Feline Decrepitude

We seem to have evolved into a home for geriatric cats as our three slide into dotage around us. Cats are eccentrics, that's their thing. Ours are no exception and as they age their oddness is only becoming more pronounced and amusing.

When we first moved into our house the local birds went into a frenzy of panic. They needn't have bothered. These three are no threat whatsoever! The doves now eat directly out of the cat crunchy bowl while all three are within pouncing distance. I'm not sure if that's an indictment of the doves or the cats, but there you have it.

NORI

16 years old and with superb comic timing, turned up to her photo shoot sporting a cobweb fascinator, very Miss Havisham.

She was brought to us by her own teenage mother when she was a tiny dot of a kitten. We had been duped into taking another older (about 6) cat a few months before by a tearful girl at the local video shop who, wasn't "allowed to keep him in (her) rental house" (in hindsight, they may have actually been crocodile tears). The cat, Mr Flibble, was a truly horrible piece of work and had some deep seated psychological issues that meant he was not always toilet trained and lived mostly under Matt's bed (on one of his rare sojourns out from under the bed he got hit by a car . . . we cried, not for joy however as we actually loved the stupid, insane cat).

As we had him at the time, we also had cat food and Nori's mum, unable to provide for what was probably her only surviving infant carried her to our house. We got both Nori and her mum (Clawdia) "fixed" and then Clawdia eventually ran away from home. We know nothing terrible happened to her (she was very street smart), she just got fed up with Nori not weaning after about 12 months! and packed her little spotted handkerchief and went to another home.

Nori has personal daemons (I'm sure Cat-Freud would have plenty to say about her weaning issues). Despite living the most comfortable and relaxed existence known to catkind, her neuroses mean that she thinks the world is out to get her. And with an amazing gift for self-fulfilling  prophesizing, she places herself in the road of every loud power tool, wheelbarrow or running child around here. We expect her to become the longest lived cat ever and enter Guinness Book of Record fame as she is so extraordinarily careful of herself and although always in the self perceived path of impending DOOM, is always able to dodge disaster!

Actually, she really doesn't know her own bravery. She "tamed" our old dog while she was still a little punctuation mark of a cat. Kato had an insane hatred for cats and had once attacked a stone cat statue. Nori swiped her once across the nose and they were lifelong friends.

GUSTAV

14 years old. Lovely, affable, roly poly Gustav, came to us as a little impoverished waif about two months old who had been living off bugs and dew and stuff. He was scrawny and his little ears were dessicated, he really was a pitiful sight. We lured him in with tasty morsels and he has vowed never to go back to a life on the mean streets. He is ENORMOUS and spends most of his day hanging out in our kitchen expectantly waiting for more of those morsels (which, obviously he gets).

He has an $800 pin in his leg (from 12 years ago when $800 was like . . . 10 thousand dollars) from an altercation with a car. He never, ever crosses the road since the incident (too far from the kitchen). He likes to sit with his pin leg straight out which makes him look like a big fat Greek fisherman mending his nets.

SCAT

12 years old. Scat was the only cat we actually got from a pet shop. While he's been "fixed" we suspect that they didn't "get it all" as he's still a bit (well a lot) of a Tom Cat. He's a bruiser with bits missing from his ears and nose from fisticuffs with neighbourhood cats. Fortunately he mostly leaves his own clan alone (although Nori is constantly on guard)

He's a beautiful looking cat but also one that you don't feel 100% safe turning your back on. 

He has to be shut out of the kids room at night as he's been known to actually push a sleeping child right out of bed!

Strange, wonderful, entertaining members of our family they are. We love them so much, and so does the local bird population.