly leaping aside for the protection of our shoes whenever so instructed by our leader.

A Big Job for a Belgian

Considering the state of the pavements, we are surprised to encounter in Bouillon, on the banks of the River Semois, an enthusiastic street cleaner. He seems intent on sweeping up every last speck of dust from the ground. His must be a demanding job and we speculate that he’s going to need a bigger barrow.

Trier street theatre: levitating man — A few days later Laura discovers how they avoid messy pavements in Trier, Germany

We watch, fascinated, from within our camper van as he progresses across the car park. Slowly, slowly, he works his way across towards our space, filling his dustpan time and time again. Upon reaching our motor-home, he carefully works his way around its perimeter. I feel I should lift my feet so that he can sweep underneath them.

Such attention to hygienic detail does not seem to tally with the laxity of the locals towards dogs, which we still can’t understand. Despite the tidy car park, later that day at the supermarket we are unable to relish what appears to be the leading brand of Belgian biscuit. It is called Plops.

Here are some other posts you might enjoy about our Easter motorhome tour of France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany:

Why Belgium is Being Rebuilt

Just When We Thought It Was Safe to Go Back Into La Piscine

When in Belgium, Drink as the Belgians Do: (In Praise of Oxo)

Family, Personal life

Enter The Snow Cat

Posted on January 26, 2013July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

(New post about how a stray cat turned up in the first winter snow storm)

On the first day that the snow fell during this latest cold snap, snowbound at home and idly dabbling on my netbook, I spot a notice on a friend’s Facebook page:

Is anyone in Hawkesbury missing a cat? quite a small cat -white with patches of colour? He/she is very hungry (just devoured 2 tins of tuna), and sheltering in my next door neighbour’s open garage. Please ask around, the cat needs to go home xxx

Feeling skittish, as it’s my birthday, I post my reply without a moment’s hesitation:

If no-one claims her, I could have a cat for my birthday! Just need to persuade Gordon….

I’ve been thinking for a long time that I’d like to have a cat again. It’s several years since my last one died, but I’ve made a deal with myself that I’ll only do so if one decides to acquire me – i.e. a stray turns up on my doorstep. Turning up on a neighbour’s doorstep (where there live two big dogs) is the next best thing.

The reason for my wavering is that one of my very best friends is allergic to cats. It was a consoling factor when my last cat died that this friend would be able to visit me at home without risking hospitalisation.

A snowy day is a quiet day, even with my daughter home from school, which is closed due to the weather. I figure that temporarily hosting this cat while we track down its owner will produce a welcome source of entertainment for us both for the afternoon. With the SOS already doing the rounds on Facebook, it surely won’t be long before we’re able to witness a happy reunion for the cat and its owner.

Another neighbour, also on Facebook, calls to check whether I’m serious.

“It’s a lovely little white cat, Deb,” he says. “I’d have it, but my cat wouldn’t like it.”

I nod and my daughter beams. Moments later, he returns, bearing cat.

It is indeed a beautiful cat, and not just white. Its thick fur is a multitude of black and ginger blotches, against a white background. It looks as if it’s been made from leftover bits of other cats. Its black-rimmed amber eyes remind me of Cleopatra’s. Google advises me that it’s a calico cat, which I’m pleased about. I’ve always wanted one of those, without actually knowing what that name meant.

Speaking of names – what to call it? There’s no collar , although the creature’s immaculate, dense fur and easy manner in our presence suggests that it’s domesticated.

“I think I’ll call it Dora, because it keeps Exploring,” decides Laura, as the cat flattens itself to creep beneath our kitchen counters.

Dora later elongates to Dorothy, without us making a conscious decision. Perhaps the name has been subliminally suggested by the postcard, propped up on the dresser, of Judy Garland’s famous ruby slippers from the film of the Wizard of Oz. Or maybe, like the Cowardly Lion, it’s just got lots on its way along the Yellow Brick Road (a nickname given, incidentally, to the part of the Cotswold Way that runs behind our village).

I confine Dorothy to the back of the house (kitchen, utility room, bathroom), while we gauge its grasp of housetraining. Our neighbour returns with cat food, bound to be needed later, even though he’s just fed it two tins of tuna before he brought it down. Dorothy had apparently eaten them voraciously. No wonder she’s looking plump.

I put down on a dish on the floor the bacon rind left over from breakfast. Whoosh! With the speed of the dirt in a Cillit Bang advert, it’s gone. Dorothy looks up hopefully from the empty dish. Moments later, a sachet of cat food is inside her.

“Mummy, why does Dorothy’s tummy keep twitching?” Laura asks.

Gingerly, if you’ll forgive the pun, I encircle the cat’s tummy with my hands. It’s solid. And moving.

A new scenario pops into my mind.

“I hope she’s not been dumped because she’s pregnant.”

It’s happened round here before: city-dwellers abandoning unwanted pregnant cats in the village, assuming the poor creature will find a new berth catching mice on a farm. Call me cynical, but I don’t believe the cats make it out here on their own, Dick Whittington style, setting off from home to in search of streets paved with Whiskas. And certainly not in snow.

Teaching the calico cat to read — “Meet my new best friend”

We make the cat a bed in a cardboard box and turn an old washing-up bowl into a litter tray filled with dirt from a discarded plant pot in the conservatory (there’s no digging up the garden under snow). Laura, ever the bountiful hostess, makes it toys to play with and reads it stories as they lie on their tummies together on the floor. She wonders how long it would take her to teach it to read.

Meanwhile, cleaning out the litter tray, I’m beginning to remember the disadvantages of cat ownership. I take a picture and put it on Facebook with the message:

If you recognise this cat, please notify its owners and put them in touch with me to reclaim it

One week on, and Dorothy must surely be thinking “There’s no place like home.”

Family

In Search of the Perfect Pet

Posted on September 16, 2012July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

Black cat painted by Laura at the age of 2 — Portrait of a black cat by Laura, aged 2

The suggestion of a Pet Show as a new PTA fundraiser fills me with foreboding: it’s bound to trigger a renewed appeal from my nine-year-old daughter Laura for a cat or a dog.

Our household is currently a pet-free zone. It’s quite a change from the fur-dominated home into which Laura was born. At that point I had four cats, Posy, Mabel, Dolly and Grace. Laura’s first word was not “Mummy” or “Daddy” but “Cat”, and her first proper painting was a black cat with yellow eyes.

Before Laura was born, I’d worried for months about old wives’ tales of cats inadvertently smothering new babies by curling up and going to sleep on them. I even invested in a “cat net” – a flimsy, over-priced bit of net curtain material, meant to repel cats from cots. But I needn’t have worried. It was soon clear which of the small creatures in our house had the upper hand. All were in awe of Laura, mostly keeping their distance from her shrill sound effects. The only one happy to linger was Mabel, our tailless white wonder who had survived a close encounter with a car in kittenhood. (Not so her tail.)

Brownie the guinea pig with Laura the Brownie

Mabel was the most good-natured and sociable cat that I’ve ever had. Whereas the others would run away at the sound of the doorbell, Mabel would bound up to the front door to greet whoever was our visitor. It was therefore not surprising that she was also the most obliging in Laura’s games, letting herself be tucked in to Laura’s doll’s pram and wheeled around the garden.

Mabel also had the most caring nature. When my husband was ill, lying on the sofa feeling wretched, she looked at him analytically, trotted out into the garden and returned with a dead mouse in her mouth. She laid her prey gently at his feet. Just what the doctor ordered to build him up again – a high-protein snack.

Laura admires a long-haired rabbit at Puxton Park — Borrowing a bunny

When Grace, the last of our cats, died of old age, Laura was too little to feel real grief, so missed the opportunity to learn a useful lesson about death from her pet. My tears were copious tears. But soon after I’d dried them, I started to notice how much cleaner the house had become without a cat. There was another significant benefit: our cat-allergic friend could at last come to stay. Helen’s allergies turned into a blessing: they became our main ally in fending off Laura’s requests for another pet.

Even so we weakened around the time of her sixth birthday. Unwilling to take on a house-dwelling pet, we acquiesced to two rescue guinea pigs. Laura chose their names, calling the ginger one, erm, Ginger, and the brown one Brownie, as she’d just become a Brownie herself. Sadly, like all small pets, they didn’t last long. Only Brownie made it through to Laura’s seventh birthday and only hung around for a couple of months longer after that. Again the loss hit my husband and I much harder than it did Laura, and this experience steeled our resolve to remain pet-free.

Until this summer, that is, when Laura came up with a new and effective solution to the problem: she acquired some invisible dogs. Now here is a pet I am happy to recommend. Invisible dogs don’t make a mess, leave no fur on the furniture, cost nothing to feed, and you don’t have to pick up after them when you take them for walks. The only real danger is sitting down without noticing they’re already on your chair. Fortunately they have a very forgiving nature. I just wonder how the judges at the PTA pet show will tell them apart.

If you enjoyed this post, you might like another one I wrote about our pets – but this time with my own suggestion of an alternative: Garden Birds – The Perfect Pet

Family, Personal life

The Guinea Pig Has Left the Building

Posted on March 25, 2011July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

Daffodils in bloom – check. Wild garlic in full pungent flower at the roadside – check. Tiny white blossoms starring the bare branches of our plum trees – check. Children shrieking as they bounce up and down on the trampoline – check. Spring solstice (and my parents’ wedding anniversary) – check. But it’s still not officially spring in our household until another important ritual takes place.

In these confusing times of climate change, it’s not always easy to spot the season. My husband has just invested in a weather station to help us get our bearings. A neat white plastic box displays the current time, date, temperature, air pressure, humidity, cloud cover and precipitation. It gleans this information from a smaller white box with which it has some sort of remote communication. According to the weather station, we experienced a fabulous run of weather the first week after he bought it – until we realised that the smaller white box was meant to be placed out of doors, rather than on the other side of the kitchen.

But we have a more reliable indicator of the seasons. It’s small, brown and furry, and makes endearing cheeping sounds whenever we pass by. The volume increases in direct proportion to the volume of cucumber in our hands.

Brownie travels around according to the season. In the summer, she grazes all day on the lawn, safe under a vast chickenwire run, constructed by my husband for her enjoyment (he can’t bear to see an animal in a cage). When we go on our summer holiday, out comes her summer palace – a large but lightweight, portable plastic house that just about fits in the back of my Ford Ka. We take palace and pig to my brother or sister’s house, where Brownie enjoys the materialistic life of a city-dweller, spoiled with treats from the nearby pet superstore and trimmings from Marks and Spencer salad packs. Last year she came back from her summer holiday with a red and yellow pop-up tent. (No guinea pig should be without one.)

Then, when the nights start to get a little cooler, she migrates into the lean-to that we euphemistically call our conservatory. Once frost sets in, we move her properly indoors, where, in her summer palace again, she takes up residence on the utility room worktop. So begins a more sociable time of year for her. We have cheery conversations whenever I’m loading the dishwasher or doing the laundry, and she likes to throw in a few helpful comments as I iron my daughter’s school uniform in the morning.

But as the nights shorten, there comes a point when she must be yearning for fresh air again, and today she got her wish. I gave her outdoor hutch a good spring clean and doused it with disinfectant. I lined it with old copies of the Radio Times and a thick layer of hay, before scattering handfuls of the greens that are suddenly growing like Topsy in our back garden. Brownie squeaked her approval as I gently scooped her up with both hands and took her out the back door. The guinea pig has left the building. So spring is here at last.