Confessions of a Cat Sitter
Chris Pascoe is the author of A Cat Called Birmingham & You Can Take the
Cat Out of Slough, and a columnist for various UK & international magazines.
He’s also a cat sitter…
I thought I’d tell you about a couple of
my own cats this month. I suppose you’d
call them my homework.
Number one is Jojo. Jojo is a feisty, edgy, jealous little
tortie who inexplicably dotes on me, and seems
to have decided I belong to her and her alone.
It’s therefore fortunate that her black and white
housemate Spooky isn’t keen on me at all, much
preferring my daughter’s company. Despite the lack of
any in-house competition, Jojo is constantly suspicious
of my antics, mainly due to the various feline scents
I bring home on my clothing. She thinks I may be
seeing ‘other cats’. Probably around 200 a year.
Jojo is a rubbish hunter, her biggest-game prey being
small flying insects. However, this does make her an
excellent dancer.The sight of Jojo suddenly jumping
into the air, twisting, and clapping her paws together
as she totally fails to capture a slow-moving moth
is a normal (but wonderful) sight in our household.
Last week she seemed to be dancing Gangnam
Style down the hall towards me (little bit disturbing).
Spooky wouldn’t be seen dead dancing, spending
almost her entire life on 1 square foot of sofa.
However I believe that, despite choosing never to
step outside, Spooky may know more about the
outside world than any cat alive.This is because
Spooky is a TV addict. Spooky will watch anything
and everything, and there really can’t be much she
doesn’t know about the FA Premier League, life in
the oceans, dinosaurs, wildlife, war, floods…and the
various going-ons in Coronation Street, which is a
must-see for Spooky – though she doesn’t seem
very keen on
Gail Tilsley at
the moment.
Experts say
that you
can tell a lot
about how
your cat sees
the world by
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how they watch TV. Apparently, a cat who takes an
interest in what’s on TV probably has ‘normal’ vision,
similar to ours. If they take no interest at all, they
possibly have ‘invertist’ vision, that is to say, they can
only really make sense of 2D images if they view
them from an upside-down perspective. A simple
test to discover if you have an invertist cat is to turn
your TV upside down. If your cat suddenly takes
an interest, this means they probably have invertist
vision. I once tried this test on my previous cat and
great friend Brum, who never seemed to notice
TV at all.The moment I turned our portable TV
upside down, I was stunned to see that he suddenly
seemed to see the picture.Then, inexplicably, he
rolled over onto his back and watched it upside
down. What the hell did that mean? That didn’t
denote anything at all.The TV was upside down, but
so was he. I gave up on testing Brum at that point.
He was a very odd lad, and I really didn’t need
further proof.
Anyway Spooky is, as I write, in the lounge watching
Ice Road Truckers. I tried turning the TV off a few
moments ago, but this seemed to annoy her, and
it’s now back on. So, while the rest of us head for
bed, Spooky will spend the next hour or so totally
enthralled by the sight of artic trucks skidding
through the Arctic circle, no doubt trying very hard
to ignore Jojo dancing the night away with a moth.
What a strange little world they live in.
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