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from the outside world was permitted entrance into her domain. It had always been my habit to keep ‘an open house’, and our front door was usually wide open to welcome any friends wishing to visit us. To prevent what she evidently considered unlawful behaviour, Mrs Cat would sit on the narrow top ledge above the open door, out of sight of most people. As they entered, she would give the unsuspecting visitor a hard whack on their head with her sharp claws while at the same time uttering a loud spitting command to get off her property!
    Once I realised that this was the cat version of a dog barking to keep strangers at bay, I got used to calling out a sharp ‘Wait!’ to our dear friends as they neared our door. Then I would run and hoist Mrs Cat down into my arms while we all put up with her furious caterwauling.
    But there was no doubt that Mrs Cat and I formed the most intimate relationship of wordless communication. One afternoon many months after her first rapprochment, again when I was home by myself, she was sitting comfortably on my lap, and we had been there cuddling happily for a long time. She even permitted me to knit while she sat purring sweetly. Finally, though, I had to get up.
    ‘Sorry,’ I told her. ‘I really need to prepare the evening meal.’
    She communicated to me that she was happy with this turn of events: ‘I shall just smell the roses in the garden for a few minutes,’ she told me silently, walking majestically through the front door.
    For a while I watched her tail moving between the flowerbeds, then went to the kitchen and began preparing the evening meal; all at once, I was startled by the screech of car tyres.
    Somehow I instantly knew that it was Mrs Cat. I ran out the door as fast as I could, but before I could even open the gate she had jumped over the two-metre-high garden wall and landed by my feet with a frightening thud. She looked up at me.
    Her eyes glowed: ‘Me and you . . .’ she seemed to say.
    The light in her eyes gradually dimmed; her head sank back gently, then fell, touching my foot, as a last intimate token of our bond.
    I have never forgotten Mrs Cat.
    Celia Novy



The Venerable Percy

    P ercy was a venerable moggy—twenty-three years old to be exact, by which time he was almost blind and totally deaf. He spent his days sitting on the top step in the sun waiting for something, anything, to turn up.
    To call him in for meals, my friend who owned him would tell her huge border collie, ‘Call Percy!’ Whereupon the dog would wander out to where Percy was sitting, bend down and bark very loudly in his ear. At this sudden assault on his eardrums, Percy would shake his head a little, stagger to his paws and wobble his way into the kitchen, for all the world like a geriatric on a Zimmer frame.
    Vashti Farrer

French novelist Colette was a firm
    cat lover. Once when she was visiting
    America she saw a cat sitting in the
    street. She went over to talk to it and
    the two of them mewed at each other
    for a friendly minute. Colette turned
    to her companion and exclaimed,
    ‘Enfin! Quelqu’un qui parle français.’
    (At last! Someone who speaks French!)

Chalk and Cheese—Only
a Mother Could Love Them

    I f you know anything at all about cats, you will know that not only do they come in all shapes, sizes, colours, markings and temperaments but also that opting for your breed of choice is no guarantee that you will get a cat blessed with the personality traits and characteristics usually ascribed to that breed. Nature is rarely so obliging and there is no such thing as ‘catalogue’ selection. Take Kevin and Smokey Puss: both blue Persians, but there the resemblance ends.
    Everyone laughs at Kevin’s name, but my sister June, who owns and loves them both, says she had to call him that ‘because he never really looked like anything, if you see what I mean’. What he does look, in fact, is absolutely beautiful; the real Persian Prince Charming, except charming is the