To mark International Cat Day, I wanna tell you a story. The tale of a pretty kitten fur ball who waltzed into my garden five years go with her band of brothers. This is how I came to adopt the tabby tigress Beau.
From kitten quartet to pretty solo stunner, my gal has been an absolute joy and delight to care for the past five years.
It’s hard to believe she was so small when I found her. It was the afternoon of August 31, 2020, and, via a soundtrack of ABBA awesomeness, there was I enjoying a little sunbathing therapy in the front garden of my farmhouse in the Charente region of rural France when I heard the fast approaching cats chorus of miaows. And it was getting louder.
The cat quadrumvirate made its way up the gravel garden past my car and over to where I was sitting. Actually, that’s not strictly true — only three kitties thrust themselves on me, as the black and white male stayed back at first, crawling under my car with an inbuilt wariness, preferring to observe rather than mingle.
The vocal trio were miaowing like crazy and obviously ravenous, so I went into the house I quickly fed them whatever salmon and tuna I had in the kitchen.
If you look at the videos of that day it’s usually what turned out to be the only female of the litter that is making all the noise, but she’s also the most responsive and demonstrative, crawling up my leg within minutes of meeting.
When the fish was wolfed down within minutes I scratched my head and decided to hop in the car to the nearest shop for cat food, about 10 minutes by road in the appropriately fishily named Oradour-Fanais. I have a plan…
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=124696500670959
That first night I let her and her three little brothers sleep in the garage until I worked out what to do with them. Never having been a cat owner before, becoming a cat daddy was the last thing on my mind.
“You’ve had mice in the barn, so maybe you could use the kittens. Rodents won’t hang round if they can smell cats,” the cleaner remarked. What a good idea. I had started notice the sound of voles scurrying around in the roof space too, so, yes, I have to admit, there was method in my accommodating this cute quartet of furballs.
The bedrooms were all colour coded – the Blue Room was inspired by Picasso, while the Yellow Room was a homage of sorts to van Gogh’s Bedroom At Arles. One early video was taken in the White Room, which wasn’t a nod to some hoary old Cream cut but a reference to White Box, the Absolutely Fabulous episode that saw the return of the queen of minimalism Bettina.
Of course, it took just a matter of hours before I started to think about keeping one or two of the fun felines for myself. As evidenced in the video, I couldn’t fail to notice how Beau, as the only female, is often playing slightly apart from her male siblings, and enjoys being close to human company.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=3700975523451815
Queen bee complex or not, there was an undeniable bond was there from the start. A surprise to me about cats in general, she really did do the face licking thing almost from day one.
On top of a smidgen of advice gleaned from a local pet charity, I did some research into what to do with abandoned cats, and whether it might be possible to keep one. Or if that’s too solitary maybe two at a push?
I’d usually let the foursome come in and out of the house for a few requisite hours of fun and playtime every day then direct them to the garage for sleepies. This went on for a month while I kept changing my mind on a day to day basis about which two to retain.
One thing I had noticed is that they’d often pair off — the ginger and the tabby were like non-identical twins: the same melancholy expressive eyes and adorable temperament yet competing colours and sex. The other two were a little more independent — a black cat with white frontage and a white and grey with a slightly skewed nose.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=244488895269670
Then, on the morning of 3 October I did my usual thing of bringing them breakfast in the garage — here even in the warmest of weather they’d all sleep huddled up together in a canvas carrier bag — to find two had vanished: the gorgeous ginger and the inscrutable black. Damn.
As with the circumstances of their arriving at my place their exit was just as mysterious. No one in the village seemed to know anything, with just the cleaner offering a theory: “I can just imagine if someone saw them driving through the village; they’d have scooped up the ginger one because he was so cute.”
So my decision was made for me. I’d already nicknamed the white one Blanca just for fun but when the time came to take the pair to the vets for the obligatory snip and chip I settled on French names that were everyday words: the tabby became Beau, and her brother with the two-tone display I named Oui.
Beau, Oui — Geddit?
To be continued…
Steve Pafford
