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.