Then there was the occasion when another friend brought her brother-in-law to visit. I opened the door into the kitchen to find one cat perched on top of the stove sipping water out of the egg pan, while another crouched in a niche in the wall with a live mouse clenched between her teeth. Needless to say in the course of trying to separate her from her prize, the mouse managed to slip away and was only with difficulty recaptured by steering it into a Wellington boot and then dumping it in the grass outside.
But my biggest problem is that I love birds quite as much as I love cats, and there's no way that both passions can be indulged without risk to at least one party. I've lost count of how many sad little sparrows I've had to bury in my garden, and one of the more distressing firsts of my life was the day when I was forced to hold down and drown a swift that one of the cats had managed to catch and then damage beyond hope of recovery.
Most of the problems crop up over the summer since in winter the cats are no more enthusiastic about venturing outdoors than I am. The curious thing is that I barely see them at this time of year since they spend their days doing whatever cats do in an area with lots of nooks and crannies where they can hole up out of the sun. But unfortunately the summer is also when the grass grows high, bringing with it the problem of the vicious barbed seeds that love to attach themselves to my pets, insinuating themselves into eyes and ears and generally causing mayhem.
As a townie by birth, I'm still coming to terms with this problem.
“Can you look at Tui?” I ask the vet. “He seems very quiet.”
Not only that, but his fur has become as matted as that of a Rastafarian who's given up on grooming. The vet decrees the need for a shave, and sets to work immediately. Once the fur is off, poor Tui looks as pathetic and vulnerable as a shorn sheep, but the man wielding the razor is more concerned by what he's discovered underneath it.
“Look at these seeds embedded in his skin. They would have given him pain when he moved. That's why he was so still.”
Unfortunately the shaving also reveals two small lumps near his breasts that have to be excised and sent for testing. When the results come back, he's given the all clear, but there are still a couple of months of grass seed season to go, plenty of time for him to gather another collection of barbs. And that's without the ticks that have always taken a particular liking to my Tui.
Pat Yale lives in restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.
