Felix Domesticus

17
Jul
2005

Fathers and Daughters

Filed under: Uncategorised — admin @ 3:39 pm

“His manners and appearance did not calculate to please; His coat was torn and seedy, he was baggy at the knees;” Growltiger’s Last Stand - T. S. Eliot
Hamlet was the original Growltiger. Ginger coated with one good eye, a torn ear, limp and bad attitude he appeared on our territory when Bast was on heat. He sired four kittens and didn’t realise that his job was now done and that he should do the honourable thing and vacate the premesis. He stayed - pinching our? food and ingratiating himself with the ape people. The more he snarled and hissed at them, the more they tried to appeal to his better nature. Hah! Better nature indeed. He didn’t have one. We all kept our distance. He liked to think that he was top cat around here, but that was just us letting him think that.

Take a good long look at that cat. Once, I guess, he was a good looking tom. By the time we knew him, the years had been rough and he was a bad attitude on legs and threadbare at the seams. His daughter, Cleo picked up where he left off when he died in 2003. Take a look at this picture and see the family resemblence:

The same set of the head, the same broad face and dammit! The same bad attitude. When the kittens were born, the rest of us tended to be tolerant - well, they are only kittens and they don’t realise that other cats’ tails are not toys. A quick boxing of the ears usually gets the message across - temporarily, at least. Cleo will adopt a different approach. She will walk into the room and survey it for low flying kittens. If they are detected, she will hiss loudly in their general direction before taking up residence and settling down to sleep. Woe betide any kitten that dares to ignore that warning. A quick trip to next Wednesday week is in store for those that do.
Curiously, she is friendly to the ape-people who seem to appreciate cats with a bad attitude. I really must take note of this and try it sometime.
Well, bye for now.

Nefertiti

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