OUR cat has something to show me. Make no mistake, she owns us, not the other way round. She isn’t even our cat. But she has the run of our place.
She calls at the door, sticks her nose in the air when I wave the special fishy biscuits for fusspots under it (cheesy chicken is a never – you’ve got to be joking!). She indicates with a sweep of her head that I should follow her to the telephone pole outside on the pavement.
My mother-in-law has an old saying: “The cat can look at the queen,” but how come I feel like I’m the cat looking at the queen in this relationship?
Then our cat stretches her claws up the post as if to say: “Have a look at what I just chased up there.”
I look. A small dead looking puppet of a thing with pointed ears is lying stretched across the top of the pole far from the cat’s claws. It looks like a Halloween toy that someone has slung up there. It looks lifeless.
The cat has boasted to me, so now she’s off to make life hell for the birds out our back. All in a day’s work.
I’m not an expert on things slung up on telegraph wires. The sight of a pair of laced gutties dangling from a wire not far from our house used to amuse me. Were young folks in high spirits playing games and throwing each other shoes in the air? Wot larks, eh?
I once lost a gutty at 3am on a street in Hamburg – a friend pulled it off me and threw it in the air. There may have been some Schnapps involved. It landed on a stranger’s balcony – that was a long stony hobble home from the gherkin factory.
It took those of the younger generation to explain that trainers slung over a telegraph wire really mean: “Get yer dope here.” I’m not over it yet.
But back to the dead kitten thing. Once our cat disappeared, the ‘dead' thing arose and twitched an ear and flicked a rather busy tail. It was a baby squirrel and it was cute enough to know when to play dead.
“There’s a small squirrel stuck at the top of our telephone pole,” I tell the man who wouldn’t have a cat about the house but subsequently bought a dish and luxury nibbles for the cat from up the street who has adopted us.
“No way,” he says about the squirrel. He doesn’t believe me. He thinks I’m hallucinating. He thinks I have dandered up to loiter under the two gutties and had a few puffs of something suspect.
He races upstairs to take a closer look from the bedroom window. The squirrel who was clearly playing dead, is now much more perky.
“You’re right,” he says. “That is indeed a squirrel.”
“Could you write that down and sign it,” I tell him. You don’t hear such a definite 'You’re right' much in 25 years of marriage.
“I think he is frightened, should we ring the USPCA?” I ask
The squirrel is up the pole and we are in a quandary.
“Perhaps he is not frightened, perhaps we are projecting our fears on to the squirrel,” says he.
“Thank you for your input, Sigmund,” says I.
We decide to have a cup of tea and think about what to do about the poor stranded baby squirrel.
When we come back, the baby squirrel has nipped off down the pole and escaped. Problem solved. Apparently they have sharp claws and are very fast on them.
No matter how often I tell the two men in this house that squirrels are rats with tails much as pigeons are rats with feathers, they refuse to listen.
Walking Ormeau Park on a Sunday, they love to see the flick of a bushy tail on a tree branch. They stand enchanted.
When it comes to love of wildlife, they don’t even differentiate. They remain resolutely entranced and colour blind.
“Red squirrels good, grey squirrels bad, very bad,” I tell them.
“Tell that to the grey squirrels,” they shrug.
It’s strange how wildlife is becoming a feature of our city streets. A friend surprised a fox strolling along the road at 2am. Each gazed at the other, then passed by.
The odd grey badger rambles down into the back garden of another friend’s house. And now grey squirrels are walking tightrope along our telephone wires. Ain't life sweet.
