Cat Whiskerer: The Tail of Nine of the Cats in My Life

As Told By: Morwenna Blackwood

It started with tea and biscuits.

One of my earliest childhood memories is of my brother and I sitting in our parents’ bed in the morning, dunking biscuits in Mum and Dad’s cups of tea. We loved them – and so did Cindy, our brindle cat!

She also loved cheese and onion crisps, and she’d sit on my lap while I was panicking about having to go to swimming club on a Wednesday after school, and I’d be there eating cheese and onion crisps – I have no idea why! – watching The Flintstones, and she’d be there crunching away on my crisps. She was very loving, and always made me feel better. Cats know things. And they do what makes sense to them – even when it makes no sense at all to us.

We had this zebra-striped curved settee – this is back in the early 1980s, and against a backdrop of dark green leaf-patterned wallpaper, it looked...well, you can imagine!  – and she’d walk along the top of it, tail flicking like a whip, and swipe the top of whoever’s head she could reach, for no apparent reason! I was still small, but my cousins regularly went home with bleeding scalps!

When I was in my teens, we moved house, and our new neighbour’s cat had just had a litter of kittens. The confident ones had all gone to new homes, but no one wanted the shy, quiet tabby her little boy had named Teddy. So Teddy came home with us.

Teddy was nervy, but she was also the most affectionate, gentle cat I ever met – and I work for a national cat charity and have met A LOT of cats! Teddy was very small, even as an adult, and her fur was, well, it was probably the softest substance on earth. Being with Teddy was like cuddling, well, your teddy when you were a small child – she brought peace.

Morwenna’s cats, Bob and Roo, as little ones

Scar

Bob and Roo all grown up

Roo looking elegant in a (natural) tuxedo

Stoat

I soon moved away, and my mental health was seriously bad at this time in my life. But my parents and my brother grew to have an incredibly strong bond with her. Teddy was in her late teens that devastating day my parents had to call the vet out, and it was time to say goodbye.

Meanwhile, I had become very ill and was in and out of hospitals. In one place I lived for a while there was a resident cat, who had been adopted from a rescue centre. Tessa was black and white and wore a scarlet collar. Apparently, she’d ended up at the rescue centre for causing absolute mayhem in her previous home – the staff had changed her name to Tessa because she’d come in with the name ‘Vlad the Impaler’, or something like that! But she was happy in her new home – life there must have suited her better – and she used to come in my room and mess about pouncing on things, or she’d just sit on my bed with me while I cried. Cats are much more perceptive than most humans give them credit for – same as with all animals, I suppose.

When I recovered enough to be able to function in society again, it was Tessa who inspired me to volunteer for the cat charity. On my first day, I was shown around the centre. I tried to hold back the tears. There were more than 100 pens, all of which were occupied. Some of the cats were coping better than others with their situation. One aspect of my OCD had revolved around being terrified of germs, and simultaneously terrified of the chemicals in cleaning products, but somehow, here, I was able to clean out pens and wash litter trays. It was a revelation! Eventually, I became a member of staff, and as well as giving them love and playing with them, I was able to feed them, medicate the sick ones, rehome them, rescue them from under motorway bridges (just one example!) and trap, neuter, release/resite ferals.

Just for the sake of clarity, a feral cat is essentially a wild animal. Best practise with ferals has changed a lot over time, and when I had my first encounter with one, I had no idea what to do. I’d been sent out to pick up a ‘kitten’ that had turned up in a retirement home. All I had with me was a towel and a normal cat basket. Cutting a long story short, the cat transpired to be a very big, entire, feral tom, and I learned a great deal that day! As a rookie, I thought that it was my duty to get the cat into a basket then and there and get it back to the Centre. The residents were shouting “Puss, puss, puss!” and trying to entice it with slices of ham. The cat was terrified and was pinging off the walls. Armed with my towel, I went in. When I arrived back at the Centre, it was so late that everyone except the manager had gone home. After putting the cat in a pen, she’d rushed me to the hospital – I’d driven back with one hand, and a tea towel wrapped around my head to stop the blood running in my eyes!

three boys

Bob

Someone named the cat Scar. He was so wild, he was let out of his pen to be a mouser, and he lived on the grounds for a decade. Some days we’d see him, some days we wouldn’t. Then, all of a sudden, he was old. He decided to live in the staff room, where he transformed into a purring softy who sat on everyone’s lap at every opportunity, and developed a taste for whatever was in your sandwich! We miss you, Scar!

Some considerable time after Teddy, my parents decided that it was time to have a new cat. As I work where I do, they came to give a loving home to a cat in need. They chose Lenny. They hadn’t seen much of Lenny before they took him home, given that he’d spent most of his time at the Centre hiding under his blankets. He was a ‘golden oldie’ who needed a quiet home where there were no other pets, or children. We soon found out why! Lenny was an enormous semi-longhaired cat with canine teeth so long, you could have mistaken him for a sabre-tooth tiger. It took a while for him to settle, and when he eventually started sitting on the arm of Dad’s chair, and curling up next to Mum, though happy, everyone was slightly nervous! Lenny hated loud noise, strangers, window-cleaners, tin foil, any change to his routine, being picked up, being brushed, and anyone who came between him and food! Mum and Dad worked around him, and when they did, he became the most contented cat in the world. He curled up with Mum while she suffered with cancer, and he was my Dad’s constant companion after she died.

My husband – well, he became my husband – works at the Centre, too. We met there, and we’ve both taken many cats home during our time there – sometimes to live, sometimes to foster, sometimes to nurse. A few years before we got together, my husband had adopted a long-stayer, called Stoat. Stoat had been a kitten when he arrived. He was very unhappy in his pen, and he was shy, and scared, and no one was interested in taking him home. So my husband did. He said that he’d give Stoat whatever he needed, and would let him do whatever he pleased, with no expectations. Homes like that are hard to find. And Stoat blossomed. He loves to be outside, exploring, but he also enjoys a lap to sit on, and at night, he’ll either sleep on my pillow around my head like a cap, or he’ll be sprawled over my husband. Stoat is a cat’s cat, and has been great with all the other cats we’ve had in our home over the years. He was even fine when our little boy came along! He can smell cream from twenty miles away, is a master tree-climber, and refuses to get off the worktops!

One day, a pair of tiny kittens were brought to the Centre. They were brothers, and had been named Bob and Roo because they had something wrong with their front left legs, and walked strangely (Bob up and down, and kangaRoo). The vet examined them. Their elbows are fused. No one knew whether, as they grew, they would need their ‘bad’ legs amputated, or what other problems could ensue, which would make rehoming them difficult. One thing was sure – we’d never learn anything while they stayed in their pen, so my husband and I took them home to see how they got on.

My goodness, there is nothing in the world, nothing, that makes me smile like watching kittens! Bob and Roo were no exception, and we soon started videoing them to record the fun, rather than simply provide information for the vet! Aside from a slight limp, and the fact that they hold their ‘bad’ paws up when they are sitting, you wouldn’t know that there is anything amiss. They have rough-and-tumbled with each other since day one, they tear about the house, up trees, all over the garden. Roo I have dubbed ‘The Cute Assassin’ for reasons that speak for themselves, and he also brings in feathers which he’ll play with for ages. I found six under the fridge the other day! He curls up with Bob, tumbles with Bob, and hangs out with Stoat but isn’t as close to him as Bob is. Bob is Stoat’s worktop companion. They allogroom a lot, although sometimes Bob doesn’t get the hint that Stoat wants some alone time. Bob is a bit highly-strung; he and I understand each other well! He will flop himself down anywhere: on jigsaws, on rouge socks, on bits of toy train set – he’s even turned the kettle on with his bum before! He wakes us all up without fail at half past three every morning, and then goes back to bed himself at about seven o’ clock!

And most recently, there’s Fly. Fly is a sleek black cat, who lives with the owners of a Victorian mansion up on the Moors. I make an annual pilgrimage there for writing retreats with my wonderful writing group each autumn. Fly lives in the cottage on the grounds, but he always comes into the house and tries to sleep on as many of the beds as is possible each day. He walks round the place like he is lord of the manor, which, in a way, I suppose he is! He’s even made an appearance in my latest novel, Glasshouse. Hopefully, I’ll get to see him again this year!

I’m writing this now, sitting up in bed, and all three boys and lying on top of my husband, purring. Oh, update – Roo is now trying to get on the keyboard…better go! hjsajfbjskkgjhslbcbjdkslhhjhjhjh…

We've since adopted Bob and Roo!

About Morwenna Blackwood

When Morwenna Blackwood was six years old, she got told off for filling a school exercise book with an endless story when she should have been listening to the teacher/eating her tea/colouring with her friends. The story was about a frog. It never did end; and Morwenna never looked back.

Born and raised in Devon, Morwenna suffered from severe OCD and depression, and spent her childhood and teens in libraries.  She travelled about for a decade before returning to Devon.  She now has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Exeter, and lives with her husband, son and three cats in a cottage that Bilbo Baggins would be proud of. 

Morwenna is the author of best-selling psychological thriller, The (D)Evolution of Us, and her second novel, Glasshouse, will be published, again by darkstroke, on 03/26/2021. When she is not writing, she works for an animal rescue charity, or can be found down by the sea.

She often thinks about that frog.

MEOWTASTIC!

We at Lucky Pineapple Films love cats. We love them so much, we have our own cat themed store, The Cattiest Cat Shop. To celebrate our love of cats, we invited people to share their own cat stories. When we moved the website over to a new shop, we didn’t want to lose them. Voila! Here the amazing cat stories are forever preserved on the Lucky Pineapple Films website.