|
There were a couple of non flying things at the air display in Puerto de la Cruz on Sunday that caught my eye:
I want to be best friends with this guy.
A portable giant beer can = a fiesta where the beer comes to you. Can life get any better?
It's a case of excess skin.
I don’t think that’s a real dog, I think it’s one of those things that children keep their pyjamas in.
On Sunday I saw further evidence that Whiskas is a ‘special one’ in the feline world.
I witnessed an internal battle between good and evil, where he reached a fork in the road and had to contemplate which direction to take.
18 months ago the demon would have won, but these days the battle between good and evil has entered an arena where the sand is grey.
As it was Sunday morning, we slept late, as you do. Subsequently this meant that Whiskas’ breakfast was also late; more of a brunch really.
Clearly this didn’t go down well and the usual breakfast preparation small talk of “Would you like some Friskies with your breakfast?”, “Are you hungry?” (stupid question to ask a cat) and “Have you had your first breakfast yet?” (we know he does the rounds of the area) wasn’t met with the customary wide bright blue eyes and the ever so cute “prrrrrrp” chirpy replies. He was miffed.
So breakfast preparation was no nonsense. Food in bowl, bowl placed outside. Unfortunately it began to rain as he was eating. This didn’t help his mood. If we’d fed him at the normal time, he’d have had a dry breakfast. He left his bowl and his half eaten breakfast and legged it back inside the house. I knew immediately where this was going. In his head, breakfast was declared null and void and a couple of hours further along the day, he’d expect a replacement in full. I rescued his bowl, placed it just inside the door and pointed his nose in its direction. It seemed to do the trick and he wolfed the rest down.
Unfortunately, this also signalled that as his bowl was inside the house, he had a right to find somewhere inside to curl up away from the rain. I could see his eyes scanning the room looking for the perfect spot, before settling on the Windsor chair. He casually walked over to it and stuck an exploratory paw on the cushion.
“WHISKAS,” I tried to put some authority into my voice. The paw was withdrawn from the cushion and he did a circuit of the room, stopping at the chair again. The paw went up again.
“WHISKAS,” another warning. This time there was a delay before the paw was withdrawn. He was in distraction mode, so I thought ´third time and he’s out’. I didn’t have to wait too long. This time I got out of my chair; a sign that I meant business. After a moments defiance, he withdrew his paw from the chair and sauntered casually over to me, rubbing his body against my leg, but I could see that his half-tail was flicking furiously. The internal struggle had begun.
He looked at my ankle, then rubbed his body against my leg, then looked at my ankle again, then another rub. I knew exactly what was going on. He wanted to wrap his front paws around my leg and sink his teeth into my shin. This was his modus operandi, or at least it used to be.
It looked as though he’d beaten his demons, the attack never came and then I made the mistake of laughing at him. Whatever good qualities cats have, being able to laugh at themselves isn’t one of them. In a flash, his legs were wrapped around my lower leg and his mouth clamped firmly on my shin bone.
But…and this is the difference from 18 moths ago when my leg would have felt as though it had been caught I a steel bear trap, his claws remained retracted and his bite had all the force of a toothless man.
He held the position. I could almost hear the internal struggle. “Bite the bastard, bite the bastard.” “No, don’t. Let go, there’ll be no more food if you bite him.”
The pressure on my leg increased slightly and I decided to take the decision away from him by flicking him with a sheet of A4. It was enough. He released his grip and I ejected him from the house (this happens a lot with Whiskas).
This cat is never going to be an angel, but at least he seems to be dealing with his anger management better these days.
Whiskas is a cat, not a very imaginatively named one admittedly, but that was nothing to do with us. I say he’s a cat; however, I really believe he’s something else completely. He’s too fiendishly clever to be a mere cat. I’m sure he’s had a curse or a spell cast on him. After all stories of shape-changers aren’t uncommon on this island.
He’s not our cat, he simply chooses to spend most of his time here, and we do feed him, but that only came about after a long, dirty and particularly well executed campaign on his part.
Over the past four years we’ve had good moments and bad ones. I’ve tried to outsmart him many times, with little success. He has the brains of a criminal mastermind and the stealth of a ninja. However at this moment in time we’ve reached a good point in our relationship. Although I’m well aware that this is always a fragile situation and one wrong move can see the re-emergence of his evil alter ego, Whiskelus.
The latest situation which threatens peace is related to his dinner times. Whiskas is given his dinner only after we’ve finished eating. Even as I write this, I realise how disciplinarian it sounds. Thank god we didn’t have kids; we’d have done a right Philip Larkin on them by now. In my defence, you don’t know what we’re dealing with here. There can be no ambiguity with this cat.
As soon as we finish eating, he gets his dinner. Normally, this happens between 8 and 9pm and he’s pretty cool with that. It’s a good system. He eats, then toddles off to have a nap, or do whatever he does at night and we don’t see him again until breakfast.
The problem we’re facing is what to do when we have to go out at night? Feed him before we go, or after we come back?
The first time this happened, we fed him before we went out, at around 6-ish; a couple of hours before his usual time. It seemed unfair to make him wait. Big mistake. When we arrived home at about 10pm, Whiskas was waiting for us, clearly expecting his dinner. The early meal had been long forgotten, or viewed as an early evening snack. He was given short shrift and shown the door.
Unfortunately, the cat felt that this was an unjust course of action and protested loudly outside our bedroom window all night.
Feeding him early was obviously the wrong option, so next time we went out for the evening we decided not to feed him until we returned. This worked much better, or so it seemed. Waiting for us was a humble, white cat (probably not hungry though. Our neighbour has a cat sanctuary, so there’s food on tap all of the time). He gratefully ate his dinner and toddled away, quiet as a mouse.
But this cat is a complex character; it’s never that easy. Last Friday we went to La Laguna to see the Semana Santa Silent Procession. As it didn’t start until 9.30pm it didn’t interfere with our, or more importantly, Whiskas’ dinner. However, when we arrived back home at about 11pm, there he was waiting for us. Apparently by feeding him the previous time after we’d been out, we’d established a pattern (funny thing that with cats. If it benefits them, they learn quickly. If it doesn’t they’re as dumb as an ass), he expected another meal.
I told him not to be so stupid and ignored him. Cue another night of unrelenting protests – I’m sure he must have French blood in him.
This cat is his own worst enemy, because now the only solution I can see is that if we’re going out, he’ll have to wait till we get home before he gets fed, even if that happens to be a three in the morning. It seems harsh, but it’s the only way we’ll get any sleep…unless anybody else has any suggestions.
