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Authors: John D. MacDonald
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Cats will travel well if you start them early enough and take them often enough. On our way to Texas we had stopped in Virginia to see my sister, Doris, and her husband, Bill Robinson. Bill was getting an engineering degree at V. P. I. They had a black female cat named Buckethead. When they started the gypsy existence of a civil engineer, Buckethead traveled well. They had a sandbox on the back seat for her to use intransit. It made such an unsteady platform that, after using it, Buckethead would lie on her side for the essential cat habit of scratching at the sand to cover it up.
This is, I have heard, an ancient feline instinct based on making it more difficult for other predators to get on the track of the cat, rather than out of some sense of fastidiousness. Yet this does not explain in any satisfactory way a habit which Geoffrey began in his early maturity and continued all his life.
Dorothy always placed their dishes on waxed paper or aluminum foil. Geoff was forever the glutton, falling upon the food in his own dish and then shouldering Roger away from his dish. Roger always accepted this. Possibly it was a carryover from his maternal interlude. When elbowed aside, he would back off and sit and wait until the other cat was finished. As Geoff had a tendency to eat until everything was gone, Dorothy had to save out Roger’s food. Roger never ate much at one time. He liked to leave food and return to it off and on for snacks. Roger has always had a standard routine for showing his distaste for food which does not please him. He stares into the dish, then up at the donor, then into the dish, then up at the donor. He seems to express a bewildered disbelief. Do you
actually
expect me to eat
that?
Why are you doing this to me?
But Geoff’s critique was brutally direct. He would plod to his dish. He would lean and snuff and perhaps try one bite. Then, if we were out of the room, we would hear the sounds of his nails against the paper or foil. Scratch, scratch, scratch. Working his way around the dish he would perform a symbolic ritual of covering it up, then plod frowningly away. I can think of no more vivid way he could have expressed his opinion of what had been served him. What particularly infuriated Dorothy was that it might be somethinghe had been eating with gusto for weeks. Cooked hamburger perhaps. Suddenly he would decide there had been quite enough of that. The healthy, well-fed cat will demand changes of diet at almost predictable intervals. It may have something to do with the digestive process. When the demanded change is not forthcoming, he will simply stop eating, despite all appearances of ravenous hunger. The better boarding kennels recognize this cat trait and cater to it when the boarding period is long, even though they continue to give their dogs standardized fare.
We hauled them squalling to Piseco and released them into an out-of-doors unlike anything they had seen. Here were steep slopes, the black silences of thick woods of pine, hemlock, birch, maple, a thousand hiding places, the strange scents of indigenous animals much larger than mice and moles, curious noises in the night, a lake shore, boats, live fish. They explored with great, quivering caution. We did worry about them up there, then, and in all the years to follow. House cats disappear in Adirondack country, taken by fishers, foxes, wildcats, coydogs and perhaps, sometimes, raccoons, weasels, and those bored, bourboned sportsmen with their mail-order artillery who come racketing in upon us each autumn in search of a dubious manhood.
Once adjusted, the cats relished every minute of it. They would come exhausted back to camp for a quick meal and a short nap, and head on out again. This was a real jungle, man. This was what the cat business was really about. Red squirrels and gray squirrels cursed them. Geoff caught chipmunks, and all but one or two managed their escape. Roger bore proudly back to the porch a shrew the size of an
Cats will travel well if you start them early enough and take them often enough. On our way to Texas we had stopped in Virginia to see my sister, Doris, and her husband, Bill Robinson. Bill was getting an engineering degree at V. P. I. They had a black female cat named Buckethead. When they started the gypsy existence of a civil engineer, Buckethead traveled well. They had a sandbox on the back seat for her to use intransit. It made such an unsteady platform that, after using it, Buckethead would lie on her side for the essential cat habit of scratching at the sand to cover it up.
This is, I have heard, an ancient feline instinct based on making it more difficult for other predators to get on the track of the cat, rather than out of some sense of fastidiousness. Yet this does not explain in any satisfactory way a habit which Geoffrey began in his early maturity and continued all his life.
Dorothy always placed their dishes on waxed paper or aluminum foil. Geoff was forever the glutton, falling upon the food in his own dish and then shouldering Roger away from his dish. Roger always accepted this. Possibly it was a carryover from his maternal interlude. When elbowed aside, he would back off and sit and wait until the other cat was finished. As Geoff had a tendency to eat until everything was gone, Dorothy had to save out Roger’s food. Roger never ate much at one time. He liked to leave food and return to it off and on for snacks. Roger has always had a standard routine for showing his distaste for food which does not please him. He stares into the dish, then up at the donor, then into the dish, then up at the donor. He seems to express a bewildered disbelief. Do you
actually
expect me to eat
that?
Why are you doing this to me?
But Geoff’s critique was brutally direct. He would plod to his dish. He would lean and snuff and perhaps try one bite. Then, if we were out of the room, we would hear the sounds of his nails against the paper or foil. Scratch, scratch, scratch. Working his way around the dish he would perform a symbolic ritual of covering it up, then plod frowningly away. I can think of no more vivid way he could have expressed his opinion of what had been served him. What particularly infuriated Dorothy was that it might be somethinghe had been eating with gusto for weeks. Cooked hamburger perhaps. Suddenly he would decide there had been quite enough of that. The healthy, well-fed cat will demand changes of diet at almost predictable intervals. It may have something to do with the digestive process. When the demanded change is not forthcoming, he will simply stop eating, despite all appearances of ravenous hunger. The better boarding kennels recognize this cat trait and cater to it when the boarding period is long, even though they continue to give their dogs standardized fare.
We hauled them squalling to Piseco and released them into an out-of-doors unlike anything they had seen. Here were steep slopes, the black silences of thick woods of pine, hemlock, birch, maple, a thousand hiding places, the strange scents of indigenous animals much larger than mice and moles, curious noises in the night, a lake shore, boats, live fish. They explored with great, quivering caution. We did worry about them up there, then, and in all the years to follow. House cats disappear in Adirondack country, taken by fishers, foxes, wildcats, coydogs and perhaps, sometimes, raccoons, weasels, and those bored, bourboned sportsmen with their mail-order artillery who come racketing in upon us each autumn in search of a dubious manhood.
Once adjusted, the cats relished every minute of it. They would come exhausted back to camp for a quick meal and a short nap, and head on out again. This was a real jungle, man. This was what the cat business was really about. Red squirrels and gray squirrels cursed them. Geoff caught chipmunks, and all but one or two managed their escape. Roger bore proudly back to the porch a shrew the size of an
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