(no subject)
Here’s an odd thing that happened last night.
Last night, as I took out the trash, I heard a small meowing sound from somewhere among the carports by the rubbish bins. There are some cats that I have come across wandering around my unit blocks, but none had been particularly sociable. The few nights before I could also hear cat calls at the back of my bedroom at night, but I simply charted to the neighbouring cats being locked out after their nightly wander. But, as per the habit when I hear a cat, I called back. There came a cat that I had not seen before, who fearlessly dashed out and bumped his head at my hand. He was relatively small and thin, but with lovely smooth and grime-free hair, ginger with brownish stripes running across his face and back like a tiger, and white chest patch and toes. His eyes were a ginger-brown, and his nose and paw pads were soft and pink. He had a desexed tattoo in his ear, and since he was so friendly and clean otherwise he was obviously a housecat (I also live close enough to the city and there are very unlikely to be strays around). He was obviously young still, and very very friendly, as he swirled around my legs and rubbed at my hands and elbows. After five minutes or so of petting, I said goodbye to him and headed in, as it was completely dark and getting cold. To my surprise, I found him following me at my ankles all the way into the house. He did not seem very familiar with the area, as he stuck to my feet, but he was not shy at all walking into my yard and rooms. I then thought, maybe he was just one of those very bold cats and wanted to check out the new territory, so I let him roamed around the unit, jumping onto the kitchen counter and window sills and sofa and tables and all of the plant pots. He crawled under the bed and poked his head into the bathroom. Oddly enough, he said no to the bowl of water that I poured out for him, and did not even sniff at the piece of tripe I fished out of my lunchbox and offered him. He poked his head into all the cupboards and fridge that I opened and sat still on the kitchen counter to watch me do the dishes. All the while, in between circling around my unit and rubbing his head against the furniture, he always stopped by to let me pet him and give him a scratch behind his ears and under his chin. He squirmed when I wiped off the bit of dirt in the corner of his eyes, like all cats did, but he let me pick him up belly-up. Then, as he finally settled down somewhat and sat on the mat at my front door, looking out to the yard, I figured he had had enough adventure and was ready to move on. So I opened the yard door and herded him out. I said goodbye to him, although he did his best to drag it out by rolling around on his back on the concrete, with his paws up and flipping to his sides when I petted his flanks. He was also curious to all the other movements and sounds around us, including random deliverymen who walked by and the neighbours’ voices through their door. He watched intently at the staircase leading to the units above mine, as if he was familiar with the concept of stairs. Anyway, eventually I shut the door and went to take a shower, while I could hear him miaowing on the other side. Eventually he’d move on, I thought.
The bathroom door muddled the sounds from outside, but when I got out after my shower I could hear the cat’s cries outside of my door. Then, to my astonishment, I looked out of the yard and found the cat on top of my fence (which were 2-metre tall metal panels with a slim width, often perched by birds but never by cat-sized animals. There was a tall tree by the fence, which was probably how he got himself up to the top of the fence in the first place. The cat walked along the fence and watched me through my window, crying all the while. I came out to take him down, afraid that he wouldn’t be able to get down himself (probably unfounded) or that if he jumped into my yard, he would be stuck since the yard gate is closed and there is no under gap. At this point, I sort of semi-resigned to let the cat stay for a bit more, so I let him drape over my lap as I dried my hair and let him wander some more as I got comfortable on the sofa (he had no qualms about jumping onto the sofa and walked along the back of it, but was somehow not keen on settling down on my blanket-covered lap). Eventually, I decided to let him out once and for all, before he got even more attached (probably too late at this point). So, even though it was like 8pm, I escorted him out of the yard door, locked the door, turned off the lights in the front room and climbed into bed. I could hear him meowing outside of my front door, and heard my neighbours shooing him, but then I turned on the volume of my Spotify and that drowned out all other sounds. I sent mom a video of the cat and was laughing about it with her. Then, as I eventually got up to brush my teeth, I could hear him yowling through the bathroom window, likely because he could hear the sound and see the bathroom light turned on. He then followed me to the bedroom window (because I keep all of my windows semi-opened and completely uncurtained) and sat outside of the window, crying some more. So I turned off all the lights, paused my podcast and curled up in bed reading, hoping that he would be dissuaded by the lack of sound and sight from my rooms. And for some time, his cries quieted down.
Right before I finally slept, I made the mistake of sitting up and peering out of my bedroom window, curious to see if the cat had left. He hadn’t, and had settled himself on top of the hot water tank right outside of my window, and upon seeing my movements he proceeded to yowl again, and he jumped onto my window sill and started to climb up and down the security bars outside of the flyscreen. At this point, I finally gave up. I took my blankets and pillow into the living room, pulled out the sofa mattress, closed the bedroom door (in case the cat decided to camp under the bed and refused to get out, at least the living room offered no such obvious hiding places) and opened the doors. I found the cat outside of my yard door again, and he quickly dashed into the house. It is July, and quite windy, and while it was not as cold as most recent nights, there was quite a freeze earlier in the week and I did not want to leave him out in the cold. So, I locked the doors, settled down on my sofa bed where I could keep an eye on things. The cat took another cursory lap around the place, hopped onto the sofa to rub his head all over my face but refused to lie down, then curled himself up on my swirly desk chair and decided to stay there for the night. So, leaving the cat to it, I slept. He eventually woke me up with little cries at 3.30am, having finished his nap for the night it seemed and was now again lounging by my head on the sofa. Perhaps by being a young cat (he was around Sammy’s size when he came to live with us), he was quite active and not very keen on lazing around. He sat upright on the sofa and looked out of the window again. And, as I told myself the previous night that I would let him out for good if he cried at any point during the night, I did exactly that. Luckily it was not that cold outside, and he didn’t cry all too much from being locked out, and there were no more climbing-onto-fence episodes, so I went back to sleep.
I woke up this morning at around 5.30 to the lack of sound, some lingering nausea from disorientation and a slight cramp on my neck from sleeping on the sofa. There were no cat calls, so I lingered in bed for some time, and finally got out to dress for the day at 7. As I was heating up my muffin for breakfast, I could hear soft cries from outside of my kitchen window, so it looked like the cat had not found his way home yet. So, I took the water container outside with me as I left, thinking that I could at least leave him some water for the day if he was to hang around. Indeed I found him running to my door. I left the water outside under my kitchen window, away from the driveways, patted him goodbye and headed out. I came across one of the more frequent visiting cats on the way, and as per usual this one paid me no mind at all. As I walked, I purposely did not look back, in case that enticed the ginger cat to follow me. I did just that until I got out of the block driveway and onto the street, and finally turned to check since this was now a proper street with cars passing. And there was the cat not too far behind me. He caught up with he and the few steps that I had taken onto the street (luckily I had not crossed the street at this point), and he seemed in no hurry to turn back, even though he was obviously alerted to all the other people on the pavement and the cars passing by, with his ears propped up and his tail twitching. At this point, the cat was probably willing to follow me all the way to work if I had let him. So, I finally looked up nearby vets to see if I could bring him in for a microchip scan and see if I could contact his family. I had resisted doing this all night, seeing that cats were usually wont to roam the neighbourhood at night (Sammy certainly did plenty of this, and the neighbour cats here seem to as well) and it might be an overreaction every time one comes across a wandering cat. On the other hand, this cat had no collars on, even though he was obviously homed, and since he was young and obviously had not left the periphery of my place all night into the morning, he might be lost. So, I called a vet that was fortunately open and about 3 mins drive away, I bundled the cat into the car and drove the short distance to the vet, while the cat, obviously unsecured due to lack of cat carrier, crawled between all the seats and onto my lap and pawed at the steering wheel as I tried to hug a roundabout. Eventually we arrived and I carried him inside, but not before he started to freak out from the much louder traffic noise on the main street. The nurse there was very friendly, took us to a room straight away and managed to find a chip on his neck. However, the chip was unregistered, so she took sometime calling around and checking their database to see if she could locate the owner’s number. All the while, the cat and I waited in their checkup room, as the cat curiously poked his head into the pile of pinecones that they had on the floor and sat looking out at their window (he seemed to have a thing for windows). Despite being in an unfamiliar place, he remained pretty calm and curious, and greeted the nurse just as sweetly as he did me. Eventually, another nurse came in and told me that they could not find any information on the owner, so they would have to keep him for the time being and contact the city council to see if there was any better luck. She asked for my details and promised to keep me updated, and that if no one claimed the cat then she would put me down as interested. So I left, got back to my car, drove home and sat crying for a while.
Why? Who knows really. In all fairness, dropping the cat off at the vet was likely the best thing to do in that scenario. I did not know where he came from, whether he could make his way home himself, whether he was missed. Leaving him in the hands of people who usually deal with lost pets and have a system to track down their family is the right decision. Regardless, they could take care of him well in the meantime, as I had no guarantee that it would be something that I am capable of offering him now. It did not mean that seeing him leave was easy. The fact that yesterday was a year from Sammy’s death probably also hit things a bit too close to home for comfort. Although, at no point did I see Sammy in this cat (appearance-, temperance-, personality-wise they were very very different), nor do I believe in the supernatural and that this was a reincarnated version of Sammy coming by for a visit or something. I barely spent a thought to Sammy at all yesterday, not until when I got home and had myself a can of sardine for dinner, in tribute of him for whom mom used to buy fancy human canned fish for. I also barely thought about it, when I miaowed back to this cat and petted him and let him follow me home. Not until I let him back in the second time, and this morning, that I bawled my eyeballs out. I probably should have explained myself to the nurse at the vet, why I burst into tears when she told me that I had to leave him there because they could not locate his family right away. I guess it was more of the fact that were Sammy at any point like this cat, wandering outside and lost without a way for us to track him down, I would have gone mad with worry. Miraculously, of the 18 years that we had him with us, he had never got himself that lost, despite all the roaming he used to do at night across all the neighbours’ rooftops that were connected to my parents’ townhouse. We used to let him out on the rooftop at night, since he got bored indoors when everyone was asleep and liked to wander along the corridors and yowl. During the day, he would periodically choose to stay under the awnings of the next door’s roof or hide somewhere secluded for a nap, rather than hanging out indoors. Many a times through the years had I made the trip up the ladder to the rooftop in search of him, with a probably irrational fear that he would wander off and we would lose him forever. That had never occurred, and the few times he got stuck elsewhere (under a tree with a beehive, or wedged at the mouth of a pipe) we were able to track him down with how loud he was. Most of the time, he just gave me a fright instead, being a cat that refused to come when called half of the time, and hid/slept away elsewhere as I climbed over roofs trying to find him in vain. Objectively speaking, I suppose that had created some sort of obsessed sense in me, and that I could not leave this ginger cat alone, the first time he followed me home.
At the end of the day, as long as the cat found a good home, either his or mine or whoever else’s, that is enough for me. Nothing to do but to wait for the call from the vet, regardless of what news it brings, and hopefully sooner rather than later, because he is indeed a really sweet cat that would make a lovely companion.
I told myself that I should write something on Sammy’s anniversary and I never did. It turned out to be this, for better or for worse.