Home is where the food and pettings are
13-07-2008 – 16:55Wow, some things are too good to be true. Our big (no, huge) tomcat Yoda just came back home after he ran away about two months ago. I only saw a glimpse of him two weeks after that, but he just ran off again. We thought he was lost forever. Since he never lost any weight (he’s still a huge, well-fed cat) we assume he’s had another place to stay, where the people don’t quite care where cats come from, as long as they can take care of them. I just hate those people.
When I was young (say, 10) we used to live in an area next to a block of homes for the elderly, and if you didn’t collar, tag and perhaps even spraypaint your cat to indicate it belonged to your address, you’d have lost it in a week. One of those sad lonely grannies would go ‘awww such a cute cat, and look I can feed it fish so it must be hungry and homeless!’, and weeks later you’d see your cat trail around that block with a strange collar on it and enter a pet door in one of their homes. Giving the cat a collar of your own didn’t always work. I wonder what they were thinking… “oh my, that collar has no name on it so God must have put it on there for me!” or some such thing? I’m amazed by what people think all the time, so it wouldn’t surprise me. Back then, we lost two cats in that way and we picked up a cat there too, since we found out where it went. I remember my dad got very angry over that with the lady who took the ‘poor’ kitten in.
Whenever you live in a neighbourhood and you have cats, things get complicated. The neighbours will always know better how you should take care of your cat, because cheap food isn’t good enough and cats don’t belong outside (funny, it’s always been my idea that they don’t belong inside all day since they’re hunting animals). Katja, our little cat, is basically being taken care of by the whole neighbourhood. My nextdoor neighbour gives it food because ‘it’s starving’ (bullshit, it eats anything alive or dead, like fish, cheese, our desserts and cake), and after that she complains that the cat’s always in her house (well duh, she gives it food, what do you expect!). On the other side a few houses down the road, we talked to people where our cat was staying because it really likes Whiskas. How it works I don’t know, but something in people’s heads stops working when they experience the cuteness of cats. They forget that they’re other people’s cats, or that they’re not sad and hungry when they beg for food.
Bottom line is, I really hate people who mess with other people’s cats. If our cats were dogs, it’d be unheard of. So, what is their problem? Why can’t they get their own cats? Ah yes, because they’re too busy working. Having a part time cat is handy, so it seems. In any case, they should stay away from our cats. Blegh.