Happy Christmas

A very happy Christmas from the magpie that eats leftover cat food; from the robin that perches on the aerial of my car, eats bread from the window and poos on the roof; from the copper-budded beech trees to which snow still clings; from the squirrel that crouches on a branch, body motionless, upright tail undulating like a snake; from dripping crystal icicles filled with light that hang from the gutter; from the two cats, John and me; from Iain mcGilchrist and Robert Twigger whose books I am slowly reading. At some level we are all connected.

Protecting Herself?

Here, it rarely snows before Christmas, and when it does it is something ephemeral, wet and slushy and vulnerable to the daylight rise of a few degrees. This year temperatures recorded in November set new records, and we had real snow that still persists days after we first woke to find the ground white. We were taken unawares. A hard winter once every few decades is to be expected, even at a time of global warming. Two hard winters in succession?

We are provided with plenty of news about the disruption caused by the snow, but no-one predicted its arrival, or gave a definite date for its departure, or attempted to explain why we should be blown upon by winds from Scandanavia and Siberia rather than from the Atlantic. In the absence of an explanation my mind has been seeking to provide an answer. This morning the name, James Lovelace, came into my head, and after James came Gaia. Perhaps a rise in the earth's temperature causes an increase in volcanic activity, and residual volcanic dust in the atmosphere, causing reflection of sunlight into space, brings about a lowering of the temperature. Gaia protecting herself through one of her homeostatic mechanisms.

Sorry

Sorry, there's no blog this week. I'm writing a story for children.

Sherpa's mystery ailment

Last week Sherpa, one of our two cats, developed a mystery illness or had a mystery accident. I knew something was amiss when, after several hours of lying in the boiler house, she refused the food I offered her, jumped down from her chair and walked very slowly towards the garden. On the way she found herself on the bottom one of three steps outside the sitting room. Several times she tried to get down from the step, lowering one paw but then withdrawing it before it reached the ground. When eventually she found the courage to get down, she walked slowly over the grass and lay under a shrub. I brought her a saucer of milk in which she showed no interest. Shortly afterwards she disappeared. I thought we had lost her.

Darkness fell and there she was, sitting on the window. I let her in and she jumped on a chair. I offered her meat which she quickly devoured, then I offered her more. It too disappeared, after which she lapped milk from a saucer and half heartedly licked her paws before becoming lethargic again.

She remained in her chair during the night, but after being fed the following morning she went out and once more disappeared. When she returned in the evening she was brighter. In a few days she was her sprightly self again.

I'm left wondering if she disappeared in case I decided to take her to the vet and had come to the conclusion that vets don't work after dark. It is interesting to speculate even though I shall never know the answer.

Nest

I was pruning the Philadelphus outside the gate when I noticed, too late because I had already severed the branch at its base, a bird's nest high up. I stopped pruning and left the branch suspended, but supported by the surrounding branches, hoping the bird would still use the nest. A few days later I noticed the same nest on the ground.

Its framework was woven carefully from blades of dried grass and fibres torn from them. Whole blades were visible on the inside around the rim, but the bowl of the base had more fibres than blades. The nest was further strengthened by thin wiry twigs like those of heather. These were present on the outside among blades of grass where insulation, in the form of moss and sheep's wool, was also applied.

What really touched me was that the bird had woven a strand of pale pink ribbon, about the same width as the blades of grass, around the top edge of its nest.

Repairing the Fireplace

I'm sitting in front of a blazing fire, the sort of fire we normally light in the depths of winter, with Sherpa, one of our cats, sprawled in contentment across an armchair. This fire should be hot enough, I hope, to set the special cement.

On Saturday, as I wandered around a local hardware shop looking for putty, I picked up a small tub and discovered that there exists a fireproof cement which is stable at temperatures above 1300 degrees Celsius and can be used for repairing defects in fireplaces. Our fireplace had plenty of those. I was aware of horizontal and vertical cracks that needed to be filled so I started the first part of the process: the preparatory cleaning, first with a brush and then with a ragged towel. This revealed more cracks and holes and depressions of which I had been unaware.

The surface needs to be wet so that the cement can adhere to it. I put my right hand into a disposable rubber glove and with this stuffed the cement directly from the tub into the cracks and hollows before leveling it off. It only remained to light a small fire, build it up gradually during the next four hours, and enjoy it with Sherpa in the meantime.

Family trees

Last week I wrote about the visit paid to us by a cousin, distant yet unexpectedly close. There is a temptation to give in to the addiction of following other branches of the family tree, but I have reservations.

Genes determine our hardware, but our software is cultural and includes language, reading and writing. Our software allows us to access an Internet, a world wide web along whose strands we can, if we so choose, connect with the greatest minds, past and present, across the Planet.

Another assumption demolished

This blog is a few days late and it has no connection with cats. Instead I need to write about an assumption I had which circumstances force me to correct.

When we were children two miniature photographs stood on a mantlepiece in the small room where we ate, did our homework and relaxed. One photograph showed my father's grandfather, my grandfather's father. The other showed his wife, Elizabeth. I still have both photographs.

Elizabeth's nephew, Richard Stanislaus, emigrated with his wife to Australia at the end of the nineteenth century. His son Austin enlisted as an ANZAC soldier during the first world war, was hospitalised while in Europe and later visited the home where his great-aunt Elizabeth and her husband had lived until their deaths a few years previously. While he stayed with the cousins who now lived in the family home, he met a girl related to his great-aunt, fell in love, married and brought her back to Australia.

A grand daughter of dashing Austin contacted me last year and we exchanged emails. I was struck by the quality of her writing. Last Sunday she came to visit.

I saw her walking past the kitchen window, went to meet her and found myself gazing at a reincarnation of my great grandmother. When I showed her the photograph she immediately recognised herself in it, and I saw her eyes return, time after time, to the little miniature.

I am a hybrid. At different times people have seen in me my mother, my paternal grandmother and my father's sister. I know I share a love of learning with Elizabeth (and with my Australian cousins), but no-one has ever suggested I bore any physical resemblance to her. At an intellectual level I realise it is possible for someone to have a closer resemblance to her great, great grand aunt than another person who is more directly related, but the idea is so counter-intuitive I never seriously harboured it. That is, until now.

Three Cart Horses

Six weeks of summer spent almost every year of childhood on our widowed grandmother's farm was for me a foretaste of paradise. We were there for haymaking in July and while oats and barley were being harvested in August. Our uncle, helped by a farm hand or two, was the farmer and his partners were three large-boned, muscular horses. If he ever considered replacing them with a tractor, that thought was quickly deleted.

Each horse had his own straw-strewn stable with a half door. When the top half was open he could stand and watch all that went on in the farmyard. Sometimes we, children, would gather windfall apples and, one by one, on the palm of an outstretched hand offer them to those horses in residence. Apples were titbits, interesting additions to a diet of oats and hay.

From the yard a gate led into the Yard Field, the road side of which was a mile long, or so it was claimed. It was never ploughed and abounded in red and white clovers, scarlet pimpernels, bird's foot trefoil, purple knapweed and many other wild flowers. Sometimes the horses, whinnying with delight were led into this bee-humming meadow to romp and graze. In their wake they left horse dung and that, we were told, was the reason field mushrooms could be found growing in this field. We threaded them on to a long grass stalk, brought them back to fry in butter and savoured a taste that is so much better than that of cultivated mushrooms.

Our stubborn uncle's death put an end to farming with horses on that farm. Is there anywhere left in Western Europe where horses pull carts and farm machinery? Is there anyone left with the understanding and skills needed to work with these breeds? Anyone who can fashion their harness? There was once a saddler in the town where I live. Horse brasses mounted on leather hung outside his shop while he adapted his business to produce robust leather school bags. At the other end of the town was a forge. My father once brought me to see the blacksmith shoeing a horse amid a shower of sparks. Soon afterwards he diversified into other types of metal work.

People still keep horses, more lightly built animals for recreation. It is the work horse which has disappeared.

Book Review - Animals in Translation.

This is my review of "Animals in Translation" subtitled "The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow" by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson.

I was motivated by the BBC “Horizon” programme devoted to her and more recently “The Interview” with her on the World Service, to buy a book by Temple Grandin. “Animals in Translation” had eighteen reviews, seventeen of which were very positive, on Amazon.co.uk, so I ordered it and started to read full of admiration for all she had achieved.

The first chapter offers moving glimpses into her very difficult childhood and adolescence and the start of her involvement with horses. It also divides humans into two clear-cut groups, autistic and normal, and has Temple Grandin making the astounding claim that “she is starting to be able to accurately predict animal talents nobody can see” based on what she knows about autistic talent. “This is a little like astronomers predicting the existence of a planet nobody can see based on their understanding of gravity.” Words like these raise very high expectations.

So what is so very different in the ways animals and autistic people think? They see details to which the rest of us are oblivious, claims Grandin, and they think in pictures. Her work with cattle does indeed demonstrate that these animals react to reflections on smooth metal and puddles, slow fan blade movement, differences in light intensity and other stimuli which people working in abattoirs do not perceive until it is drawn to their attention. When Temple Grandin’s book draws on her own experiences it is at its most convincing. I also found the common sense audits she devised very impressive. She has worked with horses, pigs and chickens as well as cattle. The problem is that she assumes what she has discovered about a few animals can be applied to all, and it is not even clear what she means by “animal.” Perhaps she means “vertebrates” because mammals, birds and occasionally reptiles and fish are included.

Several of the 324 pages are devoted to dogs and are peppered with anecdotes, as is the rest of the book. She gives what sounds like very authoritative advice on the training of dogs, but more than one person reviewing this book elsewhere has pointed out that her theories depend on old, outdated and discredited research.

In a book where the style is slang-spiced, occasionally toddler-speak, conversational, it is often hard to disentangle what is evidence-based from the matrix of opinion, over generalisation and highly imaginative speculation in which it is embedded. Here is a sample of the writing:

“...most of what animals do in life they learn from other animals. Adults teach their young where to eat, what to eat, whom to socialise with, and whom to have sex with. The adults teach the young ones social rules and respect for their own kind.”

Cats are the animals I know best. Our two cats were litter mates and arrived as kittens too small to have reached the stage where they would receive hunting lessons from their mother; yet these autodidacts progressed from learning to catch insects to catching mice once their deciduous canine teeth were replaced by permanent ones. Cats are also well known for regulating their social interactions and sex lives independently of their elders.

To write this review I read the entire book although I was tempted more than once to give up. I remain far from convinced that animals are autistic savants, that music is the language of many animals, or that Temple Grandin has no Unconscious. The book itself seems to contradict the idea that normal people are lumpers who generalise while animals and autistic people are splitters who see the differences between things more than the similarities. It also seems strange that, nowhere in this long book, is there any mention of the specialisation of right and left hemispheres of the brain. If we, normal people, seriously underestimate the intelligence of animals and of people diagnosed autistic, then this book underestimates our ability to train ourselves to see detail.

Cats' Concert

I bought the book, Animals in Translation, hoping that it would offer insights into the way animals think. Temple Grandin has been diagnosed as having high-functioning autism and has shown an exceptional understanding of animals.

It is well known that children with autism have difficulty learning to talk. Some autistic adults have recalled how, as children echoing the speech around them, they concluded that the meaning of language resided in the tone of voice used by the speaker and not in the words used. Temple Grandin knows of one mother of an autistic child who can communicate with her daughter only through singing. The child understands a command like, "Set the table now," when it is sung but not when it is spoken. As a two-year-old, unable to speak, Temple herself was able to hum Bach while her mother played the music on the piano. As an adult she admits that the only social cue she picks up easily is tone of voice.

Temple claims that it is her autism which gives her a unique insight into the way animals think and she has developed a hypothesis that music is the language of many animals. She refers to the scientific literature to lend weight to this hypothesis. Unfortunately the evidence is fragmentary, her list of references is erratic and the statement of her case far from clear.

Cats are not the animals with which she is most familiar. Like young autistic children, and unlike dogs, they seem to have no, or almost no idea that words convey meaning (Sherpa shows interest when she hears her name). They do understand what is conveyed in the tone of a voice and, contrary to popular perception make a variety of very expressive sounds and not just, "Miaou," as we render it in English. They purr when contented, hiss as a warning, and howl when face to face with a cat that has invaded their territory. Sherpa makes a soft trilling sound when I open the window to let her in. To me it conveys pleasure and acts as a greeting. When Banjo was a kitten he occasionally uttered soft whistles. Apart from purring and trilling which are rhythmic, there doesn't seem to be anything very musical about cat communication, although there may be surprises awaiting us, giving new meaning to the term, "Cats' Concert."

Temple Grandin and the Reviewers

Temple Grandin is a celebrity. She is also a high-functioning autistic, a woman with impressive academic qualifications. BBC TV devoted a Horizon programme to the work she has done in making American slaughter houses less stressful to the animals. She has a unique understanding of those we rear for food and this she attributes to the way she thinks in pictures rather than words.

Recently I visited the BBC Worldservice archive of interviews, listened to an interview with her and was moved to buy one of her books. There isn't a good book shop in the vicinity so I visited Amazon. co.uk and clicked on the reviews of Animals in Translation. There were a total of 18 reviewers who awarded it stars as follows:

72% 5 stars

22% 4 stars

6% 1 star

The person who grudgingly gave it a single star did so on the grounds that the book was "essentially a self-help book for abattoir owners". Obviously this was a book worth buying. I am about half way through it and hope to write a review when I have finished. In the meantime, reading the book has made me think again about book reviews and the people who write them.

I decided to look at the reviews of this book on Amazon.com and discovered there were 187 0f them. There was a greater spread of reactions, but, amazingly, around the same percentage of people awarded it 5 stars and 1 star. Here are the percentages:

71% 5 star

14% 4 star

6% 3 star

3% 2 star

6% 1 star

I didn't read all the reviews, but I found that many of those that were critical were among the most thoughtful. It was also obvious that many people write reviews when they have very little, or nothing to add to what has been said before. It's as if they simply want to register a vote, usually in favour of what they have read. I am almost certain that many of the most effusive reviewers were influenced by Temple Grandin's celebrity and by her academic qualifications and felt they had to accept everything she and her co-author, Catherine Johnson, wrote. It takes a very confident person to question the famous, but if the feedback celebrities receive is always unjustifiably positive they can end up less connected to reality than the average person.

The pygmy shrew

Once I noticed Banjo watching an old rose bush at a point where thick roots formed a small arch above the soil. When he started to paw under the arch a shrew ran to escape from him. Banjo watched the little mammal, then began to follow it pawing it so that it changed direction. Eventually he killed it and tossed it into the air. He didn't eat it. Cats generally find shrews distasteful.

It was a pygmy shrew, a tiny mammal few people have ever seen, which weighs 5g (about 50,000 pygmy shrews would need to be placed on the bathroom scales to register my weight). It had a broad, black back, a pale belly, a long tail, small eyes and a slender, pointed snout. Shrews are classified as insectivores but they eat a variety of small invertebrates. Woodlice, spiders and beetles, but also fruits, seeds and small carrion are drawn into the snout and broken up by small, sharp, red-tipped teeth. They forage day and night, alternating periods of activity with periods of rest. Their nests are loose balls of woven grasses at, or just below, ground level.

They don't hibernate in winter, the young, born in the spring and summer ensure that the species survives when their parents die in autumn.

Banjo tired of the dead shrew after playing with it for some time and Sherpa, who had been watching, took over the toy. When she had satisfied her desire to play and walked away, Banjo resumed his playing. When he had enough the shrew was left on a step outside the french window.

Sherpa as scientist

Doris Lessing writes that some cats display a type of intelligence she describes as scientific. There is no doubt that Sherpa is one of these curious about all that goes on around her.

When she was a couple of months old I saw her stand beside a litter tray where Banjo was doing a pooh. Then I noticed her head was under his tail, watching as it emerged. She soon became a feline authority on the things humans do in private as well as in public.

From a very young age she showed independence, wandering off on her own and leaving behind a lonely little brother. I would find him crying, and then I lifted him or took him to find his sister.

Sherpa was the one who discovered that the chain on the back door could be used as a knocker with which to gain attention when she wanted to go out.

One evening, when I was with Banjo at the front of the house I noticed her coming towards us with something in her mouth. It was an empty bird's nest, made of moss and feathers. She laid it on the ground and began to pull it apart.

Once, while she was not yet two years of age, she found an elastic band and picked it up with her teeth. Holding down the free end with her paw she pulled the elastic and found it stretched. She let it go, picked it up again and repeated the experiment. She did this several times, stretching the elastic a bit more each time. When the band finally broke she ate it.

cat and mouse

Expect to be given your first mouse at around the time your cat's kitten canine teeth are replaced by adult weapons. Until then it has been honing its hunting skills on insects.

Not long after banjo and Sherpa reached this milestone in their development, a couple came to help us in the garden. While we were having lunch they left their wellingtons at the back door and a dead mouse was dropped into one. It was a field mouse with yellowish brown fur on its back, a white belly, large round eyes and prominent ears.

I have opened the door on a wet evening to a cat howling as if in distress, only to find, too late, that it had a mouse in its mouth. I could only close a door to the rest of the house as the cat placed the mouse on the tiled floor and allowed it to run for safety in the low space under the cooker, or the narrow space between the back of the washing machine and the wall. If only the mouse stayed there until the cat lost interest, and then asked to be let out! No, it came out, was temporarily immobilised under a paw, released, reached safety, came out... Usually the mouse was still in hiding by the time we went to bed.

There was a mouse in the kitchen when I was admitted to hospital for an operation. It was only caught when I returned home and some time later came down to the kitchen in the early hours of the morning to find it frolicking. It left a nest in a drawer that contained gloves, cotton tea- cosies and rolls of gauze. To make its nest it gnawed pieces from a scarf and supplemented these with bits of the brown paper in which the gauze was rolled. The result was a sphere, several centimetres in diameter, as soft and warm and light as thistledown.

Fighting like cat and dog

During a recent family reunion John was given a photograph. It was probably taken early in the twentieth century and showed a middle-aged lady with a cat on her knee and a dog sharing her chair. When he drew my attention to it John said, 'This makes nonsense of the saying about fighting like cat and dog.' However, on examining the photograph more closely, we both decided we couldn't rule out the possibility that the cat and dog were studio props.

When I was a child we did have a cat and dog who were so friendly that, on winter evenings as they sat in front of the Aga cooker, the cat often licked the dog's ears. They had grown up together since Sooty arrived as a small black kitten around the time that Bran came as a young fox terrier pup.

When strange dogs had the temerity to invade our back yard it was Sooty who routed them. There were no cat-and-dog fights because dogs ten times her size were afraid of Sooty. At least that is how it is remembered in our family.

During her twenty four year life Sooty gave birth to several litters of kittens on a bed of straw in a wooden box in an outhouse. Bran had only to be asked, 'Show us your kittens,' and he went to the back door. As soon as it was opened he trotted straight to the outhouse and over to the wooden box, looking at Sooty and her family before turning to the human who had come to see them.

Bee in a thimble

Even during these overcast July days sentenced by St Swithen, there is usually a time when the sun is permitted a short period of parole. One day recently I found Sherpa, during one of these sunny intervals, stretched out in a state of torpor near one of the bay windows upstairs from where, when she deigns to half open her eyes, she can observe bird life. As I stroked her silky, sun-warmed fur I looked out and saw bees.

Several years ago a swarm of honey bees came and built a hive above the bay window and under the roof. When I failed to see them this spring I concluded they had been wiped out by colony collapse disorder, or had been discovered by the men who painted the house before they emerged from their winter lethargy (the bees that is, not the men), and had been exterminated.

Apart from white clover, I'm not sure what sustains honey bees at this time of year. It is bumble bees I see exploiting the bounty of St John's wort and foxglove. A few years ago I bought a packet of wild flower seeds in a supermarket, and the foxgloves - or fairy thimbles as we called them as children - flowered for the first time this year among roses where I transplanted them. The tallest flowering stems have reached almost six feet, having produced a succession of blooms that have provided the bumble bees with pollen and nectar for weeks.

Divers rats

Five minutes’ walk from our house there is a small estate of bungalows occupied by people who have retired. No-one keeps a pet - perhaps they aren’t permitted to - and rats have been coming to raid their bins.

Emotion plays a large part in the formation of long-term memory and I have several memories of rats; going as a child to see the outhouses belonging to a manor in the interval between the death of its last occupant and the demolition of the house, and seeing rats in their hundreds (at least that was my childish estimation); being wakened by their scurrying when staying in the guest room of a Mission in Zambia and imagining that fright would have turned my hair white by the morning; staying in a cheap hotel in London near a tube station which had been bombed and discovering that rats had been attempting to gnaw through the floorboards. Then there was the time when the engine of my Citroen 2CV refused to start and the mechanic who fixed it discovered gnawed potatoes under the bonnet. Rats had discovered we kept a sack of potatoes in the garage and had been climbing up the wide exhaust of the car to cache them. At that time we kept a dog but not a cat.

I appreciate that, like us, rats need food and shelter and that they care for their young, but they can transmit serious diseases and I prefer it when they keep their distance. I suspect that the smell a cat, even one that is not a ratter, leaves behind when it marks its territory is a sufficient deterrent to enterprising rats.

Haunted by Cats

An article in yesterday's Financial Times tells of an expedition by Tahir Shah and his young daughter, Ariane, to the Moroccan Atlantic port of Sale. From what was a republic in the seventeenth century, pirates sailed far and wide, returning with their booty and slaves.

In the graveyard they find an old fisherman feeding fish heads to the cats which surround him. In Morocco a cat never goes hungry because people believe ghosts of dead humans dwell in them. It turns out that parts of Sale are really haunted because Tahir and Ariane come across nests of cats as they walk along the damp vaulted corridor to the dungeon in the Sqala.

I can't say I recognise in Banjo and Sherpa the spirits of any humans I knew, but once we had a dog we loved very dearly, and more than once, in unguarded moments, I looked at her and saw a very gentle, refined and pious lady with whom we were connected. If you think about it, however, dog ghosts are more unlikely than cats. At least cats have good vision in dim light.

The entire article, 'Barbary Ghosts' can be read on the blog:

tahir-shah. blogspot.com

Banjo, the dissection expert

I think it must be Banjo who returns with what he has captured during the night and eats it on the steps at the sitting room. Today I saw a whole mouse which must have been surplus to his requirements. During the past week it was only viscera which were left behind. One day it appeared to be the entire viscera of a mouse. The following day the alimentary canal of a larger animal with a prominent caecum like a string of oval red beads was there for our inspection. I wondered if it might be a rabbit, or one of the young squirrels which have been foraging on the grass for the past ten days.

The squirrel children come down from the trees a few times a day to feed on dry, white-gilled toadstools. No parent accompanies them, so it looks unlikely that they are being taught to distinguish between edible fungi and those that could be fatal if eaten (if there are fungi that poison squirrels). At first it appeared as if the little animals took life very seriously, at least while on the ground. Then, as I was watching one of them he suddenly jumped into the air. A moment later he jumped again, but this time he introduced a variation. Before landing he rotated his body as a diver might do while plunging into a pool.

I am as certain as it's possible to be that Banjo's meal did not consist of squirrel.

Newsflash

Today I’m interrupting my Sunday blog on cats with a news flash. A few days ago I saw five earthworms, all of the same species, all 3-4cm long. They were epigeal worms, dark red in colour with an orange that suggested brandling (or tiger) worms. I found them lying on the surface of soil under one of two blue plastic washing-up basins formerly favoured by New Zealand flatworms, but they quickly retreated into burrows when they were disturbed. They are still in the same place today.

I want to reassure you that I am not dreaming, although if you have read my posts on earthworms, flatworms and alien invasive species (which I wrote before turning to cats), you will realise that seeing earthworms of any species in a garden in the north of Ireland is little short of a miracle. This spring, although often tempted, I refrained from buying locally grown bedding plants. I have a strong suspicion that flatworms lurk in the peat in which they germinated. In 2010 I have seen, and destroyed, only one flatworm. There may be other reasons why the platyhelminths appear to be less plentiful. As a result of work we had carried out by builders earlier this year, there is less damp moss in the places where they previouly congregated. Add to this the unusually small amount of rain that has fallen so far this year. Perhaps life has been less simple for travelling flatworms.

Rosemary's Cattery

When she came to dinner on Thursday evening, Rosemary told us about the cattery on the farm where she, her husband and family live in Melbourne. With a liking for dogs but a special affinity for cats, Rosemary visited several other catteries before designing her own.

Each cat is housed in a two storied compartment with a carpeted ramp, on which claws can be sharpened, connecting the two. The upper compartment has a window, the lower is darker but from it a cat flap leads to an outside enclosure. Cats usually take a day to settle in. After that they appear very content.

Rosemary restricts the number of residents she accepts, making sure her charges are eating the food their owners recommend. Two cats were left with her for two-and-a-half years while their owners were in Japan. Four was the largest number left by one person. Melbourne has very strict cat control laws and to keep four cats a permit is needed.

Before you rush out to build your own cattery, let me warn you of what can happen to raise your adrenalin to pathological levels. Cats are not usually regarded as burrowing animals and I was amazed when Rosemary told us that two cats had succeeded in burrowing out of their enclosure. Several times she and her son, Lorcan, vainly searched the farm and checked the family's garden, but it was only when the returned owner was furiously berating Rosemary that the wily creatures, miaouing innocently, betrayed their presence.

I don't know which is worse, one of your charges disappearing or having it die. While in her care two cats died. The owners of one of the deceased were in new Zealand at the time and, not wishing to spoil their holiday, Rosemary consulted their solicitor. He wisely recommended a postmortem which revealed the cause of the sudden death as a brain tumour.

Failings

A few years ago a couple who live nearby produced a circular and dropped a copy through our letter box. There was a photograph of a handsome marmalade cat and an appeal that, if anyone knew his whereabouts, to please inform them. They and their child were feeling bereft.

The following Sunday afternoon the lady called. Oscar had still not turned up and she suspected foul play. Cats do, for reasons known only to themselves, sometimes decide to move home. Sometimes they are killed accidentally; but the level of antipathy towards felines that this couple experienced before his disappearance made them fear the worst.

Many people in the area where we live dislike cats in a way few other animals are disliked. It seems to me that it was not always like this. If there was antagonism towards cats in my youth, I was not aware of it. Now, when you say cats share your home, people often respond by telling you how dirty they are and it is impossible to invite them to your house. The failings of dogs are overlooked even though a few of them have killed children. Humans, of course, don't have failings.

Food from Mars

Keeping a cat is not easy. Early last week I was talking to Joy in the local supermarket. She was upset as she told me that one of her cats had been attacked by two feral cats and had to have an eye removed.

'I don't feed stray cats,' she said, implying that the animals were hungry.

I have also learned not to feed hungry cats that find their way to the back door. We all know that giving food to cats is like giving money to most charities. They will soon be back looking for more, making you feel guilty if you refuse. Resident cats can become involved in territorial disputes. When I brought Sherpa to the vet to have her badly infected and almost detached tail amputated, I was told that tooth marks were visible suggesting another cat had been the culprit.

The cost of feeding a cat has risen by a rate greatly exceeding the rate of inflation. A 100g tray of the only brand of cat food Sherpa will eat costs over 50p per day, and a cat needs at least two trays a day. Per kilo this food, which contains about 4% chicken and 4% rabbit, costs around the same as the cheaper pot-luck minced beef sold by our local butchers. When it is first opened it usually has an appetising aroma, but very quickly - within minutes - the smell deteriorates. Our pair of resident magpies are the recipients of Sherpa's leftovers.

I'm left wondering whether the 8% refers to the dry or wet weight of the meat because, elsewhere on the tray it is stated that the food contains 10% protein and 81% moisture. Food composition tables show that chicken is made up of approximately 20% protein and cooked rabbit (assuming it can be compared to beef) about 25%. The mysterious brownish matrix must contribute the remainder of the protein.

When I look at the nutrition information on the back of a packet of dehydrated nuggets which both cats occasionally eat, I become even more confused. Kibbles contain 4% cereal and 4% animal or plant derivatives, but a massive 32% protein. If anyone from Mars (the makers of chocolate bars and cat food rather than inhabitants of the planet) happens to read this, could they possibly enlighten me?

Batty Observations

This year the second half of May has brought warm dry weather and balmy evenings when it is more pleasant to be outdoors. Yesterday, with a half moon high in the southern sky, I walked down the garden path at a time when the birds had stopped singing and retired for the night. Two large bats, black in the fading light, were on the wing. Flying low they followed one another past me and disappeared into one of the tall spruce trees at the back. After I had stood for several minutes waiting in vain for them to reappear, I sat down on the steps outside the front door. There I was joined by Sherpa and watched fast-flying bats approach and veer out of sight.

Once, a few years ago, I opened the back door to find a small dead bat lying on the top step. Had Sherpa caught it? Had Banjo found a dead bat and brought it to show me? I'll never know.

During the winter bats hibernate in our attic. In 1981, when January frosts were severe, we opened the trap door so that warm air from the rest of the house could prevent water in the pipes and tank from freezing. A small bat awoke from hibernation and flew around the house before coming to rest clinging to a curtain.

It must have been early spring, when Catriona and I were returning from a walk along the strand in Portballintrae near the Giant's Causeway, and a colony of hundreds of bats appeared. We watched transfixed as they flew overhead. I didn't know at the time that female bats come together in large maternity colonies to give birth and rear their young. Along the Antrim coast are caves. I can only speculate that is where the nursery was.

Shantytown cats

We walked from Dar Khalifa through the shantytown down a dusty earth road made uneven by protruding stones. On our left was the mosque and the mosque school, on our right a stall that sold vegetables. It was backed by a high wall and round it customers had gathered. A little farther on, at a place where a profusion of climbing plants spilled over the wall, an adolescent boy wearing a black T-shirt and black trousers which reached just below his knee, was selling white-skinned, earth-free potatoes from a cart over which a clean cloth had been laid. The donkey was nowhere to be seen.

We rounded a corner and found a row of simple dwellings. They were windowless, or had very small windows. The corrugated iron which formed their roofs was weighed down with bricks and on each door a lozenge pattern was painted, but beside plastic water tanks there were satellite dishes. The shantytown had only one standpipe to provide water, but mains electricity.

A large area of common ground separated the shantytown from the tarred road and high-walled villas opening on to it. On part of it short grass grew, elsewhere there were other plants which, from a distance, were impossible to identify. Here egrets had landed and hens, some with chicks at their feet, were pecking. A large flock of shorn long-tailed sheep lay close together.

Nearer the houses, where the ground was bare, leaning tree-branches propped up lines hung with clothes drying and bedding being aired. In the shade of rugs goats sheltered from the hot sun and a magnificent rooster stood proudly with red comb and wattles, a long scarf of silky russet feathers and black curving feathers at his tail. It was here we found cats sleeping in shadow.

Casablanca Cat

At the end of April Catriona and I spent two full days in Casablanca staying at the Caliph's house, the home of Tahir and Rachana Shah and their two young children. On the recommendation of our hosts we had lunch the first day in a restaurant where the food was said to be as good as that cooked in Moroccan homes.

We sipped delicious freshly squeezed orange juice and nibbled olives while we waited for the first course to appear. This was a tray of dips and salads which we ate with bread. When we had finished the waiter brought our chicken tagines, a half chicken jointed, tender, succulent and subtly spiced.

Hardly had I lifted the conical earthenware lid, when I saw at my feet, sitting in the narrow border of dark earth that separated the tiled floor from the wall, a cat. He (you could tell it was a he from his stance) sat in dignified silence, a haughty beggar. He was a tabby in the sense that his short hair was brindled black on light grey. When I looked up the word 'tabby' in a dictionary I discovered it can also mean a fabric like silk or taffeta with a watered pattern and the word came originally from Arabic. Al-'attabiya was the quarter of (Prince) 'Attab, the part of Baghdad where the fabric was originally made.

He watched me eating my tagine until I could bear it no longer and, surreptitiously tearing off a piece of chicken, and another and another, placed them on the pink tile beside him. When I had finished he moved closer to Catriona.

At dinner that evening we mentioned the restaurant cat to our hosts. Cats, they told us, are found in many public places in Morooco. People respect cats and are considerate towards them because they believe jinns can take the form of a cat.

When we were in Casablanca airport having our passports carefully examined by taciturn immigration officials, Catriona drew my attention to a (you've guessed it) walking silently behind us.

A cat called Lucy

A ginger cat, obviously a neutered male, used to be a regular visitor to our garden. The cat’s owner was the person who phoned us on the morning of Banjo’s accident and a week later I called to thank her. She brought me into her sitting room where her four cats had already made themselves comfortable. When I told her that the ginger often came to see us she revealed that his name was Lucy.

Lucy is not the only male cat I know who has been given a female name. If you judge by appearances it is easy to assume that a male kitten is female. Banjo was smaller than his sister when he arrived and both were six weeks old. His testes had not yet descended. I can’t say for certain when a male kitten’s testes descend, but it is several months after birth. Initially, when I fed both kittens from the same saucer, Sherpa grabbed the larger share, but even then, when he was small and vulnerable, I had no doubt that he was male. I can’t be more specific seven years later, but his behaviour was male and hers was female.

I’ve decided to write this blog less frequently but more regularly. Next Sunday, I shall write a little about cats we saw in Morocco. Inshallah - please God.

Book Review

Pleasurable Kingdom

by

Jonathan Balcombe

There is a chapter in Pleasurable Kingdom entitled Transcendent Pleasures which has a section headed Mad with joy. Here we learn about the delight of chimpanzees, released from their winter quarters at Arnham zoo, and that of other chimps given shelter from rain, about the raptures felt by mules brought to the surface after years working in a coal mine, about the joy of dolphins escaping from purse seine nets, of dogs anticipating walks and cattle let into fields after long winters confined in byres. When elephants meet again after a period of absence they can create pandemonium.

Jonathan Balcombe has created a magnificent hymn celebrating the pleasures experienced by animals, from their delight in play, to the enjoyment they find in food, touch, uninhibited sex and love, to the happiness they derive when exhibiting their skills and intelligence and in appreciating those of others. For too long, those of us who thought of such things at all, have dwelt on the harshness of nature and have not allowed the sweet notes to enter our consciousness.

As we listen to the glorious music the images presented before us in rapid succession seem to contain no shadow, until we are finally shown the long, dark shadow thrown by cruel man. We have to look very closely to see any other darkness, but it is there. We see it when we realise that the pleasures described in Mad with joy would not exist were it not for hardship and loss. The apparent bliss of crows standing in the smoke stream of a chimney or spreading their wings over discarded cigarette butts in a railway terminus, may not be because of intoxication, but simply the relief experienced after removal of the fleas which had been driving the birds to distraction. I suspect that a life of uninterrupted pleasure would be no more satisfying for an animal than it would be for a human.

It seems begrudging to award this book only four stars instead of five. I enjoyed it immensely, but these shadowless, too-numerous animals hopping in and out of my consciousness failed to touch my heart in the way that, say, Doris Lessing’s cats did.

Ice Storm

During the last week of March there was an ice storm such as I have never seen before. For hours sheets of snow were tossed about by a strong wind. From 6 pm cars were stranded on Glenshane Pass a few miles from here and it was 2 am before all the drivers and passengers were rescued and brought to local halls where they spent the night. A photograph taken from the air the following day showed a thin dark line with a single lane of tiny parked cars crossing the white television screen.

Many people lost their electricity supply that evening. Poles were blown down and overhead cables broke under the weight of frozen snow. As I sat beside the fire with the two cats the lights flickered every few seconds, but we were lucky. The power stayed on.

Banjo and Sherpa react differently when they are forced to stay indoors. That night Banjo was restless and repeatedly went to the door asking for it to be opened. When it was, and he was hit by a blast of icy wind he quickly retreated. Sherpa withdrew, as she did during the worst of the winter snow. She showed no interest in food or lying on a warm lap, but curled up on a chair beside the radiator.

Spring Scents

Spring Scents

In the book, 'Pleasurable Kingdom,' Jonathan Balcombe writes, 'They (animals) live - I suspect - mainly in the present. I wonder about this when animals can have such a powerful sense of smell, and when I know that a smell can drop me instantly into a specific past.The scent of lilac recreates our walk to primary school. Along one stretch the stone wall of a garden towered above us. Hanging over the wall was a lilac bush which in spring diffused a scent from heaven into the air around it. We could have walked along the path that adults chose, but we often preferred to climb over rocks at the base of the wall.Near the school was a canteen from whose tall chimney descended smells unlike those of home cooking. Recently I detected one of those smells when I passed the factory of a local butcher.The smell of a fox transports me to my grandmother's farm where we spent idyllic summer days in childhood. We were walking along a hedge that separated two fields when our cousin stopped. We noticed a strong distinctive smell and she told us a fox had passed that way.Some years ago we visited a folk park and walked around a variety of traditional cottages. From the garden of one a smell arose that was exactly like that in the garden behind my grandmother's farmhouse. It brought me to a sudden stop.The smells of primroses, bluebells, wild garlic, flowering currant, to name a few, connect me to the places where I saw them as a child.I contrast the memory I have of past weather. People say that this winter was the coldest for fifty years, but I have no memory of a harsh winter about fifty years ago.In the photograph Sherpa has found an interesting smell. I wonder if it awakened memories for her.

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Spring Scents

In the book, 'Pleasurable Kingdom,' Jonathan Balcombe writes, 'They (animals) live - I suspect - mainly in the present. I wonder about this when animals can have such a powerful sense of smell, and when I know that a smell can drop me instantly into a specific past.

The scent of lilac recreates our walk to primary school. Along one stretch the stone wall of a garden towered above us. Hanging over the wall was a lilac bush which in spring diffused a scent from heaven into the air around it. We could have walked along the path that adults chose, but we often preferred to climb over rocks at the base of the wall.

Near the school was a canteen from whose tall chimney descended smells unlike those of home cooking. Recently I detected one of those smells when I passed the factory of a local butcher.

The smell of a fox transports me to my grandmother's farm where we spent idyllic summer days in childhood. We were walking along a hedge that separated two fields when our cousin stopped. We noticed a strong distinctive smell and she told us a fox had passed that way.

Some years ago we visited a folk park and walked around a variety of traditional cottages. From the garden of one a smell arose that was exactly like that in the garden behind my grandmother's farmhouse. It brought me to a sudden stop.

The smells of primroses, bluebells, wild garlic, flowering currant, to name a few, connect me to the places where I saw them as a child.

I contrast the memory I have of past weather. People say that this winter was the coldest for fifty years, but I have no memory of a harsh winter about fifty years ago.

In the photograph Sherpa has found an interesting smell. I wonder if it awakened memories for her.

Caress

Mysterious Sherpa unusually has been spending the last four nights outside. On the first three of those nights Banjo was also out, but last night he disappeared upstairs at bed time. When I let Sherpa in this morning Banjo was standing near the door. I saw her rub her cheek against his as she walked past, and was surprised. Since both cats were neutered over five years ago, the most we have come to expect from them is mutual tolerance.

When they were kittens they often cuddled up together. I can remember one occasion when John's brother visited with his dog. After they had departed we looked for our two tiny kittens, but although we searched the house, the garden and even went out to the footpath beside the road, there was no sign of either. Worried we returned to the house. I remember standing at the kitchen sink wondering what to do next, when I heard a soft scratching that seemed to come from the table behind me. Pulling out the drawer that was part of the table I found the pair running round among the cutlery. They had climbed on to a chair and found a gap between the top of the drawer and the lower surface of the table.

Purring

When I went to visit Banjo in his cage at the veterinary clinic he purred loudly. I left him there for the night and went home feeling greatly relieved. when cats purr it means they're happy doesn't it? It was only recently that I learned that cats can also purr when they are injured.

Today I started reading a book by Jonathan Balcombe called 'Pleasurable Kingdom.' In it he mentioned an hypothesis proposed by Elizabeth von Muggenthaler of the Fauna Communication Research Institute in North Carolina. She thinks it is possible that cat purring has therapeutic properties.

I looked up the paper she presented at the 142nd annual Acoustical Society of America, American Institute of Physics, International Conference. In humans, vibrations between 20-140 Hz are therapeutic for:

• bone growth/ fracture healing
• pain relief/ swelling reduction
• wound healing
• muscle growth and repair/ tendon repair.

She says that, although it would be very difficult to carry out an investigation on cats to test whether their purring promotes healing, it is well within the bounds of possibility since they create frequencies that fall directly in the range that has been shown to be therapeutic in humans.

Things you don't expect...(4)

Inability to defend his (or her) territory can be a great source of distress for an infirm cat. Intruders appear and leave their scents on doorposts and window sills. The sick cat looks out and howls helplessly. It was years, rather than months, after Banjo’s operation, before he could once again effectively defend his territory.

Banjo takes his responsibilities very seriously, and we are given the impression that he is carrying out his duties on behalf of the humans as well as the cats in the family. He expects to be rewarded when he knocks loudly to be admitted after time spent patrolling or on guard. Occasionally he demands that Sherpa relieve him. I have seen him come in and walk directly towards her before head butting her. Then she invariably asks to be let out, but returns soon after.

In the presence of an invader, Sherpa can change from a gentle pussy to a feline Amazon. Taking courage from my presence, I have seen her chase after and pounce on a large gib. Fearful for her safety I could only watch as, to the accompaniment of loud squawking, tufts of cat fur rose through the air before the gib vanished through a hole in the hedge.

We will never know for certain how she lost her beautiful tail. The vet who saved her life by amputating the already almost severed tail and dosed her with an antibiotic to treat a large abscess, said she could see on the patient the marks of a cat’s teeth.

Defence of territory can be a costly business.

Things you don't expect (3)

The time has come to broach the uncomfortable subject of Banjo’s diet. Our male cat feeds almost exclusively on raw beef mince, preferably the cheapest, pot-luck sort with excess fat removed. The meat must come from a certain butcher’s shop and it is a complete mystery to us how he can distinguish it from meat of similar quality bought elsewhere. Perhaps the secret lies in the mincing machine, perhaps not.

Banjo eats in the evening and early in the morning when he is prepared to ingest food he refuses at other times. He knows that at 5am there is no chance of fresh meat. After I have been to the butcher’s, I present him with a little of the older meat he has previously refused alongside some of the fresh meat and he usually eats both. Sherpa regularly prefers older meat to what has been recently minced.

Occasionally both cats enjoy a small piece of liver or a slice of chicken breast that has been for quick sale. They crunch small amounts of desiccated cat food and search for a saucer that contains milk, but this must not contain too much lactic acid. Conventional advice to cat owners is to provide a saucer full of water. Neither of our cats, to the best of my knowledge, has ever been remotely interested in drinking water.

People seeing Banjo are often surprised by his size. ‘He looks like a small dog,’ they say, scolding me. Banjo is a neutered male, a gib, and it is recognised that removal of testes can result in obesity. Activity and metabolism may be reduced, we are told, and a neutered male may eat more because of altered feeding behaviour. Normally a placid and contented animal, our gib can become annoyed when hungry and pouncing on Sherpa is the way his frustration finds expression.

I have learned not to leave cat food outside the back door having discovered that feline trespassers, on finding this bounty, return in hope day after day mewing piteously. On a couple of occasions I surprised Banjo as he stood on the top step outside the door eating processed cat food, all of which he really dislikes. He was defending his territory.

Sometimes I place food in front of both cats and a couple of minutes later find them looking at it while it is still untouched. When I stroke their heads they start to eat. I have sometimes wondered if Banjo, in particular, asks for food when what he really wants is attention and reassurance that he is still loved.

When I am serving food to visitors I can be sure that both cats will appear and expect to be fed. They find usurpers occupying their favourite seats so there is no question of compounding their discomfiture by ignoring them.

I used to believe that animals ate because of a simple biological instinct. Cats have taught me that I was wrong.

Things you don't expect - part 2

Through no fault of their own cats are not the easiest of patients. When Banjo was discharged after his operation, James, the vet, gave me a packet of antibiotic tablets with instructions that he was to be given two twice daily. It must have come as no surprise to those in the veterinary clinic when I rang up to say that their patient was refusing to take his medication, even though it was buried at the centre of a delicious meatball.

My experience of taking antibiotics at a time when treatment made me abnormally sensitive to smell has made me more sympathetic to cats. My antibiotics smelt so disgustingly of mould, the only way I could take them without being sick was to keep my nose pinched tightly with one hand while putting a tablet in my mouth with the other and immediately washing it down with water.

For most of the ten days following his operation I brought Banjo to the clinic for an injection. After Sherpa’s operation she was given a single injection of a slow-release antibiotic, for which I was deeply grateful.

Things you don't expect when you bring your cat to the vet

The phone rang one Monday morning while John and I were still in bed. A lady told us that a neighbour of hers had, while walking his dog, found a large charcoal cat that had been hit by a car.

Banjo was mewing pitifully at the mouth of the lane where he had been left. I brought his bed and he managed to climb into it. Sherpa watched as John drove out of the gate, with me sitting in the front passenger seat holding the box with her brother on my knee. I assumed that she must be feeling very distressed.

At the veterinary clinic Banjo was sedated, X-rayed and found to have a broken femur. The following day he had an operation to insert a metal plate and on Thursday he was discharged.

Sherpa came to meet the car. She had been very happy having the house to herself while Banjo was in hospital, but I expected her to feel pleased that her brother was still alive. Instead, when she caught sight of a cat with shaved and stitched legs and that smelt strongly of antiseptics, she hissed and disappeared. Terror kept her away from the patient for several weeks.

When Sherpa in turn had to have her tail amputated, she received no sympathy from Banjo. Her hostility to him during his recovery was fully reciprocated.

Cats are very different to us aren’t they? Since I started to write this I remembered an event from a time when I was twelve and a first-year pupil at grammar school. One Saturday afternoon I walked with a friend to visit someone she knew who was a patient at the local hospital. Years before, I had happily played in the grounds of this hospital while siblings were having arms encased in plaster of Paris, but on this occasion someone was burning rubber and that smell connected with illness disturbed me so much I avoided the road for a long time sfterwards.

The Incident

To-day, the day after the 150th anniversary of the birth of Anton Chekhov, I listened to one of his stories on BBC Radio7. Titled 'The Incident', it tells how two children, a boy aged 6 and a girl aged 4, wake one morning to discover their cat has had kittens. The offspring of parents wealthy enough to have their children brought up by a nurse and a governess, they are filled with an interest and curiosity not shared by the adults around them. They treat the three blind kittens like toys and as objects for experimentation. They plan a future for each of the little animals and appoint their uncle's dog as the kittens' father. I shall not divulge how the story ends.

Chekhov has a strong opinion about the beneficial effect of pets in the life of children. Animals show patience, fidelity, readiness to forgive and sincerity, he claims. Living with them can have a greater effect on children than what is imparted during formal education.

Goldfinch

When it thawed during the night making the snow pleasantly slippery, I walked and slid round the house forming small snowballs and throwing them for Banjo to chase. He stayed outdoors when I was driven inside by icy red hands. Before these had warmed, I heard a cat's cry and rushed out fearing that Banjo had injured himself. Rounding a corner I saw him coming towards me with something in his mouth, and followed him back to the steps outside the back door. There he dropped a little bird which I picked up and stroked. It was the first time I had seen a goldfinch and I was astounded by the bright beauty of the feathers which covered its still warm body.

Banjo had brought the dead bird to show me and expected congratulations and, perhaps, reassurance that the bird was safe to eat. He purred while I petted him, feeling sad at the loss of the beautiful goldfinch whose gleaming gold, black and red on a sandy background had made it conspicuous to an accomplished hunter.

Soon I realised that I, a meat eater, was being superficial, in judging the value of a creature by what pleases the eye. No amount of sentimentality on my part can make a bird immortal and, even if cats did not exist, I suspect we would find very few geriatric goldfinches. The weather, disease or other predators might terminate a vulnerable life. I do not have the knowledge to decide which is more desirable; for Banjo to dine on beef or on goldfinch.

Banjo in his element

Hair-balls

In 'James Herriot's Cat Stories we read about a large, sleek, handsome neutered male cat who was at home in a tiny, but thriving sweet shop. He sat at the end of the counter (it was the middle of last century), placid and dignified, watching the owner of the shop whom he greatly resembled, serve his customers.

One afternoon Herriot, a vet, was asked to examine Alfred because Geoff, his master, was concerned by his loss of appetite and lack of energy. He could find nothing wrong with the animal and gave him a vitamin injection, but Alfred continued to deteriorate and was put on a course of mixed mineral and vitamin tablets. When these and other drugs and treatments failed to halt the loss of weight, the cat was brought to the surgery, but X-rays and blood tests showed no abnormality.

Alfred began to look gaunt; his fur was lacklustre, his eyes dull. His master too, lost weight and was showing signs of depression, but then, when the animal started to vomit, something was said which provided a clue to the problem. Geoff revealed how, before his illness, Alfred had groomed himself obsessively, and Herriot thought, 'Hair-balls.'

An operation revealed a large, matted hair-ball in the cat's stomach and several smaller ones in other parts of his digestive system. The operation was a major one and recovery of both Alfred and his master took about a month, but this story had a happy ending.

Our Banjo, like Alfred, is a large neutered male with a luxuriant coat. He occasionally regurgitates hair-balls. I have learned that he needs to have his fur combed with a fine comb, especially when he is moulting. Provided I am careful not to pull any matts he might have, he purrs loudly to show his appreciation.

Photographing Sherpa

Most of us want to look our best when we are having our photograph taken, and Sherpa seems to be no exception. When she saw me with the camera she decided to have a quick clean-up before looking straight at the lens. The three posts below show her doing this.

How many humans do you know who can do this?

Please be patient (like me). it"ll just take a few more licks

Wasn't it worth the trouble?

Paw Tracks in the Moonlight

Twelve people writing very similar reviews for Amazon lauded this book. We listened to excerpts on BBC Radio 4's 'Book of the Week' and enjoyed the story of the cat, Toby Jug, but I am rarely tempted to buy books featured on 'Book of the Week' and in this case did not make an exception.

The story begins when the author, going outside after a blizzard, heard the scream of an animal in pain. After a search of the neighbourhood he found a silvery grey cat held by a hind leg in a gin trap. While he freed her she scrabbed and bit him and, when she was released she fled. After he had tended his cuts he made up his mind to follow the blood trail from the trap and came to a derelict barn. In the corner of a hay loft he found the cat with two kittens. By the time he reached the vet only one animal was still alive. Denis insisted on bringing this frail kitten home, if only that it might die by his fire, but, contrary to his expectations, the little creature responded to his attempts to feed it using the washed out ink sac of a fountain pen. While he was at work he kept the kitten in a jug beside the fire, hence the name he gave it, Toby Jug.

Toby Jug became Denis O'Connor's companion, slithering around the back seat of his car, being taken for walks in a chiwawa harness, climbing on to the author's shoulder when he felt threatened. He helped himself to a neighbour's tomatoes when his red ball was lost and, occupying a pannier, he went on a trekking holiday.

The book dissolves preconceived ideas about cats. At least some cats are not obsessed with comfort. Like Banjo in his younger days, Toby Jug romps in snow. Neither has he fear of water. In hot weather he likes to cool off in a bucket of it. A book which makes us think twice before we generalise is to be welcomed.