Pets in my life, part 2 | Zwierzęta domowe w moim życiu, część 2
A package of stories about our current family cat | Zestaw historii o naszym obecnym rodzinnym kocie
In the previous part I described how it was with the dog and two rats we had many years ago. This time it will be our cat who’s going to steal the show. I’ll try to make this post filled with all of the trivia I remember or know about. And if anything more happens or I find more photos, I will update it.
The cat’s biography
The break from having pets lasted five years. In the Spring of 2019, my aunt (mum’s youngest sister) alongside my uncle and two cousins, who are living in Dębica, which is the town where my mum and her sisters grew up, payed us a visit. They told us that they have cats to give away and asked if we would like to adopt one. They were born as a part of, as we call it in a joking way, their “cat breeding”, because they have kept not spayed cats and their offspring for many years. Back then only my youngest brother Ignac was strongly in favor of having a cat, with the rest of us stating we have to think about and discussing it first.
We saw our cat for the first time in June of 2019, when we arrived for the party and celebration of the 50th anniversary of our grandparents’ wedding, which were held in Dębica. Before we headed to the restaurant, we stepped into aunt and uncle’s house and my cousins took us to the basement, where those kittens were living for the first weeks of their lives. Given we were told they were at the time approximately a month old, because cat’s mum gave birth somewhere in the bushes, we assume our kitty was born in May of 2019.
It was decided, after my brother Ignac’s strong insisting, that we will take one for a trial. Next month, after we have returned from holiday trip, aunt’s family went to visit us again and brought two little kittens – one (female) for us and one (male) for our other cousins living nearby. The other one was returned, because he was chased away by other cats and kept peeing on the front door of their house. Our kitten however stayed, because there was less competition for territory around our house and in the garden, plus Ignac promised that he’ll be the main one responisble for her needs. The only condition mandated by mum was that she’ll be an “outgoing cat”, because “she might be a serious threat to our furniture”.
Even though her appearance may be ordinary, there is no similar cat in this world | Nawet jeśli jej wygląd jest zwyczajny, nie ma drugiego takiego kota na tym świecie
Main, but not only one, as our parents stated during the discussion on organising our life with cat that everybody will have some duties regarding new animal companion. The assigment of cat chores changed over the years, but usually it was me and bros. emptying the litter box and brushing cat’s fur, everybody refilling the bowls with cat food and milk/water, mum buying the cat food and dad taking her to the vet.
The second key point to sort out was how to name our cat. There were several proposals, but eventually everybody agreed on mum’s one. Its only problem was the written form - because we were lazy on that, we took the shortest, but there could be two other fitting as well. Our cat’s name is spelled Kofi (mum’s reasoning was “because it’s nice” and when she was inventing it she didn’t think of late UN Secretary General Kofi Annan) and pronounced as “coffee”, which could also be the written form, but as I said we did bare minimum writing.
But despite giving her a name, we often call her such as: kot (pol. cat), kicia (pol. kitty) miau (pol. meow), futrzak (pol. furry), zwierzę (pol. animal) or Mruczysława (a parody name based on the word mruczy - purring). If Kofi does something that irritates my mum, she calls her “sierściuch”, which means pejoratively “hairy”.
When Kofi arrived in our house in the second half of July 2019, she initially lived like Harry Potter, in the cupboard under the stairs, but those stairs were leading to the terrace. We had to basically lock her there every night for safety concerns, as other cats in the area didn’t like her presence. When colder months came, parents agreed to relocate Kofi’s cat couch to the garage. It was meant “just for the winter”, but she’s sleeping there ever since. She doesn’t rest only on her couch - she loves doing so on the seat of dad’s motorbike, which is standing above it and enjoys warming herself on the hoods of my parents’ cars.
Kofi was five months old when in October of 2019 my parents decided to have her spayed, after seeing some male cats chasing her and mum stated she won’t stand keeping any more pets. We didn’t oppose, knowing it was hard enough to convince her to get Kofi in the first place. Taking the cat to the vet turned out to be a really hard task. She went for examination a few times and each drive was exhausting for dad, because first she never got into her cat carrier easily and she was constantly meowing on the drive there and back home. At least she didn’t poo in there. I was present only during the last to date drive to the vet, which happened in February of 2020, and I can say it was frustrating to hear Kofi meowing all the time and being unable to comfort her or make her understand that she doesn’t have to fear anything. Since that time our cat’s health remains intact and my parents decided that driving her to the vet is a last resort. This also means that Kofi will be the last member of her “house” and final pet in our family.
After that, for the past couple of years not many seriously important things happened in Kofi’s life. She’s been living a happy life with only one threatening situation. As I shared somewhere
“Last year during the rainstorm, our family cat hid somewhere and didn't return for about two weeks. We were starting to lose hope she was still alive, and just out of nowhere she appeared. She was looking normally, only a bit skinny. We still can't figure out, where could she be for so long and still stay alive.”.
Our only explanantion is that one of our neighbours must have locked her in the garage when they were going for vacation.
Now, after writing down the cat’s backstory, it’s time for…
Some stories and anegdotes involving Kofi
Firstly, some things I’ve shared in the comments under the posts by James Breakwell and Glenn Wood:
Nowadays, for about four years, we have a female cat. When nobody admits being guilty of doing (or not) something (chores, messing up etc.) then someone from us follows up with a running joke "You know who did this? It had to be the cat!".
Our family cat is living in garage, so the only ways she can ask for food or getting inside is either by loud meowing or scrapping the door leading to entrance hall.
Regarding the second one, one time Kofi scrapped the garage door so hard she ripped off some of the protective foam (which is keeping warm in the hall and isolating it from much colder garage), forcing us to make “undesired repairs”.
Secondly, here are all other cat tales I can remember:
Although Kofi is going outdoors willingly, she loves staying inside too. That’s why keeping terrace doors open in the summer is risky, because she sometimes sneaks in and lays somewhere quietly to not be found and kicked out by anybody. Leaving the door only resembling and not actually being closed will make our cat try her luck and apply pressure on the door with her front paws, until the hole is big enough for her to come in. If the door’s closed when the weather is cold and she spots somebody in the living room, she usually does what I’ve called “knocking the door” - she’s scratching the glass with her front paws very quickly as long as it takes for us to give up and let her in. I don’t have it filmed, but if I can caught her doing it, I’ll make a video and post here.
In her quest of trying to stay indoors as long as possible, Kofi likes to play hide and seek with us, so sometimes we have to look carefully where she hid this time. The strangest one was when she somehow managed to sneak into the box used by mum to store old and unused clothes. We found out where she was only because she narrowed her eyes quickly a few times.
When it’s raining or snowing and therefore not much to do, mum’s heart sometimes melts and she’s letting Kofi sit with her on the sofa and accompany us watching TV (which we call “Cat’s TV sessions”) or lie there while mum is knitting or crocheting. If Kofi’s lucky enough, she’d be let to sit on my or anybody else’s laps when we’re using computers or phones.
Sleeping alongside somebody | Śpiąca obok kogoś
But the kitty doesn’t seem to be aware of how electronic devices works, because she never recognises or pays attention to who’s on the screen when dad is video calling us home from Saudi Arabia while he’s on the job trip there. One time however she reacted, when being a kitten she sat with Ignac while he was playing Clash of Clans on his phone. He was quickly clicking on the screen and Kofi probably thought that he’s hunting something, so she also started to slap Ignac’s phone, resulting in making some upgrades to his ingame stuff.
Hunting is a vital part in Kofi’s life. Her first successes in it came less than a month since her moving in. She caught two mice, but I won’t upload photos, because I don’t know Substack’s policy on potentially drastic content. Throughout those four years, our cat didn’t just hunt mice - she succeeded in catching birds (most of them only because they tangled in the net that was set up to protect dad’s grape plantation, but one time I witnessed her actually climbing a tree and then catching a bird on the branch), grubbers, rats (we’re lucky our former pets Remia and Gienia passed away years ago), shrews, bugs and even moles. I witnessed how one time she hunted down a mole that preyed on our compost - she chased him on the grass while he was desperately trying to dig himself into the ground, but was to slow and Kofi bit him until he died. She left however the body, so moles presumably aren’t a part of cats diet.
Kofi with my dad | Kofi z moim tatą
But our cat is also “hunting” in a different way - by picking up ticks when she’s wandering through the garden, fields, trees and bushes. To protect her we add every month a pill prescribed by the vet to her food, which is keeping ticks from biting into her and kills them if they try. But sometimes they are irritating Kofi and she comes to us with short and high-pitched meowing, meaning she asks for our help in removing them. Despite it being uncomfortable, she learned over time to sit still while we are removing ticks with pliers on my brother Antek’s Swiss Army Knife. The only time Kofi wasn’t cooperating at all (which given the circumstances was completely understandable) was in July of 2021, when she had a tick sticking centrally from her arse. Antek and I were the only people in the house and oh boy, how we struggled to get him out. Since then we hope and pray that Kofi never has a tick in there again.
Kofi’s activity and frequent patrolling around our garden and house coincided with smaller number of mole mounds on our grass and no reported activity of marten that previously climbed sometimes to our attic. When it comes to climbing, our cat loves doing so - she can get all over to the treetops, some quite high (over five meters). When she was younger and chased by every cat in the neighbourhood, she often found shelter there. Similarly Kofi’s outdoor safe point was the roof of our playground, which served her also as good observation point. She slipped off the rooftiles only once, but felt no harm. What’s helpul for our cat in climbing is her tail, which is sorta longer than average.
Our cat is ver fearful, which may be also saving her life. The first area where this shows is that she isn’t wandering on our road and doesn’t like cars (except from warming on the hood, as I said). Although our road isn’t particularly busy, I saw a few cats hit by cars over the years. Kofi isn’t also eager to venture into the fields nearby, at least without any of us nearby. She can probably sense that some stronger predators, such as foxes or boars, like to travel through there from one forest to the second. Our kitty is also afraid of strangers - whenever we have guests, it takes some time for her to get close to them. But it’s easier for girls and women to earn her trust, which makes me suspect she can differentiate sexes. Or it may make me suspect Kofi is a feminist😉. At least we don’t have to worry that she could be kidnapped easily and without resistance from her side. Finally, there are rainstorms. Because Kofi dreads lightnings and thunders, she is often let inside from garage to be comforted in our presence. If a storm occures in the night, sometimes Ignac or I let her sleep in our rooms, allowing her to lay down on our blankets.
Kofi has some strange eating habits - despite being adult cat for a few years now, she still likes drinking milk, which is the only liquid she’ll empty her bowl from. When it comes to water, she’s drinking only rainwater found in the puddle. She likes dairy in general, often looking for leftovers from cheese in our compost. She loves meat of many kinds, so when we’re preparing some we keep in mind to spare some rests for her to enjoy. One time when she accompanied us during the grill in the garden, we were surprised to see Kofi lurking into the couldron in which we boiled some bacon and vegetables. She then ate salad to get to the bacon she could smell from far away. But sometimes she also likes to eat grass, mum says “for better digestion”.
The cat that was most upset about Kofi moving in was our neighbours’ cat, named Jessie. Before we got our current family cat, she was ruling over our garden, sometimes even letting us pet her. After Kofi became residing here, she didn’t allow us to get closer to her than two meters. Jessie also chased Kofi whenever she saw her, so we had to protect our kitty with shouting aggresively on the neighbours’ cat. The turning point was Jessie’s death in September of 2022. After that, Kofi stopped running away from other cats and even started striking back on some.
Escaping Jessie on the bar of our playgorund’s swing. | Uciekając przed Jessie na szczycie huśtawki na naszym placu zabaw.
That’s all for now. When more stories happen, they will appear here. For now, see you in my other works.
P. S. The usually located below polish part will be uploaded some time after publishing, because I don’t want to explode your inboxes by breaching over email limit length.
Max
[Polska wersja językowa będzie uzupełniona niedługo, bo inaczej Wasze skrzynki zostałyby rozsadzone przez przekroczenie limitu długości maila]
;-) Keep up the good stuff.