Read Online Paw Prints in the Moonlight by Denis O'Connor - Free Book Online Page B

developed a deep-rooted attachment to me. To Toby Jug I was family and to me he was more than a cat. To me animals have unique personalities in the same way as people do. I have known budgerigars, cats, dogs and horses, each with their very own characteristics and personal ways of behaving which rendered them special, just like people. The cats in my life have all played an important part, helping me to understand the phenomena of animal behaviour and to realize that each of them is entitled to a life of their own. At a dinner party one evening I remember how I astonished a senior medical research scientist by asking him if he had ever considered, with regard to the cats and dogs he used in his vivisection experiments, that their lives were as important to them as his own life was to him.
    Â 
    My life with Toby Jug began to follow a routine that started at breakfast time, which he greeted with tremendous
enthusiasm. It was the start of a new day and a fresh opportunity for him to savour life to the full. Apart from holidays and most weekends, breakfast tended to be a rushed affair because I usually needed to leave for work at about 7.30 a.m. Once we were downstairs Toby Jug insisted on being served immediately. He was always ravenous and I largely fed him on the best quality tinned cat food unless there were some roast beef or chicken leftovers from my meal the night before. Then, as he was eating, I would open the upper half of the back door so that he could answer the call of nature whilst I washed, shaved and got myself ready. After which, weather permitting, I would join Toby in the garden.
    Mug of tea in hand we would gravitate towards the top end of the lawn. The view over fields and woodland towards the distant Cheviot Hills was balm to my mind before the demands of work. Toby, like most cats, was a fastidious washer and the morning ritual involved him vigorously licking and preening himself as he sat at my feet – it was a definite policy of his to be as close as possible to me whenever opportunity afforded – whilst I drank my tea and gazed at the view. Soon I would have to leave him and I would catch a glimpse of him in my rear-view mirror as I drove off, watching my departure from his vantage point at the top of the old apple tree by the gates. I hated leaving him and I knew that he missed me enormously but I could
not take him into college and so he had to amuse himself all day until I arrived home in the evening, when he would be waiting with the warmest welcome a man could wish for. During the day when I was at work I always left one of the shed doors ajar so that he could make himself comfortable inside where there was an old clothes basket with a blanket inside and a dish of fresh water.
    Breakfast on Saturday mornings was the best of the week. There were grilled venison sausages and lambs’ kidneys bought from a country butcher in Rothbury and free-range eggs from a local man who boasted ‘Fresh Eggs From Happy Hens’. I would also have wild mushrooms, when they were available, that I collected, accompanied by Toby, from the fields by the river where the cattle grazed and, from the nearby farm, slices of home-cured bacon dripping with flavour. Toby Jug would share some of the morning banquet with me, including some sausage and fried egg which I cut up for him, but not the bacon which he preferred to deal with by himself. When he had finished, he would lick his plate clean, jump down from the table, have a drink from his water bowl then go and wash himself in front of the fire, after which he catnapped until I called him to go out.
    He loved sitting in the car whilst I drove around the town collecting the shopping for the week ahead. If, for some good reason I had to leave home without him on a Saturday, he would be inconsolable and truly ‘miffed’ with me when
I returned. This was because I belonged to him on Saturdays and he would do all in his power to insist on this priority.