The Hairy Tails
Of a
Cat Sitter
C. H. Hemington
Irony Press
England
Copyright 2015 Clare Hemington. All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-0-9934766-2-4
No part of this book shall be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information retrieval system without written permission of the publisher.
Published by Irony Press
Edited by Gidmeister
Cover Design and Illustrations © Deborah Dawson 2015
Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of this information contained herein.
This book is also available in a print edition
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1 - The Crystal Healer and her Carefree Cat
Chapter 2 - The Pros and Cons of Cohabiting Cats
Chapter 3 - Fur, Feathers and Hairless Tails
Chapter 4 - The Cowboy, the Critter and the Cat Sitter
Chapter 5 - Alarms, Lava Lamps and Unsightly Undies
Chapter 6 - Felines and Other Fetishes
Chapter 7 - Neighbourhood Watch
Chapter 8: - Rhythm and Poos, the Cat with the Nervous Tummy
Chapter 9 - Emergencies
Chapter 10 - A Dish Fit for a Feline
Chapter 11 - Drooly, Madly, Deeply – the Final Chapter
Postscript
Connect with the Author
Preface
If you’ve picked up this book then there’s a good chance you either own a cat now or have in the past and are as beguiled by them as I am. After all, what other creature can so flagrantly disobey all our rules and still be able to wrap us completely around their little paws?
It was to try and answer this question that in 2001 I made a bit of a daft decision and gave up my well paid job in London to spend the next fourteen years working with cats and trying to figure them out. I spent much of this time working for various animal welfare charities and it wasn’t until 2007 that a piece of extraordinary good luck came my way. One sleepless night I sent a spontaneous email to a renowned cat behaviourist enquiring as to whether she had any roles available within her practice. To be honest the only thing I was expecting by way of a response was a polite ‘no’. It turns out however, that I had written at exactly the same time as she was contemplating hiring someone to help her with research for her latest book. My contract was only supposed to last for three months but I ended up staying for nearly seven years.
Whilst this meant I was able to live and breathe cats, as a part-time role it also meant that I would need to supplement my income somehow. The sensible thing to do would have been to take a part-time job in a bank or suchlike which would allow me to make a proper contribution to the Hemington household income. On the other hand could I bear to do anything that didn’t revolve around the species I love? I decided I couldn’t and started my own cat sitting business, much to my husband and family’s collective exasperation.
It’s a combination of my experiences as a cat sitter as well as my cat behaviour work that has been the source of inspiration for this book. Both roles have not only given me a unique perspective on, and insight into the behaviour of cats, their owners and the special relationships they share, it has also given me an awareness of everything that could go wrong when looking after other people’s cats!
The book follows the quirky, comic and unexpectedly embarrassing escapades of cat sitter Katherine aka ‘Kat’, as she goes about her work in and around the leafy and affluent suburbs of Sevenoaks and Tunbridge Wells. Attempting to fulfil her cat-sitting duties with care and dignity, she instead lurches from one mishap to the next as she negotiates the strange inclinations of her human clients and the funny little ways of her cat clients; not to mention other, more deadly pets, and the nosey neighbours she meets along the way.
I hope ‘The Hairy Tails’ will not only make you laugh, but that you’ll find some points of recognition in the quirky characters of Kat's protégés with cats you have known, be they endearing, stubborn, stroppy, affectionate, stand-offish, or just plain manipulative!
Whilst many of the book’s characters and stories are fictional, some are based on real people, cats and events. I’ll leave it to you to guess which!
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