On the communication of cats.
My
story starts, I would think, in about the late '70's or early '80's, in the
southern suburbs of Johannesburg. My
mother, a stay-at-home mom and chronic cleaner, got it into her head to start
herself a small cat-breeding business. Whether she was simply bored, or
expected that it may somehow turn into a viable concern, is lost to me. The
initial stock (if we can call it that) was brought in, large caging areas were
built, various sundries and whatnots purchased, and the whole show hit the
road. The mechanics of this operation is not really important.
She
started small, a few kittens here, a few kittens there, specialising in
Persians. It got so that a house full of little fur balls was the norm; it was
nothing to have five sleeping on your bed, another four finishing your
breakfast before you got to the table, six more staring at you from the top of
the curtain rail. And the house never smelled, as you'd be expecting. All
credit to my mom, the chronic cleaner.
This
story revolves around one cat in particular. I don't remember her pedigreed,
registered name. She was referred to, simply, as Mops. I think my sister coined
that one. This was a cat with a perpetual bad-hair day. There was no brush or product known to man
that could tame that particular fall-out zone. She was small, a black-and-cream
bi-colour, becoming a Champion at some stage in life (yes, I had to tag along
to cat shows, a sad and depressing subject for another day). Being a Champion
breed, you'd expect that her kittens would fetch a decent sum but alas; this
was not to be.
This
little thing had a couple of peculiarities. For one, she refused to be mated. Any
and all attempts ended in disaster. As soon as she was shoved into a cage with
some or other virile and ready male, she would lie on her side and open the
throat of anything that dared approach her. We never did figure out why. Perhaps
Mops didn't fancy men? Whatever her own reasons for that she was, however, an
excellent midwife. Any breeder will testify to a cat n labour gleefully eating
anything that approaches her; not so with any of ours, where Mops was
involved. She would saunter on in to the
birthing area (yes, we had a birthing area) and climb into the box. During the
labour stage she would purr at the expectant mother, wash her down, comfort
her. At the birth itself she would assist by cleaning the new-borns and cutting
cords. She has even been seen to dry-suckle the little newbies, allowing the
exhausted mother to rest for a while. I have never seen the like of Mops since.
But,
all told, I think that the single biggest reason Mops never did have kittens is
because of her personality. She seems
like a nice little kitty; she wasn’t. Outside of her few-times-a-year role as
midwife she was (with no questions asked and no excuses given) a rampant,
bad-tempered, stuck-up bitch. Dogs will say: "they feed me and care for
me: they must be gods." Cats, on the other hand, think; "they feed me
and care for me: I must be a god." That was Mops. The lord of all she
surveyed, she swayed and flicked her way through the house, passing out
whatever justice she deemed deserved for whatever slight on her person, whether
real or imagined, with a flash of a claw or a click of a tooth. More often than
not, it was simply the cold shoulder. Mops would simply turn her back on
anything that approached to say hi, be it human or feline. She ate first,
without question, the other cats sitting back from their bowls until Mops had
finished. Any snacks or treats would go to her first; this was not disputed. It
was only in the birthing room that she was even tolerated.
Sometime
around '86 or '87, I was sitting at the dining room table. Whether I was eating
or doing homework matters not. I do recall that the house, that day, was
unnaturally quiet. I believe that there must have been, all told, around six or
seven cats still in residence, my mother having been winding down her operation
over a period (I think she ceased breeding somewhere towards the end of '89). There
were no cats to be seen. All was calm and quiet. Like a grave, or a morgue. Or,
more correctly as it turned out, that special kind of quiet in the air just before
the mortar shell lands, spreading debris everywhere in one single and shocking
bang.
I
don't rightly know how cats communicate with each other, even though I had the
opportunity to live with and observe them for the better part of a decade. I
know that they meow only in conversation with humans. That day, those remaining
cats in the house must have gotten together, conferred in secret, and reached a
decision.
It
was time.
From
where I was sitting I could stare directly up the first flight of steps,
leading to the upstairs bedrooms. Calmly
and confidently down the stairs came Mops. Her tail swished gently from side to
side, her bad mood at a relaxed DEFCON 2. Completely and utterly oblivious to
the lightning-charged friction in the air, she reached the bottom of the
stairs. I must have somehow picked up on the subconscious menace that clogged
the day, because I watched, quiet and still, barely breathing. Mops hopped down
from the final step.
And
was attacked.
Viciously.
From
under furniture and from around corners, from behind doors and from under
curtains, came a flashing, yowling, fur-bristling knot of fury, hell-bent on
murder and mayhem. Cats from all angles crashed into Mops. She went down under
a storm of multi-coloured, standing-on-end destruction. Fur went everywhere. The
screams and hisses, the challenges and the pleas, rang out through the house. The
mortar shell had landed. The horde of
cats crashed one way and then the next, bashing into furniture and walls,
rolling on the carpet and sending up fur and spittle, blood and shouts. It
seemed like minutes, though it must have been a few seconds before I went
wading in, hitting, pushing and kicking from one side to another, scattering
cats left, right and centre. Mops was a wreck. That's the best we could say. Bloody
and torn, missing fur and flesh, she lay panting, eyes glazed over and little body
quivering. Of the other cats, there were none to be seen. Job done, they had
crawled back to where they came from, only appearing again later in the day,
tails perhaps a little straighter, when Mops returned from the vet.
It
doesn't matter what you think about the communication of cats, what animal
behaviourists and enthusiasts will tell you. On that day at the end of the
'80's, six or seven cats got together and decided that enough was enough. They
conspired, they planned, and they acted. They violently and concisely, with
precision that was military-perfect, ambushed another cat, and beat it to a
pulp. They sought their revenge, and they got it.
And
Mops, the ruler, the judge, the jury and the executioner…was now only Mops the
cat who sat quietly on her couch, Mops the one that ate last at mealtimes. Mops
who gave way when other cats walked past.
For
the rest of her life.
Karma,
unlike Mops, might not be such a bitch after all.
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