Secrets of the Cat_ Its Lore, Legend, and Lives - Barbara Holland [98]
I think a cat in confinement needs as much novelty as we can arrange. Even in the city, a cat can be taken out in a safe figure-eight harness, can go to the park if he’s not afraid of passing dogs. A view of a busy street and pigeons helps. An occasional dose of catnip, change of diet, new place to sit, new cat in the household, a visit to a neighbor’s apartment, a canary in a cage to lust for, a wind-up toy, human guests. Something to think about. Cats are intelligent, however strangely their intelligence works, and how can an intelligent creature keep its mind awake contemplating the same walls and smelling the same smells for years without change?
Opening doors: Where cats go out, opening doors to let them out and back in again has been a source of irritation and marital discord ever since cats moved in with us. Cat doors can be made in human doors, through which the cat may come and go without having to wake up the whole household. Sometimes the cat will invite friends in. In the country, it’s not unheard of for the householder to go downstairs in the night investigating strange sounds and trip over a skunk in the dark kitchen.
There are cat doors on the market that are opened by a magnet on the cat’s collar, activating a solenoid that releases the catch on the door to admit your cat, and only your cat. I don’t know why they don’t extend the idea to people and people doors, eliminating theneed for door keys.
Pussy willows: A long time ago in Poland, an unwanted litter of kittens was thrown into the river to drown. Their mother sat on the bank and wept so long and so bitterly for them that the willows
growing along the river’s edge took pity on her and held down their branches for the drowning kittens to cling to. After that, every spring the willow bushes have sprouted soft little velvet buds like kittens’ paws.
Qualyway: In Cornwall, this will cure a sty:
Take the tail of a black cat and stroke your eye outward from the nose, giving one stroke to each phrase as you chant:
I poke thee,
I don’t poke thee,
I toke the quell that’s under the eye.
Oh, qualyway. Oh, qualyway.
Renting: In the United States, and only in the United States, land of the free, it’s the rule rather than the exception for landlords and rental agents to make as much fuss over a house cat on the premises as if one were harboring a brothel, or a rock band. No one seems to know why we put up with this, or why it happens in the first place, unless Americans came so recently to a wild country that we distrust all animals as the opposite of civilization, as unpredictable, probably dangerous, certainly unclean.
In Russia, home of oppression and the trampling of human rights, everyone, no matter how cramped the apartment, has cats and dogs, though some of the newer buildings try to limit the number of dogs to three, and the government provides free veterinary care.
In America, cats make criminals of decent folk. Me, for instance. For my rented house I signed a lease swearing to have no pet of any kind, not even a caged bird, nor to let any sort of creature pass through or inhabit the premises no matter how briefly. I am careful to pay my rent promptly, to deal with and pay for all repairs myself, and to keep my fingers crossed. I can be thrown out onto the street without further ado if I’m discovered. There is no legal recourse. My landlord is under no obligation to prove damage or cite complaints. He holds a month’s rent of mine as guarantee that I and mine will do no more than ordinary damage, but apparently the potential for feline destruction is more than that would cover.
Every rental agent makes his own rules, and I once had a most generous lease that allowed me to own as many as two cats or a dog that weighed no more than twenty pounds, but most stand firm against all creatures.
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