The Christmas Cat: Part Four - Farewell

I will admit to a little poetic licence here. In fact the cats were not collected and rehomed by B and Boris until tomorrow morning. But as I am writing this a little while after the event, I have the ability to predict the future, and as the cats were supposed to be picked up today, but circumstances delayed this, we more or less spent the day expecting the rehousing of the cat family, so it feels as though it happened today. In our heads at least. And tomorrow I want to talk about something else. So I will admit to my little bit of truth stretching, and then relay today, the events of tomorrow. Not something most diarists can do.

But most diarists don’t get weeks out of date with their entries.

Boris and B turn up with a cat carrier, large enough to take a whole family, and a thick blanket. It will be important, Boris tells us, to make sure that Favourite Cat feels secure as she is moved, and also that she can’t see where she is going, to avoid the temptation for her to try to move the kittens back to our house. Boris and B live significantly far enough down the one street that more or less encapsulates the whole village, that such a journey would be long, arduous, and fraught with danger. And then we’d have to take them all back again.

I stroke Favourite Cat gently, and talk to her. Then we lift her into the box and quickly pick up her kittens, one by one, and place them, gently, in the box next to her. We want to minimise any stress she might feel about the safety of her kittens, and to move her first, then them to her, seems the best way to do it. Sure enough she is distracted by the arrival of each kitten, licking it and settling it, so that she doesn’t start to worry about the remainder. When all four are settled with her in the box, she blinks, trustingly up at us.

“Goodbye Favourite Cat” I say, though I will in fact walk down with them to see her settled. She narrows her eyes, stretches out, and the kittens begin to suckle. We cover her up and set off down the road, Boris carrying the basket carefully.

She doesn’t meow until the box is put down, after some discussion, in the corner of the room. We have brought the cardboard box and some old trousers I had donated for a nest while they were settled in our house, to bring the familiar smells with her, to help her feel safe. We settle cats, box and blanket in the corner, open the box, watch and wait.

She begins by finishing suckling her kittens. That done, she jumps out of the box and begins, carefully, to sniff her way around the house. Bumping into the two cats who already live there, both new and old cats pause, freeze, and eye each other carefully. There is no hissing or fighting. They simply each sit down, warily, eyeing the other carefully, a safe distance away.

“Don’t worry,” says Boris to the collected feline audience, settling himself down between new cat and old, a hand on each, “see I am stroking both of you equally. No need to be jealous.”

They settle a little further into the floor, ears pricked up, listening. The kittens are asleep. Everything, I can see, is going to be fine.

“Do you mind if I take this thing off?” says Boris, eyeing Favourite Cat’s collar distastefully.

“Of course,” I say. I had not been a fan of that collar myself. Once again if you believe that cats should be left to be free, don’t put unnatural collars on them. If you’re going to turn them out on the street when they get pregnant because you didn’t sterilise them, don’t turn them loose wearing a collar on which is a bell, so that they can’t even hunt successfully, to feed themselves. Either they are free. Or they are not free.

I open my mouth to resume this rant to Boris, but he isn’t listening.

“There,” he is saying to Favourite Cat, releasing her from the collar and throwing it away, “you are free here. OK? No collars.” He strokes her gently and she purrs and rubs her head against him. “Now you can wash your neck properly.”

My work here is done. All is well that ends well. I leave.

Postcript: Favourite Cat, renamed ‘Lila’ remained with Boris and B, made friends with the other cats, not much older than kittens themselves, and settled in like the patient, trusting cat she was. The kittens, at the point we left Thailand, were growing healthy and strong. The cat family did not try to relocate themselves back to our house. Cooed over and cossetted, and living far away from the usual haunts of the packs of wild dogs, gentle and fearful of humans but sometimes vicious to smaller cats, they knew which side their bread was buttered. And everyone, was very happy.

And if I wished we could have taken the whole family with us…well I kept quiet about it. There will be other cats. One day there will be our cats.

And in the meantime, a cat, perhaps, in every country. If there is anything that is universal, it’s cats.