You’ve got to be kitten me

“The Son of man is going to his fate, as the scriptures say he will, but alas for that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! Better for that man if he had never been born!’

– Matthew 26:24

Rooted to the spot, I turned my face to the sky and closed my eyes in silent scream. Surprisingly, for a man of middle years, what I was experiencing at that moment was a brand new emotion, although a not altogether pleasant one. It was hangover rawness mixed with end-of-the-world despair; a dash of impotence, a few drops of self-loathing and seasoned with plenty of bitter irony. It was all of these things and more and it made the hairs rise on my neck as my pulse throbbed in my temple. Opening my eyes, I looked down at my empty hands. Had I been holding something I would not have been shocked to see that it was the fraying end of my once shining tether. I was Edvard Munch’s muse. I was white noise. And most importantly, I now realised that I would strangle the cat with my bare hands.

But what transpired to push me so dramatically beyond the edge of reason and into the foothills of delirium? A dog named Waffle and (as it would come to be known in time), that H of a cat.

But first, we must set the scene…

As is the way with all fateful days, I awoke the previous morning to a question. Tossing and turning in that antechamber between slumber and the waking world, I couldn’t decide whether I was hearing the drone of a jet contrailing in the sky above or the oil burner humming as it heated the water for my shower. And it was while I was straining my ears beyond the window panes that I heard another sound, this one wholly unmistakable in its identity and owner.

“Miaow,” said the cat.

However, as is the way with all fateful moments, this one passed me by like a stranger on the street, its reputation incognito and its import only knowable with the passage of time.

That fateful day came and went and it was only as evening began to fall in all the glorious golden hues of an August sunset that our visitor once again came calling.

I was in the sunroom and I had just turned from looking out into the garden beyond where my chickens were happily pecking at unseen morsels when the dog started to growl.

Waffle doesn’t growl very often and from the timbre of this utterance I recognised immediately that it wasn’t merely a Willy Wagtail that had irked his sensibilities.

Turning to follow Waffle’s line of sight, I caught the barest glimpse of a tail as it slunk around the corner of the house and out of sight. At the time I couldn’t name the owner of the tail except to say he or she had become an instant enemy, as they undoubtedly bore scant good will for my happy peckers.

“Right, Waffle!” I commanded in my best Sergeant Major voice and opened the backdoor so as to release the hound. I naively assumed that a short chase would ensue followed by me scratching Waffle’s ears and telling him he was a “good boy” for having chased off the tail-y invader. No such luck. What took place was a short chase but one which did not conclude in mine or Waffle’s favour.

Erupting out of the house like a bucking bronco, Waffle locked onto the cat immediately and went full tilt into the feline’s face. Wasting no time, that soon-to-be-named H of a cat struck out post-haste. A quick circumnavigation of the car took place before the feline realised it could evade its barking adversary by scooting underneath the car and better still, by taking up residence under the bonnet.

“Miaow,” said the cat.

“WUF-WUF-WUF-WUF-WUF-WUF!” said Waffle.

“Shut-up dog!” I snapped, the magnitude of this new pickle dawning at once. The H of a cat now had the upper hand.

“Why did you have to chase it under the car?” I demanded of the dog.

But Waffle just tilted his head in reply.

The remainder of that evening played out amidst ever deepening frowns and shakes of the head. How were we to entice the feline squatter out? We did not know and the situation looked especially one-sided when, even after a good hosing with the hose, the cat stayed put.

“Let him go there,” I said with all the confidence of the captain of the Titanic. “He’ll be gone in the morning.”

The next day dawned bright and still and I arose with the echoes of a dream in my head, although its cast and plot were already fading even as I brushed my teeth. It might have been something to do with a giant ice-berg.

A daily ritual for me is the opening of the bathroom window of a morning as I brush, to see, even in the briefest way, what prevailing conditions la journée might hold.

“Miaow,” said the cat.

“WUF-WUF-WUF-WUF-WUF-WUF!” said Waffle, who had heard the mewing from his bed in the back porch.

“F…” I bit back on the oath.

Outside in the bright and still morning, the cat remained abroad and, lifting the bonnet of the car, I could glimpse him (or her) from time to time, stepping around in the car’s innards oblivious to the actual requirements a person might have vis-a-vis their car, ie, they needed it to go places and they couldn’t do that if there was a RUDDY CAT INSIDE!

“Miaow,” said the cat.

With my levity evaporating, I first tried some left-over chicken from the fridge. This tempted the little bugger out but not so far enough that I might make a grab for him. Then I tried some milk in a bowl but this had no effect whatsoever except that the cat hissed violently at me when I wouldn’t push the bowl in far enough.

“Miaow,” said the cat, this time with some venom.

“Shut-up, cat.”

Even though I was working from home that morning, I was still working and so to continue the mission to extricate the newly dubbed, H of a cat out from underneath the bonnet, I woke the eldest of the little humans.

“Don’t try and pick it up, even if you can tempt it out,” I explained. “It’s pretty wild and it hissed at me any time I came close. Try and tempt it out with some chicken or something and if you can get it into a cardboard box, we’ll see about finding it a new home.

“Can we not keep it?” Sarah enquired, innocently.

“No. It’s wild, I’m telling you. It has obviously never been part of a loving home. It’s feral. So don’t touch it. But see what you can do.”

And I went back to work.

For the next four hours Sarah toiled to trap the cat. She used the left-over chicken, more milk and sardines out of a tin.

At one point, a false dawn, she even managed to drop an old wired shopping basket onto the cat as it sat drinking the milk. But then Waffle went mental and the cat escaped through the bars before I could reach the scene. This was a particularly low moment for everyone involved (especially Waffle, as he received a kick up the arse for barking at such an inopportune moment) because as soon as he wriggled free of the basket, the cat returned to the safety of the car’s engine. But Sarah didn’t give up.

The coup de grace finally arrived an hour later when Sarah mixed sardines with some milk in a bowl and set the bowl at the back of a cardboard box, the box positioned on its side beside the car, for maximum feline convenience. Sarah then sat back from the box and waited and I stood at the back door. From where I was standing, I immediately spotted the cat when it emerged from behind a wheel. It stepped tentatively towards the box; the hunger was upon it. Sensing Sarah about to move, I whispered for her to wait. Slowly, the cat came on. Then it was half in, half out. Another moment and he was inside.

“Go!” I breathed.

In one fluid movement, Sarah lunged forward and flipped the cardboard box up, trapping the cat and the milky sardines underneath.

“HISSSSSSSSSS!” said the cat.

“WUF-WUF-WUF-WUF-WUF-WUF!” said Waffle at my feet.

“Yes!” cried Sarah, triumphant.

My work momentarily forgotten, I ran outside and checked the box, just to make sure the captive kitty couldn’t escape this time around. It could not.

“Sit with the box here and make sure he doesn’t get out and I’ll make a few phone calls,” I told Sarah.

And for the next hour, I was pushed from pillar to post and back again, in my bid to off-load the feline fiend into a more suitable home (ie, not my car engine). The short answer was: No-one wanted it. None of the local animal sanctuaries could provide succour, the council did a Pontius Pilate and even a cat neutering charity said there was nothing they could do as there were so many ferals about at the moment.

I can’t say for sure which of my sanctuary phonecalls suggested the following but it was a suggestion nonetheless and it went like this: Seeing as it’s half wild, why don’t you just release it or let it go?

“I think,” I said aloud after hanging up the phone from the last attempt to find a home for that H of a cat, “that is the best suggestion I’ve heard this side of Christianity.” The obvious problem was: I couldn’t release the cat near home or it would immediately return to the car’s engine.

“Right,” I told the troops (little humans). “Get shoes on, we’re taking the cat for a drive.”

“Can we bring Waffle?” someone asked.

“Not a hope,” I replied.

“Miaow,” said the cat.

Ten minutes later we were trundling along a country road about three miles from home, Sarah in the passenger seat and the cat in the cardboard box in her lap.

“This looks like as good a place as any,” I suggested.

“Miaow,” said the cat.

“Yeah, keep talking, pal. You keep talking.”

I pulled the car onto the verge.

“Gimmie that box,” I instructed Sarah and she duly handed over the cardboard prison.

The next moment seemed to play out in slow motion. I tossed the box onto the verge. The box bounced. The cat bounced out of the box and like a streak of feline lightning, it darted underneath the car again and up into the engine.

Rooted to the spot, I turned my face to the sky and closed my eyes in silent scream.

“Seriously, God?”

Ten minutes later we were home again, the cat back under the bonnet and back to square one.

After that turn-around, we all kind of gave up. Our spirits were broken, apart from Waffle’s, that is.

Later that evening, someone noticed that the cat had strayed out from underneath the car and was in the far corner of the yard drinking from Waffle’s bowl. With as little fanfare as possible, I slunk out the front door, sneaked around the house, started the car and drove off. Parking some distance away, I returned to the house, unceremoniously opened the back door and suggested to Waffle, “Off you go, buddy.”

For the second time in as many evenings, Waffle locked onto the cat immediately and went full tilt into the feline’s face. This time, however, instead of having a car to take shelter under, the cat was in the great wide open and with a hairy teddy bear in hot pursuit, was forced to hike up the nearest tree.

This chase happened four more times until the cat finally took the hint. Waffle had become the epitome of faux wrath and the cat… well, let’s just say everyone was glad to see the back of that H of a cat.

After the fourth chase which resulted in the cat clambering to the top of a tree at the foot of the garden, I hunkered down beside the returning hero.

“Good boy, wee Waffle,” I said and scratched his ears.