Purrfect pals (France)

For some reason, the cats on the farm are not assigned any names (and have never been, I think).  

The dogs are called Patou, Fleurie, Mizou, and so on.  (Dino doesn’t count as he came already named Dino by his previous  [now deceased] owner — see blog entry Dino the dirty dog.)

The cats, however, are all just addressed as Mimi (see blog entry Minou), even when spoken to directly and individually.  (This reminds me of my family’s tradition of treating our cats and dogs differently:  speaking in English to the dogs and in Mandarin to the cats.)

The frisky one (the little black cat) will totally disrupt my reading or journal-writing, endlessly nudging my fingers, hands and any other part of my body that he can mark.  By “mark”, I mean mainly scent but he also leaves scratch marks (when he jumps on or all over me) and (playful but painful) bite marks (when he suddenly takes a fancy to my finger).  

As soon as the one with tiger stripes spots me (haha, word play on stripes and spots) on the sun-lounger, he will instantly leave his usual perch on the kitchen window sill (again, for food scraps), come over and claim my lap (or even chest if I’m sitting a bit reclined).  He’ll go to sleep straightaway, freezing me in the one pose until my legs go numb.  If I move him to de-numb my legs, he’ll immediately climb back on.  

If I’ve got something on my lap (e.g., dry haricot bean pods to shell), Tiger (my own name for him) will sit beside or behind me, leaning his body against mine — basically staying close throughout even though I'm too busy to stroke or cuddle him.  

If I leave the sun-lounger, so will he, which proves that he’s not there for the sun-lounger but for my company.  

One feels honoured, indeed, to be adopted by cats in this way, as the Gentle Giant used to say.  (He also called them “whores”, though, in his quaint usage of the English language, sucking up to anyone who will dish out the stroking and cuddling.)

Mummy Cat (as I call the variegated one with endlessly successive broods, poor old girl) will try to get to my face, for her to nuzzle, by climbing up my leg (or arm, if I bend down, say, to pull up some weeds) with her front legs.  Sweet, if rather painful.  

She has this lovely touch of putting her paws on my shoulders, one on each side, then wrapping them around my neck in a big hug while she nuzzles my chin or cheek.  

If I’m standing at a table, she’ll jump onto the table to try and reach me from that level.  If I stand back, she’ll try and reach out, sometimes to the point of nearly falling off the table herself, in which case she’ll even go to the extent of keeping three legs on the table and just use one to try and climb up my arm in her eagerness to get to my face for that nuzzle.  I find it rather touching (haha, word play).

Practically all the cats are highly responsive and interactive, though in different ways.  

Each looks different (in colour combinations and patterns) and each has his/her own very individualistic mannerisms and way of communicating with you.  

As I got to know each one, I found myself saying to them in turn every day — often more than once a day, “I wish I could take you back to London with me.”  I can see why Serge and Jeanette have them around, even though it means extra work and cost, because they fill one’s life with so much affection. 

The beige one (and mother of the black frisky one — they are both the same size and I’d mistaken them to be siblings) was the first to adopt me.  

It was the morning after I’d arrived from London.  I’d just opened the front door, to go out and start doing the chores for the day, when I heard this meow from somewhere by my feet.

The beige one had been sleeping (probably throughout the night) inside the bushy-climber-plant open-top wire cage by the front door.  She spotted me, however, the moment I opened the front door, left her comfortable nest inside that cage and came up to me, greeting me with a warm, welcoming meow — I was adopted.

After the first few days of my arrival, she took to sleeping in my bed (in the first floor bedroom).  Then in my open suitcase among my clothes.  And finally, on it — when I shut the lid (to stop her from sleeping among my clothes in the suitcase).  

She’d get to my room at night by scaling the ground floor shutters, then the stretch of wall between the shutters on the two storeys, thus endangering her nine lives.  

I’d spend most of the night getting out of bed, carrying her downstairs (cooing apologetically to her) and putting her gently out of the front door, only to get back to my room to find she’d got there and into my bed before me!

The black canvas material of the suitcase was liberally covered with her pale hairs by my last day.  

When Mauricette (a family friend who was visiting for a week with her husband Simon, Serge’s old army comrade) offered to brush them off, I said no, I wanted to keep it as it was — as a souvenir, to keep the memory of these purrfect pals alive and fresh.

(France, September/October 2011)