tracking the cat

Tracking the Cat ©

By

Michael Casey

Well Summer is here and we think of sex, sea and holidays. But what if you are a cat, what if you are Totoro our cat? Totoro as you know pleases herself she is a cat after all. So what does she get up to. You’ve seen those programmes on the telly where they track cats, we don’t need any programme on tv, we have Totoro.

Totoro is named after the cat from the Studio Ghibli films if you haven’t heard the name before. My daughter’s Godfather thought it was a silly name but he is just a church organist so what does he know about cat names? He knows more about riding his bike than he does about Studio Ghibli, but I digress.

We are lucky because there are 20 or so gardens backing onto each other, which means Totoro can stretch her legs and pooh in other people’s gardens, no more litter tray in our house. When I speak of  other people’s gardens, she, Totoro is spoilt for choice. She does not jump from our garden wall more like launches herself as if from a circus cannon from the garden wall to the neighbour’s fence.

That is why a cat’s hind quarters are so big. Then like a grappling iron her front paws hawl her up and over the fence, then with a jingling of her two bells and her Best Bitch medallion she is away, up and over other fences. A Lesbian friend of my wife gave out the medallions one Christmas, so Totoro ended up wearing it along with her two bells. By doing this we can hear her coming, as can any birds, or the families of magpies that nest nearby.

When Totoro goes walkabout she has a choice, a choice of owners, who think they own her, by they don’t know her. Like the song in the First Wives Club, you don’t know me. Totoro has to decide will she have:- Polish, Japanese, French, Spanish, or even English food, should she be bored with Ocado delivered Whiskas. Or Chinese leftovers from our house. Then there is the Indian Curry house over a few more fences.

We know she visits the curry house because she comes home smelling of curry. She may just be sitting near the chimney, a chimney is full of heat and flavour. Sometimes she comes home smelling of Chanel, if only she were a dog she could bring some  home in her mouth like a retriever.

Totoro likes to go out late at night, so like any parent I am concerned and tell her to avoid anybody called Tom. When I lock up at night I wonder what she is up to, but I have done my best, besides she is neutered. Sometime I call her name adding a few words in Japanese or Chinese, she is bilingual after all, we are a Birmingham/Shanghai family after all. Sometimes she will will return other times she will not.

I might get up in the night for green tea, so I squish plastic and suddenly she’ll appear thundering over fences six feet high, plastic means that Aldi Cajun chicken is being opened, and she’ll sell her soul, or one of nine souls for a treat of Cajun chicken from Aldi. Once she’s back in the house at 3 am or 4 am I give her a stern lecture as any dad would to his daughter, 2 equals 14 in cat years somebody told me. Then I’ll give her a stroke and tell her to go upstairs to bed.With the sounds of her bells jingling I smile as I finish my green tea before returning to my own bed.

However some nights she stays out all night or most of the night,  so what am I to do? Like any concerned parent, I cross my fingers, and may even bless myself and ask Saint Martin de Porres to keep an eye out. I’ll leave an upstairs window open and a night light on to guide her home.

All in all being a parent to a cat, to Totoro is very rewarding though I do feel like Quasimodo waiting for the bells, the bells. The bells signify Totoro is home and safe. For a cat in the house turns a house into a home. The Bells, The Bells jingling away its like Christmas every day.