My life with Toby Jug began to follow a routine that started at breakfast time, which he greeted with tremendous enthusiasm. It was the start of a new day and a fresh opportunity for him to savour life to the full. Apart from holidays and most weekends, breakfast tended to be a rushed affair because I usually needed to leave for work at about 7.30 a.m. Once we were downstairs Toby Jug insisted on being served immediately. He was always ravenous and I largely fed him on the best quality tinned cat food unless there were some roast beef or chicken leftovers from my meal the night before. Then, as he was eating, I would open the upper half of the back door so that he could answer the call of nature whilst I washed, shaved and got myself ready. After which, weather permitting, I would join Toby in the garden.
Mug of tea in hand we would gravitate towards the top end of the lawn. The view over fields and woodland towards the distant Cheviot Hills was balm to my mind before the demands of work. Toby, like most cats, was a fastidious washer and the morning ritual involved him vigorously licking and preening himself as he sat at my feet – it was a definite policy of his to be as close as possible to me whenever opportunity afforded – whilst I drank my tea and gazed at the view. Soon I would have to leave him and I would catch a glimpse of him in my rear-view mirror as I drove off, watching my departure from his vantage point at the top of the old apple tree by the gates. I hated leaving him and I knew that he missed me enormously but I could not take him into college and so he had to amuse himself all day until I arrived home in the evening, when he would be waiting with the warmest welcome a man could wish for. During the day when I was at work I always left one of the shed doors ajar so that he could make himself comfortable inside where there was an old clothes basket with a blanket inside and a dish of fresh water.
Breakfast on Saturday mornings was the best of the week. There were grilled venison sausages and lambs’ kidneys bought from a country butcher in Rothbury and free-range eggs from a local man who boasted ‘Fresh Eggs From Happy Hens’. I would also have wild mushrooms, when they were available, that I collected, accompanied by Toby, from the fields by the river where the cattle grazed and, from the nearby farm, slices of home-cured bacon dripping with flavour. Toby Jug would share some of the morning banquet with me, including some sausage and fried egg which I cut up for him, but not the bacon which he preferred to deal with by himself. When he had finished, he would lick his plate clean, jump down from the table, have a drink from his water bowl then go and wash himself in front of the fire, after which he catnapped until I called him to go out.
He loved sitting in the car whilst I drove around the town collecting the shopping for the week ahead. If, for some good reason I had to leave home without him on a Saturday, he would be inconsolable and truly ‘miffed’ with me when I returned. This was because I belonged to him on Saturdays and he would do all in his power to insist on this priority. I must say that on the few occasions that I had to leave him I missed him too since I liked to think that the weekend was a time when both of us would enjoy being together.
Whenever I was able I would take him with me in the car on weekdays when my work entailed visiting schools to supervise students or when I was delivering cheques to landladies where students were billeted on special practice. On these occasions I would prepare a picnic for us to share and we had some memorable times picnicking in wild and picturesque rural settings of the Scottish Border towns from Duns to Lauder to Selkirk and beyond.
On one occasion I had parked alongside a row of old trees by a river bank. The car door was open for us to breathe the sweet clean air. Toby set off on a little prowl around. Generally, I still kept Toby on a lead when we went out on our jaunts, but I thought that he wouldn’t venture far. Suddenly I heard sounds of a skirmish and spied a red squirrel’s bushy tail in full flight, with Toby Jug in hot pursuit. The squirrel raced up a tall Scots pine and from a high branch set about scolding not only Toby but me as well. I retrieved my cat, just as he was contemplating a climb up the tree when I got the distinct impression that, far from having murderous intentions, he simply wanted to play as cats do when they chase each other backwards and forwards. However, I doubt whether the squirrel shared this view as it remained safely in the treetops until we resumed our journey.
Toby Jug’s naivety was quite ingenuous. I thought that eventually he would mature into a killer cat, although yet again I had my doubts; he had probably become imprinted with too many human sentiments from living so closely with me and not having contact with his mother long enough to learn cat ways and cat lore.
On one warm spring morning in late May, Toby Jug and I were walking along a hillside path near the rural hamlet of Kirknewton when I stopped to gaze at some horses grazing in the valley below. After a while we continued with our walk. Toby Jug suddenly started pulling hard on his lead. In fact, he pulled so hard that he hurt his throat and we had to stop whilst he endured a fit of coughing. Looking around I saw what had excited his attention. Further along the path there was a grassy green meadow and it was full of rabbits feeding. ‘Well,’ I thought to myself, ‘let him have some fun. He’ll soon find out how fast rabbits can run.’
I slipped his head loose and off he went in a rapid stalking stealthy crawl with much tail swishing and wriggling of his behind. Of course, the rabbits had already spotted him and they fled to their respective burrows long before he got anywhere near them. However, it was then that I realized the mistake I’d made in letting him go because, far from giving up the chase, Toby Jug kept on going and disappeared down one of the rabbit holes. I raced over to the spot where he’d vanished and, crouching down as low as I could get to the rabbit hole, I began urgently calling him. To no avail.
Nothing stirred inside the burrow as far as I could tell and I was beginning to feel increasingly alarmed. What if the rabbits ganged up on him? Rabbits could kick and bite, as I knew from experience as a child who had kept one. I wasn’t aware of just how long I spent with my face pressed to that sandy tunnel desperately calling his name when I suddenly became aware of voices above and behind me. I must have presented a strange if not ridiculous sight: a grown man with his head down a rabbit burrow, shouting ‘Toby Jug!’ Easing myself back to my knees I turned around with what must have been a shame-faced grimace and started lamely to explain what had happened when I stopped in jaw-dropping amazement. What I saw was a man standing staring down at me with a wide smirk on his face but what really astonished me was the sight of a second person. She was bending down stroking and talking to none other than his highness Toby Jug. I staggered to my feet and realized that Toby had obviously come out of another burrow entrance and had been watching me behind my back. He would have been puzzled at the sight of me lying fully stretched out with my head jammed up against the rabbit hole shouting his name. Both the man and the woman laughed heartily when I told them what had happened and continued on their way. Meanwhile I clipped Toby Jug’s lead back on and decided that we’d had enough adventure for one day. We returned to the car and drove home with the Toby perched on my shoulder, purring loudly in my ear. Too late, I realized that I was wearing my brand new Harris tweed jacket.
Later that evening, after we had dined, I retired to the conservatory and was soon joined by Toby. I stroked and fondled him even though he had given me such a traumatic time during the afternoon. As far as he was concerned he had merely been having a jolly frolic. Nothing wrong with that was there? And it was then that I recalled my distress at several ‘fun’ incidents which had almost killed him in the past months. Banishing such thoughts from my mind as inappropriate in this restful setting, I was helped by the glowing sight of the planet Venus rising resplendent above the treetops, a golden star against the inky-black night sky. I took this to be a good omen for the future. Toby Jug was by now fast asleep and emitting faint snores. As I listened to him I wondered what new excitement this exceptional little cat would bring into my life. Tomorrow would no doubt herald yet more surprises.
I think that animals tend to be
much more accepting of human beings than the other way around. I often found that cats took the initiative in my relationships with them. But it was a two-way process of communication. Whilst I sought to domesticate my cats, they made me more aware of the natural world by sharing their instincts and demonstrating their skills to me. And how fascinating they were. I totally reject the idea of the ‘dumb animal’ because I have never found it applied to any of the animals I have kept as pets. I’ve always found my pet cats to be graced by an in-born wisdom which perhaps many civilized human beings have lost. This was especially so with Toby Jug.
Toby Jug was, in a lot of ways, different from the many other cats I have known. He was more like a child to me because, in a sense, I had reared him and he knew no parent but me. I’m sure that some people would dismiss my feelings about Toby Jug as mawkish rubbish but I am equally certain that other people would echo the same sentiments about their own pets in spite of accusations of mad ‘anthropomorphism’ – the name given to attributing human behaviour to animals. Whilst all the animals I have known were special to me, Toby Jug assumed a significance in my life which was out of all proportion to the fact that he was a cat.
I don’t think there is any doubt that, for many people, love, the strongest emotion of all, enters the equation when an animal becomes a pet. Sceptics would argue, though, that this love is only one-sided – without regular feeding, all of an animal’s so-called affection would soon cease. I’m not so sure that this is true. In my experience animals need to be loved as well as fed, just as people do. I have known cats, dogs and horses who wanted to be stroked and petted, quite apart from their need for food. This was most certainly the case with Toby Jug who showed feelings of loving attachment for me beyond anything that I had experienced before with any other pet animal and it warmed my heart to feel it.
During my childhood there were always cats about the house, sitting on walls in the backstreets and in the gardens of the neighbours’ houses and the backyards near my home. I recall the amusement when a cat got into our classroom at the local elementary school and how I was the one who managed to catch it and set it free outside again. I remember, too, the time that my grandmother’s cat had two black kittens and my outrage and horror when my father drowned them in a pail of water because nobody wanted them and we were too poor to keep them ourselves. Most striking of all are my memories of my first visit to the zoo where I had to be dragged away from the tigers’ compound. My wonder at those huge, beautifully marked cats knew no bounds. In my spare time I loved to read stories and look at pictures of the jungle cats of Africa and India. The favourite story of my boyhood was Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book in which the Tiger, Shere Kahn, was my hero.
I also remember a striped tabby we had during the Second World War, when my father was away at sea. I found him as an abandoned kitten wandering the streets totally lost. My mother, with a family of three children to feed and only a pittance from the Admiralty to live on, reluctantly allowed me to keep it. I called the kitten Tiger. He was silver-grey with vivid dark stripes and he ate anything that was left-over from the family meals. He especially loved porridge. Tiger was always the first to run into the Anderson Air Raid Shelter with the family when the warning siren sounded to alert us to the German bombers which were mounting a blitz against the armament factories and the shipyards along the River Tyne. He survived the war but sadly was later run over by a lorry.
I have an almost instinctive attraction to cats. Whenever I see one I have to go and speak to it. For the most part cats come towards me and allow me to stroke them. I love to watch the graceful way that they move. To me, the most attractive dancers and actors have the skill of moving like a cat, that flowing smoothness which is a joy to watch. Teachers of yoga advise members of their classes to learn to stretch like a cat and to practise breathing exercises by moving the stomach muscles rather than the chest in just the same way cats do when they are totally relaxed. When I first saw Sean Connery as Special Agent 007 in the James Bond films I was captivated, as were audiences worldwide, by the speed and grace with which he moved; he walked with the stealth of a big cat.
It was because of these feelings that I was prepared on a cold winter’s night to venture out in a snowstorm to rescue an injured cat. The reward for all my efforts was more than I could ever have expected. It was the bonus of turning a tragedy into a triumph: I found a dying kitten who grew into a wonderful pet called Toby Jug.
SUMMER
Summer was judged to have begun at Owl Cottage when the house martins arrived and diligently began to build their nests of dried mud and grasses against the stone walls high up under the overhanging roof of the cottage. It is fascinating to see the dark brown nests finally assume their full rugby ball shape with only the smallest of openings at the side for the birds to enter. Toby Jug sat on the lawn watching for hours, mesmerized by the comings and goings of these amazing birds. To me they were always a welcome sight in spite of the proliferation of their droppings which, as the season progressed, lay encrusted on the bedroom window-sill and marred the elegance of my much-prized and newly tiled patio.
During that first summer with Toby Jug there were many developments in the life we shared that surpassed anything I had encountered before with cats. For one thing he delighted in being with me, not for him the often haughty disdain that some cats show to their owners as an assertion of their independence. Whenever I called to him, he would come running to me from wherever he was, no matter what he was doing. This attachment extended even to travelling in the car. My work at the rural-based college entailed a great deal of travelling around the country visiting schools and other institutions and whenever possible I took Toby with me. He would sit or lie on the rear window shelf and slither enjoyably about as we took corners fast, much to the hilarity of passengers in other cars, especially children who often mistook him at first sight for a toy. On other occasions he would sit perched on my shoulder and purr into my ear at the sheer excitement of us travelling together. He never needed an invitation nor did he show any fear of travelling in the car. He was never car sick.
Wherever I took him he was always so exuberant that I was afraid of his recklessness. He would jump out of the car after me with complete disregard for traffic, big dogs or people who didn’t like cats. With this problem in mind I resolved that he would have to be restrained in the same way as I had done earlier during his first ventures into the garden. However, the small guinea-pig harness I had acquired for him was too small now that he had grown and dog harnesses were too large.
One day I was browsing around in a pet warehouse store which had just opened in the city shopping mall. There I discovered a harness and lead suitable for a breed of small Mexican dog, the Chihuahua. These tiny dogs were a very popular choice of pets at the time. The harness seemed to fit the bill exactly and without further ado I bought it and eventually coaxed Toby Jug into wearing it. It was made of stiff new leather, unlike his other one which had been made of soft fabric. This one came around his chest and extended over his back so that if it was tugged it would restrain without choking him. He definitely wasn’t very happy about wearing it but, being the valiant little fellow that he was, he accepted it. When I began to use it regularly he soon learned not to pull away. After a short while he got the knack and would run alongside me like a small dog. Occasionally, I would have to pull on the lead to guide him along and prevent him sidetracking but he gradually developed an awareness of what was required to keep in step with me and the arrangement worked out fine. I doubt if many cats would have accommodated so well to this restriction but Toby Jug was a fast and willing learner.
Using the harness, we were able to visit many places where few cats could ever have ventured. If danger threatened in the form of a large dog I would swing him up into my arms and, if necessary, fend off the attacker with the stick I carried on our walks. I can only remember a couple of such incidents happening. The vast majority of the time we had highly enjoyable, event-free excursion
s. For example, I had to supervise a student teacher on teaching practice in a school on Holy Island and, because I could keep him under control, I thought it would be nice to take Toby Jug along with me. Whilst having a cup of tea with the head teacher of the school I kept going to the window of her study to check that Toby Jug, whom I’d left in the car with the window slightly open, was all right. On our car trips, Toby would more often than not curl up and sleep away the time when I had to be involved in work matters, but occasionally he would become anxious as he used to be in the cottage during the first few weeks of life and then he would prowl around the car whining for me.
As I kept frequently getting up and looking out of the window, the head teacher became curious and, on learning the reason for my behaviour, she persuaded me to tell her the full story of the way I had rescued Toby Jug. She then told me she was a devoted cat owner herself and insisted on my bringing Toby Jug in to meet her. With some trepidation I agreed – what else could I do in the circumstances? And so I duly brought in Toby Jug and introduced him to the head. To my surprise he took to her immediately and purred loudly when she stroked him. I had, of course, been worried about his reactions to a stranger but he was fine and I was proud of him. Nevertheless, I thought the artful little beggar knows when he’s well off as I watched him scoffing a saucer full of cream from the school canteen. The good lady had insisted on giving it to him as she said he must be thirsty after his car trip.
Paw Prints in the Moonlight Page 6
