I am a cat person. I ought not to be, as I was
surrounded by them growing up, but such are the things of life. My
story starts, I would think, in about the late '70's or early '80's, in
the southern suburbs of Johannesburg. My mother, a stay-at-home mom and
chronic cleaner, got it into her head to start herself a small
cat-breeding business. Whether she was simply bored, or expected that
it may somehow turn into a viable concern, is lost to me. The initial
stock (if we can call it that) was brought in, large caging areas were
built, various sundries and whatnots purchased, and the whole show hit
the road. The mechanics of this operation is not really important.
She
started small, a few kittens here, a few kittens there, specialising in
Persians. It got so that a house full of little fur balls was the
norm; it was nothing to have five sleeping on your bed, another four
finishing your breakfast before you got to the table, six more staring
at you from the top of the curtain rail. And the house never smelled,
as you'd be expecting. All credit to my mom, the chronic cleaner.
This
story revolves around one cat in particular. I don't remember her
pedigreed, registered name. She was referred to, simply, as Mops. I
think my sister coined that one. This was a cat with a perpetual
bad-hair day. There was no brush or product known to man that could
tame that particular fall-out zone. She was small, a black-and-cream
bi-colour, becoming a Champion at some stage in life (yes, I had to tag
along to cat shows, a sad and depressing subject for another day). Being
a Champion breed, you'd expect that her kittens would fetch a decent
sum but alas; this was not to be.
This little
thing had a couple of peculiarities. For one, she refused to be mated.
Any and all attempts ended in disaster. As soon as she was shoved into
a cage with some or other virile and ready male, she would lie on her
side and open the throat of anything that dared approach her. We never
did figure out why. Perhaps Mops didn't fancy men? Whatever her own
reasons for that she was, however, an excellent midwife. Any breeder
will testify to a cat in labour gleefully eating anything that
approaches her; not so with any of ours, where Mops was involved. She
would saunter on in to the birthing area (yes, we had a birthing area)
and climb into the box. During the labour stage she would purr at the
expectant mother, wash her down, comfort her. At the birth itself she
would assist by cleaning the new-borns and cutting cords. She has even
been seen to dry-suckle the little newbies, allowing the exhausted
mother to rest for a while. I have never seen the like of Mops since.
But,
all told, I think that the single biggest reason Mops never did have
kittens is because of her personality. She seems like a nice little
kitty; she wasn’t. Outside of her few-times-a-year role as midwife she
was (with no questions asked and no excuses given) a rampant,
bad-tempered, stuck-up bitch. Dogs will say: "they feed me and care for
me: they must be gods." Cats, on the other hand, think; "they feed me
and care for me: I must be a god." That was Mops. The lord of all she
surveyed, she swayed and flicked her way through the house, passing out
whatever justice she deemed deserved for whatever slight on her person,
whether real or imagined, with a flash of a claw or a click of a tooth.
More often than not, it was simply the cold shoulder. Mops would
simply turn her back on anything that approached to say hi, be it human
or feline. She ate first, without question, the other cats sitting back
from their bowls until Mops had finished. Any snacks or treats would go
to her first; this was not disputed. It was only in the birthing room
that she was even tolerated.
Sometime around '86
or '87, I was sitting at the dining room table. Whether I was eating or
doing homework matters not. I do recall that the house, that day, was
unnaturally quiet. I believe that there must have been, all told,
around six or seven cats still in residence, my mother having been
winding down her operation over a period (I think she ceased breeding
somewhere towards the end of '89). There were no cats to be seen. All
was calm and quiet. Like a grave, or a morgue. Or, more correctly as
it turned out, that special kind of quiet in the air just before the
mortar shell lands, spreading debris everywhere in one single and
shocking bang.
I don't rightly know how cats
communicate with each other, even though I had the opportunity to live
with and observe them for the better part of a decade. I know that they
meow only in conversation with humans. That day, those remaining cats
in the house must have gotten together, conferred in secret, and reached
a decision.
It was time.
From
where I was sitting I could stare directly up the first flight of
steps, leading to the upstairs bedrooms. Calmly and confidently down
the stairs came Mops. Her tail swished gently from side to side, her
bad mood at a relaxed DEFCON 1. Completely and utterly oblivious to the
lightning-charged friction in the air, she reached the bottom of the
stairs. I must have somehow picked up on the subconscious menace that
clogged the day, because I watched, quiet and still, barely breathing.
Mops hopped down from the final step.
And was attacked.
Viciously.
From
under furniture and from around corners, from behind doors and from
under curtains, came a flashing, yowling, fur-bristling knot of fury,
hell-bent on murder and mayhem. Cats from all angles crashed into Mops.
She went down under a storm of multi-coloured, standing-on-end
destruction. Fur went everywhere. The screams and hisses, the
challenges and the pleas, rang out through the house. The mortar shell
had landed. The horde of cats crashed one way and then the next,
bashing into furniture and walls, rolling on the carpet and sending up
fur and spittle, blood and shouts. It seemed like minutes, though it
must have been a few seconds before I went wading in, hitting, pushing
and kicking from one side to another, scattering cats left, right and
centre. Mops was a wreck. That's the best we could say. Bloody and
torn, missing fur and flesh, she lay panting, eyes glazed over and
little body quivering. Of the other cats, there were none to be seen.
Job done, they had crawled back to where they came from, only appearing
again later in the day, tails perhaps a little straighter, when Mops
returned from the vet.
It doesn't matter what you
think about the communication of cats, what animal behaviourists and
enthusiasts will tell you. On that day at the end of the '80's, six or
seven cats got together and decided that enough was enough. They
conspired, they planned, and they acted. They violently and concisely,
with precision that was military-perfect, ambushed another cat, and beat
it to a pulp. They sought their revenge, and they got it.
And
Mops, the ruler, the judge, the jury and the executioner…was now only
Mops the cat who sat quietly on her couch, Mops the one that ate last at
mealtimes. Mops who gave way when other cats walked past.
For the rest of her life.
Karma, unlike Mops, might not be such a bitch after all.
