Tag Archives: McCat

So, on the up side, I’ve written a couple of hundred words on a new story and have a good idea what it’s going to be about and who’s in it which feels wonderful. On the down side, THINGS have been fairly hectic, as usual.

First up McCar, the Noisy Cricket, has those stupid LED headlights and they broke. Usually with a car like mine you’re pretty safe on parts; my old one seemed to have a fair amount that could also be found on various Vauxhaulls (Opels if you’re outside the UK) and they were cheap so it ended up with high end Vauxhaull branded brake discs etc. Unfortunately, the headlight for this one is a sealed unit built specifically for this marque of car and they only make about 500 a year – and that’s 500 of the car, not the headlight unit, they probably make about five of those. Naturally, that means that they cost an arm and a leg.

So it was that I dropped the wretched thing off a week ago. To be honest I’ve only just got my finances back on track after the gargantuan bills I had to pay last year. On the up side, despite the massive expense, they did actually have one the mechanic could get hold of – no endless searching on the internet and having to import it from Germany which was what happened last time I had to try and replace the tyres. Indeed it was perfectly possible that the part would not only be out of stock in the UK but out of stock everywhere, rendering my car illegal – and with its MOT running out in two weeks – unusable until such time as Lotus deigned to replace their stock so I considered that a win.

Never mind, after a very pleasant day at the beach on Monday followed by supper in the garden, we sat out in the darkness, revelling in being a comfortable temperature. McCat revelled with us. When it was time to go in, McCat was being a bit coquettish.

‘I’ll just go and get the cheese,’ I said. McCat will comply with pretty much any demand if there’s cheese in the offing.

Then there was a rustle, the sound of an oversized tabby cat galloping very fast and a bang and a scrabble as he went over the fence into next door. The bloody squirrel is back, it seems. Fat, unfeasibly healthy, it’s fat face stuffed to the gunwales by everyone on the street by the looks of it. But, unfortunately, it’s still too fast and agile – both mentally and physically – for McCat. He chased the little bastard into next door and that was the last we saw of him.

We called and called but he didn’t come in. McMini was distraught as was I. McOther who dislikes McCat, was ambivalent. I had a think about the trajectory and reckoned he’d gone over the wall into next door and, possibly, over their wall into the main road beyond. Normally he doesn’t go near that but stays in the three gardens on our triangle of land or goes across the quiet residential street at the back. He is frightened of cars and petrified of lorries, haring in when the dustcart comes past on the quiet residential side. He never crosses the main road therefore, because he’s scared. Ergo, if he’d crossed it that night in the red heat of a chase, he wouldn’t be coming back over until the traffic died down. He’d be too scared.

McCat … butter wouldn’t melt

However, they were resurfacing the roundabout a few hundred yards beyond our house and the main road is never that quiet. Even so, we hoped that, if we left his food out and the cat flap open, he’d come back. But we also knew that McCat is too scared of traffic to return across a busy road that never sleeps (except for a couple of hours between two and four when the drunks walking home yelling the odds at one another take over – and no, he wouldn’t chance running past them either). Then there’s the wall, of course, five or six feet our side but about fourteen the other. A big jump to ask of a cat. Opposite is a wall of houses with doors fronting onto the street and finally, about 100 yards down, there’s a small street running to the allotments. There’s a block of flats opposite us and another street to the allotments about 50 yards up the other way. All we could think was that he’d got across the road, been frightened and run down the street to the one of the side roads, the direction of travel suggested the furthest of the two from us. It’s walled all the way along, so the allotments at the far end of it seemed like a good place to start looking.

The next morning no cat.

McOther left for work and though it was like a furnace out McMini and I popped over to our next door neighbours’ and searched their garden. Then we walked across the main road and started in the allotments behind the houses, calling as we went. After a couple of hours I began to worry about dragging a small boy around in such oven-like heat so we went home, me to make posters and McMini to whinge about how badly he needed a haircut. Although he perked up considerably once I’d given him a meal. Having consulted t’interweb, advice on line suggested talking to other neighbours or folks in nearby houses. It looked as if the best thing we could do was wait until people were coming home from work and then trudge round the nearby streets posting leaflets through their letterboxes and knocking on their doors. So, since the posters were made, McMini and I went to the barbers as it’s only at the end of the street and we handed out posters to all businesses on the way, the barbers put one up too.

I brought a stapler with me to attach posters to any posts or telegraph poles we passed. It is one of my favourite things so, naturally, I lost it, which was a massive pisser but pretty much inevitable what with the week I was having.

McMini’s hair cut complete we returned home and luckily, McOther arrived soon after as I was printing out more posters and also flyers. I’d shared McCat all over social media, which had met with a wonderful response, and was pointed in the direction of some excellent local lost cat groups – it’s definitely worth searching Facebook for lost pets groups in your town if you lose one. One of the lost cats groups had some great advice about what to do if your cat goes missing. They’d said that usually cats will be hiding close by, scared to come home. That figured, I was sure that’s what ours was doing, but opposite was a wall of houses and I reckoned he was behind them. I just needed to get into people’s gardens and to do that, as the advice said, I needed to knock on the doors of the ten nearest houses to ours.

We were all worried, it was now nearly 24 hours since McCat had gone missing, it was boiling hot and unless he was lucky enough to be hiding near some water, McCat would have had nothing to drink in all that time. He’d be very dehydrated as well as hungry. The heat being what it was, I doubted I had too much time to find him before he became really ill.

McOther happily at home and McMini with him, I headed off alone to start door knocking on the quiet side of our plot, mainly because I hadn’t looked there at all yet and wanted to try and cover all the surrounding area as quickly as I could. Then I crossed the main road and started on the other side from us. I posted leaflets in all the houses because nobody was in, or answering. I also put posters up along all the telegraph poles in the road where all the back gates were, which ran parallel to the main road, behind the houses, along the edge of the allotments. At last I came to the neighbours opposite. They live in an old house next door to a Victorian building which has been converted into flats. Their main entrance is at the side, and they and the Victorian flats share parking. The opposite neighbour didn’t answer.

As I wondered what to do next, I wasn’t sure there was much point in disturbing the people in the flats, I noticed the car park went round behind them. I walked past the building to have a look. There was a small brick outhouse built onto the back, about the size of a garden shed, with an open door which revealed it to be full of bicycles. I wondered if I should go look when a voice called out asking what I was doing. It was the opposite neighbour, who hadn’t answered the door, calling from a first floor window. I retraced my steps and explained that I was looking for my cat and she said she’d keep an eye out for him. Then I stuck a leaflet in the door of the first flat and decided that, now she knew that I wasn’t a burglar casing the joint, maybe I could go back and have a better look at the shed. Standing at the corner, I looked at the open door a few yards away, screwing up the courage to trespass and go closer. I took a couple of paces and stopped. I was sure I heard a meow.

‘McCat?’ I called.

The meow got louder. It was definitely a yell-for-help kind of meow.

I moved closer, and called again. Inside the outhouse/porch some sheets of plywood leant against the wall and now, as I moved slowly towards them, a wide-eyed tabby face appeared from the darkness underneath them.

Gently, I approached him, talking to him all the while, because I wasn’t sure if he’d take off. Once I was within a couple of feet of his hiding place I stopped. I didn’t want to crowd him. He crept out, keeping low in case the sky fell on him, shimmied under the pedals of one of the bicycles and inched towards me. I was keenly aware that the road was busy, that I didn’t have a cat box and that he might not let me catch him. He was still meowing loudly, presumably expressing his relief at being found, explaining what a terrible time he’d had, how frightening his night and day in the outhouse had been and telling me he was hungry.

‘Are you going to let me pick you up?’ I asked, I wasn’t sure he would.

But when I reached down, he let me pick him up without demur and possibly with something approaching relief, flopping against me.

Now to get him back across the road. Gulp.

I held onto his back feet with one hand and kept the other arm round him. He leaned against me rather than trying to escape to something more interesting the way he usually does. Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait ages by the side of the road for a gap in the traffic. He flinched as the cars passed but didn’t try and run. Talking to him, and nuzzling his head with my cheek to reassure him, I walked briskly across the main road and down a small side road to our back gate. I managed to retrieve my keys from my pocket without dropping him, opened the gate and put him down just inside. He trotted into the garden where he was greeted by a very happy little boy.

Thank heavens for that, as now I could go to visit Mum on Wednesday without the worry of leaving McCat at large up here.

Other news, I’ve started writing again, only a little bit but I see it as a result. I have to write a story by 15th September. I have a pretty good idea what’s going to happen and who is in it, it’s just a case of whether I can write 15k in the time. McMini goes back to school on 4th so it could well happen. It depends on the Dad stuff. I still get waves of sadness and I expect I will for sometime but it seems to be a little less grim now and Mum seems a lot better too, which is brilliant, and it’s great to chat to her about it on Wednesdays. The writers’ group I’m in also met yesterday, which was great fun, as always, and just as they were leaving I got a message that the car was all fixed, which was brilliant. All the more so because the bill, though big, was much lower than I expected. It will be a while before I can get the rest of the new books edited, but perhaps not as long as I thought.

A traumatic week then! But all in all, it turned out pretty well in the end.