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Angelic Presents

“I’ve got to eat. The mice must have seen me coming, and I’m not big enough to get rabbits. I’ve ripped open half the bin bags in the area. Birds were never my thing. I’m desperate.”

“If I nip through the cat flap in Bumble Cottage, I can chance a showdown with those two overfed sods Harry and Jimmy. A bit of hissing and snarling in between gobfuls, I’m out quick, and can come back later. Truth is, I’m doing them a favour. They eat too much. “

Angel is two years old, a young male black and white farm cat. He’s been roaming around Dodge Lane since he was born. Scruffy, a bit small for his age, a deep scratch on his nose, dirty paws and coat, and a few flea bites. What he lacks in style he makes up for in ‘character.’ A lovable rogue.

“Being a farm cat would open the eyes of those two. Why should I want a glossy coat anyway? And who called them Harry and Jimmy? Jimmy-I ask you? Big fat swine. Struts around as if he owns the place.”

“I’ve never been settled long enough to have a name. So I couldn’t care less what they call me. Give me a dish of cat meat and you can call me Serendipity, Scarface or Runt. The thing is life’s a struggle. If you expect nothing, then you’re not disappointed. All those others out there who live with people. They could be thrown out at any time. I know some of my mates were doing fine until a baby was born. ‘Can’t take the risk’ was the excuse. Another was made homeless when his keeper died. I wonder if we could sell the feline equivalent of ‘The Big Issue’*. Being homeless isn’t a big issue for us, eating is. We could have a magazine called ‘Starving.’ Sure, for a short time having a keeper is great, as long as they don’t kick or hit you.”

“You see it really is very simple. You don’t ask to be born, but you are. Fight to survive from day 1. I missed out on my mother’s milk, so I guess that’s why I’m bit smaller than my brothers and sisters. They’ve all gone now. I don’t know what’s happened to them. I’ve got me ‘mates’, but there’s been times when they’ve let me down. But like me, they have got to survive too, so I can’t blame them. I suppose we’re in this together.”

The cat community around Dodge Lane is as mixed as any human settlement. Strays, farm cats, feral cats, lone cats or groups of cats kept as pets, gatecrashers, sly cats, happy cats, poorly cats, scruffy cats, well-groomed cats, kittens, old cats, loud cats, silent cats, purring cats, howling cats, mousers, rabbit catchers, injured cats, cheeky cats, shy cats, characters!

Bumble Cottage is home to four cats, with three who could be classed as visitors. Max, a beautiful ginger tom lives next door but one, with Bob a soft-as-a-brush sheepdog, and his family of keepers. As a one-time farm cat, Max has made up for his early months of starvation by eating everything that isn’t nailed down.

Poppy, the [plant] nursery cat is a typical ‘moggie’ who purrs for England. Her markings are quite distinctive, and she’s got bottle and will stand up for herself against much bigger cats. She is a delight with a sting in the tail. Previously she has been hit, and if a human attempts to stroke her, it’s 50-50 if she claws you. One second later she’ll carry on purring.

Angel is the name Bumble Cottage owner Sylvia has given him. She doesn’t know anything about this background, his attitudes, or what he wants out of life. Sylvia is a bit psychic, and has told others she can ‘talk to animals.’ Angel thinks this is all rubbish.

“Yeah, me and me mates were talking about that last week. People who think they can talk to us. Sack of crap. They can ignore us, abuse us, starve us, experiment on us, but that’s as far as it goes. They can’t mentally get inside our heads. They think they know because we miaow when we want food. So they give us [some of them] food. Eureka! Miaowing = food, I can talk to my cat. What they don’t know either is where we’ve been and where we go.”

What Angel and his mates don’t know either is the background of Harry, Jimmy, Ch’Bee and Milo, the cats who live at Bumble Cottage. They have no idea that Harry muscled his way into his keepers’ house when he was a kitten, and that Ch’Bee was abandoned on a doorstep, and Milo came from a cat’s rescue centre. They couldn’t have worked out that Milo is Greek for ‘apple’, and she last lived with her keepers at a house they discovered was named after a variety of apple.

“All this has got me thinking. I know people talk to each other, and we talk to each other. I hate to admit it, but there are some decent people and keepers out there. When someone leaves food out for me, I suspect it’s Sylvia. I reckon it’s stuff Jimmy doesn’t want, so I get it.”

Jimmy has only been at Bumble Cottage for six months. He was a farm cat, and is twice the size of the other three he shares his life with. He has been reflecting on a potential new brother in Angel.

“Angel is it? Beats Jimmy I suppose. Still he reminds me of myself. A little bitter, cynical, and thinks life is a fight, a struggle to survive. At times it is. Cats and people know how important food is to us. Some of us get fat like Harry. He’s a fighter but he’s still pretty insecure. Sylvia tells me Ch’Bee is guarding this house until we leave. Milo has told me she found her personality through having so many other cats around-she had to realise her own identity. I’ve been chased, starved and had to live on mice and rabbits. Don’t feel proud about it, but that’s’ what I had to do”

“One day soon, when Angel gets in here like I did, I’ll tell him all this, but only if he asks. Until then, as he gets his strength up though Sylvia’s presents, he’ll gradually realise there’s more to life than being in tune with nature, keeping the mice population down, and denying the connection between all living things. I know in his quieter moments he’ll hear this, and think he did at all himself… just like I did.”

JS, 9/6/06.

* The Big Issue is a magazine sold by homeless people in the UK who want to change their situation. It is a good read, full of interesting features, and devoid of lies and sensationalism. A sizable chunk of the price goes to the seller, the rest for the cost of production and running the support network that lies behind it. It has helped thousands of people.