A new cat learns old tricks
Dealing with neighbours disturbed by the animals in your life
When I return home from shopping, almost immediately I realise that Manohra, the Monster Kitten, is missing. She’s not anywhere in the house.
Since I don’t let my cats outside, except for the two soi cats Thep and Thong, I realise that Thep must have shown her how to climb my gate so that she can reach the second floor of all the houses on the soi. Now she’s out on the street, a most dangerous place for an accident-prone kitten.
There’s another problem as well. Last week, I wrote about Mee, the part-chow who lives next door, as an example of a dog disrupting the neighbourhood. I hadn’t meant to write so much about this beautiful but totally bored dog, but Mee is a major problem in the life of the neighbourhood.
I always believed that my cats would never cause the neighbours any problem, but last year, when the two soi boys Thep and Thong chose my house as their personal five-star feline hotel, I was surprised to face the wrath of neighbours.
Actually it was (and is) just one neighbour. As soon as he saw that I was feeding the two boys, he called me outside and told me to stop.
“Feed the cats, and they will never leave,” he said. “They make messes wherever they go, and it’s ugly when they wait outside your gate.”
As an additional reason (and my favourite), he complained that the dogs barked when they saw the cats. “What will the neighbours think when they hear the dogs barking two sois away? You should be ashamed.”
I’m not really ashamed. Stray cats, like stray dogs, need all the help they can get. Now, when that neighbour sees me, he doesn’t complain directly to me but to the air, discussing, perhaps with God, my singular stupidity.
It’s not pleasant having any disagreement with neighbours, though, and I’ve done my best to keep the soi boys out of sight of this neighbour.
Now, however, Manohra is missing, and I don’t know where she is. I can only think that if the neighbour sees her, he’ll get even angrier than he already is. I wander around the soi calling her name, and finally, around 10 at night, I find her.
Thep has shown her the joys of the empty house down the soi, the one where the owner has left all the windows open.
The cats have happily moved in, using it as a sleeping area and their own personal elevator from the top floorsdown to the ground floor.
Manohra is happily playing about in the ground patio, chasing leaves and cockroaches. It takes time, but I finally grab her and take her home.
Now I have another worry. I’m sure that the cats have been using that empty house as their personal toilet too. When the house’s owner returns, he’s going to have an unpleasant surprise.
Then I’ll have two neighbours angry with me.
