Guest Blog from Southdowner
Okie
Growing up, I never lived with a cat. The only feline I really knew was Kama, my grandmother’s elderly cat, for a few years in my early childhood. My mother often talked fondly of cats she had known in her childhood but as I was growing up surrounded by dogs and ponies I never felt the need to share my existence with additional species. So the story of my first cat comes later; I had completed a degree and married, moving to Lesser Deeping, a small town in Lincolnshire. I arrived with new husband and my elderly pony, Cobweb, and my priority was to find the best possible equine accommodation for Cobweb. Through work colleagues I heard of a woman who would be interested in sharing riding in return for Cobweb living in her back garden. BACK GARDEN?
Not having many options I decided to visit, but had already discounted a “back garden” before I set off.
Jacky lived in a large elegant Victorian end terrace house with a long, beautiful garden. There was a small but solid brick built stable a few yards from the house and Jacky had several utility rooms, one of which could be dedicated to tack and the innumerable horsy items which tend to expand mysteriously, eventually requiring a room the size of the Tardis if past experience was anything to go by.
We chatted…
The surprise came when she said “let’s look at the rest of the garden” and led me down to the very end of her garden where we could squeeze through a narrow gap into the garden behind the large detached house next door.
Her neighbour was a very old woman who had lived in the detached house next door for most of her life. Apparently her father had been a wealthy local farmer and on his death his two spinster daughters had moved into town sharing the large detached house (it even had a ballroom with a sprung floor). Opal’s sister had died leaving her alone and without the anchor of her sister she had become isolated and prone to odd behaviour; it was relatively common for her to upbraid total strangers in the local shop about perceived transgressions against various animals she had known or rescued decades before. She had always cared about animals and started to rescue them once she was independent of her father; by the time I met her she just had a small dog and two cats left living with her. Jacky knew Opal well, as pets were an important part of both their lives. Opal’s income was small and she had no intention of leaving her home, so Jacky had had the idea of offering to buy most of her garden, giving Jacky more garden to plant and enjoy and allowing Opal a few more years of security in her home. When I arrived, Jacky promptly revised her plan – the nearly-an-acre of garden would be an ideal pony plot!
So Cobweb travelled up from the South that summer, in a big rented horsebox with my first bull terrier in the cab, and the arrangement worked well. I became acquainted with Opal who was increasingly eccentric as the months went by, and we chatted about her animals and mine. For a few days in January I didn’t see her and then I heard that she had died suddenly. As I was stopping for a coffee instead of my usual rushing off, Jacky took me with her to feed Opal’s animals. Jacky had adopted the small dog, but the two remaining cats were to be collected that week by the animal charity to whom Opal had left the house. One was feral, and just ran and hid, while the other was a thin tortoiseshell who rubbed round and round our ankles, with a purr the volume of an industrial vacuum cleaner.
Jacky told me that Opal had rescued her from a family where she was having cans tied to her tail by the sons “for fun”; apparently they found her wandering the streets so she was a free toy as far as the kids were concerned. Their final act was to tie her in a sack and throw her in a local stream. She had been half starved and terrified but with Opal’s care she had settled down. She seemed a young adult then and that was nearly ten years before. Now she was hungry again; it became clear after her death, when Jacky first went into feed the animals that Opal had become increasingly forgetful in the last few weeks prior to her death. Cat food might arrive three times in one day or not at all. The indoor cat was very thin and the house was in a state of confusion, with empty and half opened tins of cat food lying around. It was another time of change for the small cat. I made a big fuss of her, then left and thought no more about it.
A week later I asked what had happened to the cats and found that the sanctuary they had gone to was for dogs; the terms of the will stipulated that the cats were taken so they had been; Jacky gave me their number. Why did I need the number? I had no intention of adopting a cat… Next day was freezing, and I couldn’t stop thinking of the little rescue cat. No doubt she was warm and cosy in her cattery but I found myself driving over to the sanctuary to just see how “my” cat was doing.
I found a busy, rather muddy farm yard with interested pony and horse faces peering from stables over half doors; sounds of barking from a long barn suggested the site of the kennelling. Cattery?
I went to the farmhouse door which was labelled clearly “Reception”.
“Betty can show you where the cats are living” a pleasant woman said, calling a young girl over to direct me; the two of us moved away from the yard and walked through a couple of fields, calmly watched by well wrapped pensioned off horses who checked our intentions – food? No food. Okay. – and quietly grazed off at a tangent from us.
Wondering where we were heading, I saw a brick ruin ahead of us – a shed or byre that had partly collapsed, sited in the middle of the field. It was covered in wire mesh. Unfolding overlapping edges, Betty crawled inside the wire and gingerly I followed. We went into the shed and I heard rustling… something shot away and while I was getting my bearings I was suddenly hit in the chest and stumbled, nearly falling over. I moved into the light and found the tortoiseshell cat I had met once before pressed against my chest, purring and mewing as if pleased to see me and simultaneously complaining that I had taken my time.
“She knows you well doesn’t she?” said the girl with a smile. “Did you come to collect her?” I looked at the cat. She gazed back then rubbed her head hard against me. “Yes” I heard myself say “Yes, that’s what I’m doing”.
Together we crawled out of the wire, traipsed back through the fields and one-handed, I signed for ownership of a cat I didn’t know I needed. Dogs roared as I walked to the car, but my cat clung to me, not through fear but because that was what she had decided to do. I had not come prepared, either materially or in terms of knowledge. I put her in an open cardboard box in the car’s front footwell where I could see her and we could converse on the way home, got in the car, started the engine… and the cat vanished.
We travelled home with locked doors, closed windows, me feeling extremely inept about cats in general and “mine” in particular, and the cat firmly wedged under my seat. It took half an hour and some tuna to extricate her at the end of the journey, but I don’t remember her scratching me once. Clutching her to me, I walked the few houses from the car to my front door and pressed the bell – no free hands for keys.
My husband answered the door, saw the cat and gazed in horror. He had been brought up by his cat hating father to think of cats as little better than large vermin. Looking at the cat’s face, I saw the same expression mirrored there. Living with an elderly woman and previous neglect and bad treatment had prepared her. She glared like a maiden aunt faced with a small obnoxious child.
So Okie entered our lives; she was at least ten when I first met her and we had six funny happy years with her. We called her Okie after Ronald Reagan’s phrase “okey dokey” because she seemed to have persuaded both my husband and me when it was impossible that we would adopt her – okey dokey we heard ourselves say.
Safe and relaxed
I had two dogs at that time, a standard bullie and a standard poodle, and she cuffed them each twice; having established her seniority, she was willing to share sofa space with them. It was common to “lose” her and realise she had curled up next to an upside down bull terrier whose exposed stomach was a welcome hot water bottle. She won my husband’s heart so spectacularly that he is now a permanent cat lover, though no-one fills the vast space left empty by her…
With her favourite person
Partners in crime!
THAT bull terrier tummy
One morning I opened the bedroom door to find her curled up outside – I’d asked her if she wanted to sleep in the bedroom but that night she had declined. She tried to get up but kept falling over. On scooping her up I could feel that one leg was cold from the elbow down. She talked loudly to me and rubbed her head hard against me – I try desperately not to anthropomorphise but she did seem grateful to be picked up and held. I called the vets and arranged for her to be seen immediately: it was obvious that something serious had happened. I said goodbye to her, rubbing her cheek, and left her for an exploratory operation. An hour later I got the call that all pet owners dread – she was riddled with cancer – a piece of tumour had broken free and blocked a key artery to her leg. There was nothing to be done, they didn’t really understand how she had lived this long. Did I want them to bring her round?
No, I said, weeping over the telephone. I understood completely how small stubborn loving Okie had held out for so long. Having been starved, beaten and nearly drowned before Opal rescued her, rehomed to a shed in a field, and then reaching her final home where she was adored, pure character and tenacious strength of will had been her armour. I never regretted being chosen by her, and am grateful for every day we shared.
A Grand Old Lady aged 16
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