I relayed this (true) story by texted instalments to amuse a friend stuck in hospital for the weekend. She enjoyed it so much she said I should write a book about our cat’s adventures, so I thought I would start by putting some of his tales in this blog – which means all out of sequence, but never mind. If I try to do it in the correct order, I will never get going on it 😉
This chapter is the story of the provision of a “safe place” for our ex-wild and now “garden cat” called Nemo.
Now one of the perils of being a garden cat like our Nemo, is being fed outside – fine but it does mean that other cats, be they wild, garden or fully owned indoor/outdoor pets, will steal your food once they have located it. This leads to intermittent feeding frenzies, exacerbated by the thought of all wild cats – where is my next meal coming from? Therefore, we have an ex-wild cat who looks better fed than most domestic moggies. Actually, he is fat – a furry barrel on legs in the winter, slightly less so in the summer.
Incidentally, in our garden the blackbirds and robins also join this free feast when the felines are dozing and digesting elsewhere, in which we see a certain satisfactory irony seeing as he drinks from their birdbath.
It’s been on my mind for a while that he needed an indoor refuge as in addition to the food theft, Nemo was beaten up again recently. Coming out of the back door to a doormat covered in tufts of cat hair is not a great start to the day until he appears looking relatively unscathed after all.
It turns out new neighbours have acquired a new “young gun” and our ol’ fella, who can’t see very well and is somewhat lacking in the dental department these days, just wasn’t winning 😿😿 At the moment the damage is limited as he is well covered in winter fat and fur, so the birds have had an additional benefit of some nice soft nest lining material a couple of times recently.
My first thought was to give him more access to my office as he comes in there with me already, but it has double glazed sliding glass doors and block walls which ruled it out for a cat flap.
The next option was our back door hallway, we call it our “boot room”, which has a wood panelled door and to me looked like the answer. However, it needed an internal door to the stairs to the kitchen so as to block access to the rest of the house as we are not in the market for shabby chic, aka shredded furniture. His teeth may be lacking but he keeps all the claws he has left very sharp indeed as I have painfully experienced more than once.
Over to B, who has the final say on all projects like this. He was somewhat less than impressed with this idea than I was, as it meant another DIY session and he thinks I already pamper Nemo far too much. Nemo would disagree, naturally, but that’s another story. B likes to pretend he is not as soft on Nemo as I am … but then decided that a door between kitchen stairs and the boot room would stop draughts into the kitchen and from there into the lounge. The project got the go ahead!
Before B changed his mind, we selected a door online after rejecting the local DIY stores’ options as either (a) cheap and nasty, or (b) outrageously expensive. I ordered one which looked suitable, and we waited. It arrived a couple of weeks later (that’s fast for France) and was twice as big as expected. Doh! Well, not quite double, but it was huge – bigger than the external door from the boot room to the garden. But somehow we got it through said back door and into position and the “Man Who Can” built an internal porch and fitted it 😁
While this was going on I ordered a chip-reading cat flap to keep interlopers out, and booked Nemo into the vets for a microchip 🙀……Despite Amazon Prime, the vets appointment came first, and the cat flap took another 2 weeks to turn up. You have to learn to be patient in France, which B will tell you does not come naturally to me… at all.
Until then Nemo had been to the vet with me just once so I could get his eyes checked – and once was enough for all concerned. He made such a loud fuss he was put in his carrier in a darkened room to wait as he upset all the other pets and owners – this was a busy, pre-Covid waiting room with us all sitting round together for a long time.
When at last it was his turn, they brought the carrier through and he completely refused to exit without damaging someone, so the vet just looked through the bars to diagnose his eye issue. He continued to scream all the way back home and told me off for days after, so a return has been studiously avoided.
Pawnote: 5 minutes after being offloaded from the car and carrier after that first trip , incredulously he jumped into the still open boot of the car for a sniff around….cat curiosity cannot be constrained for long it seems.
As a result, this time it was decided he should be sedated prior to his rendez vous. I picked up a tablet of Calmivet deemed suitable for his size – definitely well over 5 kilos!! Just under 3 hours before his appointment I crushed it and popped it in some chopped up chicken – his favourite, though to be honest any food is always welcome in his world. He started to inhale it and I left him to it.
As the feeding area was still outside, another problem was the possibility of the young gun eating it which might not have made me very popular with the neighbours, so I came back half an hour later to check. I found Nemo tottering around looking very confused although there was still some tablet and food left – seems he quickly realised something wasn’t quite right, but not soon enough!
I picked him up – and he let me (that was a first) and then he slept on my knees in my office for 2 hours without once getting off (also a first). Just like a real cat B said! Normally he is a super fidget-bum continually “checking for snakes” (that’s when they turn round and round before settling) and shuttling between my lap and a pile of carpet samples by the window (too many choices).
By then I was feeling really bad for drugging him as he just wasn’t himself and he knew something was wrong. But getting my now very dopey furry purry into his carrier was definitely easier. Off we went and he immediately perked up a bit in the car so there was a bit of a serenade, but nothing like the scale and volume of last time.
Covid means that even at the vets everyone must now have an appointment which is so much better than before. We waited about 2 mins and then he was in the surgery and unloaded onto the table and started quietly looking around – interesting as we think he can’t see very well at all.
I told the new vet there that he is a garden cat, and the chip was for a chip reading cat flap as his tattoo (they all have one or the other in France) didn’t help and a collar was out of the question. She turned his ear inside out to check his tattoo while he barely noticed. Thank goodness for the drugs. Then she checked their records for him. I had previously taken over ownership in their system (during the cat-astrophic visit!) But it turned out the previous “owners” didn’t pay for his sterilization and tattoo – it was a charity like the PDSA and so the charity was his registered owner.
Thats ok I said – its only for the cat flap – oh no she said, you can’t have different owners registered for the tattoo and chip!! Impossible!! (to be said in French accent with relevant gestures). French administration strikes again whilst Nemo steadily gets more bright eyed and bushy tailed on the vets table, wandering about so I’m now having to hold on to him to avoid any escapology, or, more likely, damage to the surgery.
I was getting a little worried – good grief have we got to do all this again?! I pleaded in my best French for a solution, so ten minutes and one phone call to the charity later it was agreed that the vet would officially ask for the transfer of ownership to me as the charity said they would not object. YAY! Two minutes later the “micropuce” (literally micro flea!) had been injected in his neck and we were heading home, singing to each other.
A few days later I get a letter from a government department for the registration of “domestic carnivores” – yes, this is a real department. This was typical flowery administrative language which I had to read 3 times to properly understand (pretty good going that time, at least I knew the subject). It was telling me they had contacted the charity requesting the transfer of ownership to me, but we had to wait a month for a response – no response means it is assumed they agree. I was also invited to fill in a form if I didn’t want the cat, and no reply from me within a month meant they assumed I did want him.
Bearing in mind that if you do want to register for anything official by post you have to do it with a 5 euro registered letter including proof of receipt, this is all a bit hit and miss, but very much the way it works – or often doesn’t work – here. So, lots more waiting, and when nobody has replied, he will get his very own Identity Card. And to think that all I wanted to do was safely let him in and out of our boot room!!!
Only in France.
Ok so now for the cat flap – as a result of my research I ordered extra-large so his aforementioned tummy would fit through. To be honest part of me wanted to stay with normal size to see if he was like my parent’s last cat – also on the large side, he used to get stuck halfway with his back legs flapping about trying to get enough purchase to push his tummy through. We all found it hilarious, said cat did not. I suspected it might put off Nemo too much, so the super large deluxe model it was.
To prepare him before it arrived I moved his automated feeder and one of his sleeping baskets into the boot room and during the day we left the outside door open as by then B had fitted the inner one to keep him out of the rest of the house. 😉 He quickly learned where his food had moved to, though was still a bit confused at times, racing ahead to the previous spot if any hint that one of us might be going to that location 😼
Finally, the cat flap arrived and a couple of days after that B (who is more laid back French style than me and saw no need to rush into the job) cut a hole in the door. We left it like that for 24 hours, closed the door and Nemo got into the ideal of access day and night and popped in and out quite happily. So Stage 2 box ticked.
Next, to get the flap to register the micropuce (!) you have to get the cats head right into the doorway while it’s in registration mode, but they also advise against just stuffing the cat in there as it can put them off the whole device. That would be an expensive (and probably unforgiveable) mistake, so in true Baldrick style I had a cunning plan …..
Back in my studio office I got him on my lap (his favourite place) and positioned the cat flap next to him – then I put some favourite treats in the doorway, which worked – a treat!! 😉😉. The flap clicks when it registers the chip which apparently upsets some – probably less greedy – felines, but this potential issue didn’t bother him at all – “Whiskas Irresistables” are apparently correctly named. I took the cat flap back to the installation position after cleaning off the cat dribble.
Once installed, to teach him this new trick, I shut him in the boot room and crouched the other side to call him out – he hates being trapped so went to the “hole” in the door and promptly banged his nose on the plastic! That didn’t go down well, and he retreated under a chair. I went in and pushed the flap open for him – he shot through it – like a scalded cat!! We did a repeat later and very soon after that he figured he could push the flap himself – again he shot through it and was halfway across the garden in a microsecond. This is probably the most exercise he has had in weeks, so time for a catnap.
But he still didn’t fancy the reverse process….. until about 9pm that evening, when he finally realised there was no food anywhere else other than through that flappy thingy. We heard the clicks and bangs as his greed overcame his hesitation. He is now in and out like it’s always been there. Purrfect!
Second pawnote: he has now slept in there several times, though not in his basket – that’s way too obvious – the staff chair and cushion are much more to his liking 😉
Finally, you will note the recurring theme and reason for the quick success of the new set up is that – as a friend here put it – aw bless him, he is ruled by his tummy ……
