Jul 31st, 2014

Author: donich_admin

Who’d have cats….

As I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions, we have two snow Bengal cats – Schrodi (aka the good one) and Tora (aka the bad one). Schrodi is a typical ‘cute ball of fur’ type cat. He likes eating, sleeping (preferably on a knee) and is basically a little friend to all the world (this is an oversimplification because he is also a fierce mouser). Tora on the other hand is a bit wild and self-willed. He had ‘Watch!’ on his medical records at the vet’s surgery where we used to live because he had had a few good goes at the nurses there, and he is not fond (to say the least) of other cats. His other little predilection is (or hopefully ‘was’) for getting himself locked in places, and several years ago he nearly gave me a nervous breakdown when he disappeared for three days and turned out to be locked in a neighbour’s spare bedroom.

So after that we bought him a special locator collar. I’m surprised these have never caught on in UK – but we buy them from www.thecatlocator.com (in USA). The collar has a wireless transmitter on it which is about the size of a 10p coin and about 1cm thick. There is an associated receiver unit which bleeps when the collar is in range and gets louder as you get closer. So basically you can track your cat with a range between a few hundred yards to up to about half a mile dependent on the terrain. This appeals so us because it is a nice piece of tech and also enables us to find the cats if they don’t put in an appearance for a while.

So since we moved to Lochgoilhead, Tora has taken it into his head from time to time to go down to the village (about half a mile away) and stay there for ages. We have never worked out why he does this – one theory is that he goes there to find other cats to beat up. Possibly also someone is giving him treats. Anyway when he does this we tend to give him a whole day of non-appearance before we go and forcibly bring him home. Yesterday he was out when we got up and hadn’t showed up by mid afternoon. Typically when he does this he is either just in or just out of range with the cat locator and yesterday was no exception – during the course of the afternoon we could get him from time to time. About 8pm we decided enough was enough and went to bring him home. Of course he was in the village and we got really close to where the signal was coming from. Alarm bells started going off at this point because he always comes when I call – and this time he was ignoring me. To my great embarrassment I had to ask a lady if I could look for him in her garden (which is where the signal was coming from). And there – shock and horror we found the collar but no Tora.

I have to say that at this point I was fearing the worst. R kept saying to me not to worry – but by this point we hadn’t seen him in 24 hours, and I was thinking of all the places he could be stuck in – particularly as the temperature had been 28 degrees that afternoon. We went back to the house and I got more and more miserable by the moment worrying about him. At 10pm I managed to prevail upon R (who was insistent that Tora would just come back on his own) to come down to the village to look for him. To cut a long (very long) story short – we found him sitting in a garden intent on a hedge where some small hapless creature was doubtless hiding. Much against his will, we carried him home kicking and struggling.

So lessons learned…. R is always right (I knew that already). Tora is a naughty cat (that too). Don’t panic before you are hurt (this one I should know from experience but it is taking a while to get through).

I hope my Mum and J (our normal cat sitter) do not read this because they are not keen on looking after the lads at the best of times.