Sunday, May 30, 2010

Let the Cat out the Bag

One of the logistical problems of spending an unknown amount of time away from home on the farm is the question of what to do with my (as opposed to the farm) cat. She is a pavement special, rescued from a vet who was about to put her down, who has never really bought into the whole happy families thing! While not wild, she is stand-offish in the extreme and not really amenable to petting or playing. Still she is an interesting character. She also hates other cats. She tolerated dogs, preferrably from a distance and as long as they ignore her. I decided to take her with me, and as a precaution I asked our local vet for travel tranquilizers for her for the seven hour trip. He advised against it and recommended I use a naturopathic concoction, or " just before you travel, dunk her in a bath of warm water, and she will spend the whole trip grooming herself, and not worry about the journey". I took the former option although that was totally unsuccessful.

The night before I left didn't feed her, so she was easy to catch and put in the car. She was not impressed, although after the first 100km or so she found herself a comfortable place; and slept. Arriving at the destination she headed into the garden to relieve stress and headed up a small tree, hissing and clawing at anyone or anything that approached her. Later that night I got a towel and removed her from the tree and settled her in my bedroom with her food.

She has taken the usual feline curiosity with enclosed spaces to extremes. One of her passions is finding hidden places to sleep. One such place was between two pillows under the cover of my bed! Another was under a layer of polyfibre roof insulation, which over time became her preferred sleeping place. I took this, folded it in three, and fabricated a 'sleeping bag' by stitching the panel together with fishing line. This, and its several successors are her passion. She will actively search the house until she finds it and curls up inside.

Once she had found her 'den' in the farmhouse, she quickly settled down and was no further trouble. There were a few run-ins with James and the cats, but nothing serious and she settled into the life of a country cat.

1 comment:

Carolyn said...

Hey! You've got a new format! I like it. Good work. I'll definitely have to call on you when I finally start my own blog.