Feeding cats
For centuries the idea of feeding cats was as unbelievable as squaring the circle. So was feeding chickens, for that matter. They just hung around, making their own arrangements. The whole point about having them was to keep down vermin and generally tidy up the place. Dogs got fed, cats got scraps. If they were lucky. We all know what it's like now. Feeding Real cats follows a pattern as changeless as the seasons.
1. Real cat turns up its nose at gold-plated tinned stuff recommended by woman on television.
2. Out of spite, you buy some down-marked own-brand stuff whose contents you wouldn't want to know about (after all, considering what can be put in beefburgers and sausages… no, you really wouldn't want to know about it…) Cat wolfs it down, licks empty plate across floor.
3. Out of relief, next shopping trip you buy a dozen tins of the humming stuff.
4. Cat turns up nose at it after one meal. This is a cat, you understand, that will eat dragonflies and frogs.
Having for some time watched what cats will eat, then I can safely say that any enterprising manufacturer who markets a cat food made of steak, half-thawed turkey, grass, flies, crumbs from under tables, frogs and voles will be on to a winner. At least for one meal.
The alternative, of course, is hunting. The theory is that a well-fed cat is better at hunting than a hungry one. The reasoning is that a plump and full cat will be more content to lie in wait for the things that need guile and patience to catch—dragonflies, frogs, robins, that sort of thing—while a hungry one will merely dash about the place filling up on ordinary rats and mice. It's not certain who first advanced this view, but it's an evens bet that they probably had fur and whiskers. Real cats don't hunt for food, but because they love you. And, because they love you, they realise that for some reason you have neglected to include in your house all those little personal touches that make it a home, and do their best to provide them. Headless shrews are always popular. For that extra splash of colour, you can't beat miniature sets of innards. For best effect such items should be left somewhere where they won't be found for some days, and can have a chance to develop a personality of their own.
We had friends in an isolated cottage who had one cat, a big fat boot-faced thing, which'd never turn a paw to hunting despite the hordes of rats that besieged the property on every side. So they got another one, a sleek white young female who strode off into the long grass every day with a purposeful air. But, strangely, never came back with anything. Even odder, the resident huge cat began to hunt and turned up every day with something resembling a draught excluder in its mouth, or was found sitting proudly beside a miniature rodent Somme on the doorstep. Aha, they thought, spurred on by competition he's finally got cracking. What they eventually found out, as any Real cat owner would suspect, was that he was waylaying the female as she approached the house and glaring at her until she dropped the booty, then picking it up and carrying it the rest of the way. When it came to delegation, that was a cat who got someone else to write the book.
Training and disciplining the Real cat
Always a tricky one, this, for Real cat owners, who tend to be the types to whom parade-ground shouting and the legendary rolled-up newspaper does not come easily (if it did, they would then be one of those people with huge bounding dogs who do whatever they damn well please in a huge, jolly way to distant strains of “Prince! NO! I said NO! PUT IT DOWN! This minute! Prince! NO!” etc). What it really boils down to is the difference between Inside and Outside (cf. “Hygiene”). Most Real cats cotton on to the idea fairly quickly. Most Real cats, after all, are bright enough to know that a dry box in a corner of the kitchen is a better bet than a flower bed when the wind is blowing straight from Siberia. Their mothers apparently educate them, though much attention paid to this has been unable to fathom exactly how this is done, apart from persistently moving them around in a slightly neurotic game of kitten chess. Possibly the kittens are taken to some secret cat school where they are shown diagrams. (it's amazing how self-possessed and intelligent cats turn out to be when brought up by their mothers. We've been brought up by our mothers for millennia, and look at us. If Romulus and Remus had been reared by a cat instead of a wolf, Rome would be a different place today).
It'd have better lavatories, for a start.
Beyond that, you can't teach cats to do anything. No, not a thing. You might think you can, but that is because you've misunderstood what's going on. You think it's the cat turning up obediently at the back door at ten o'clock on the dot for its dinner. From the cat's point, a blob on legs has been trained to take a tin out of the fridge every night.
Discipline—once you get beyond all the blanco and school traditions—means, If You Don't Do What I Want I'll Hit You. One problem here, of course, is that a cat is a hard animal to hit. A dog is always amenable to the famous rolled-up newspaper, whereupon it can go into the sorrowful grovelling, whining and sighing routine that would get a human actor booed off the stage. Hitting a cat is like walloping a furry glove full of pins, and doesn't make a blind bit of difference anyway. A relative who will remain unidentified until the RSPCA Statute of Limitations runs out always reckoned that a half-brick thrown the length of a garden6 was necessary even to get a cat to pay attention. Distasteful though it may seem, however, there are times when even a Real cat owner feels it necessary to Take Action. Here are some options:
…which is the first thing to hand when you're digging7 and you see, out of the corner of your eye, the guilty crouching shape as it sits among the cabbages and peas.8 The GBCOE is the rubber bullet of garden preservation, designed to chastise without actual death. The approved method is to hit ground zero about eighteen inches from the culprit, the resultant short sharp shower of shrapnel causing it to leap two feet vertically and suffer acute intestinal distress for the rest of the day. The trouble is, though, that the cat soon works out that you are a typical Real cat owner, ie, a soft touch, and realises that if it calls your bluff, your ferocious stance will melt and you'll just run grumbling to the United Nations. The four cats that turn our garden into a vegetable Jonestown every Spring have realised this, and sit demurely among the whizzing clods visibly thinking “Why is the funny man jumping up and down like that? And why is his aim so bad?”
Don't think this hasn't been discussed.
6. If St Francis of Assisi had prided himself on his broccoli, and saw the last little seedling turning yellow because of the ministrations of Itsthatsoddingtomfromnextdoor, he would have done the same thing.