by Susan Finden
Usually one of the ways that new cats coming into the house ingratiate themselves with the already established inhabitants is to clean them as much as possible. I’ve seen this happen so many times. Cats undoubtedly use grooming as a way of making social connections. Sometimes those who have come from rescue centres will spend hours lavishing attention on the cats who have cemented their place in the household. Casper was never part of this – he never cleaned others and they never cleaned him. In fact, he was often a dirty little devil. One day he would go all out washing himself and his white patches would be lovely, sparkling in the light, then he would go for ages without licking a single bit.
‘What a filthy thing you are, Casper,’ I’d scold. On more than one occasion I said to Chris that our new arrival was a typical boy who couldn’t be bothered having a good scrub until it became absolutely unavoidable.
‘Look at the state of you!’ I’d chide. ‘Your white bits are yellow, and your feet are black! Do you want me to give you a bath?’ He’d stare back at me, and I could almost hear him thinking, ‘Just you dare’. On the few occasions I did take a cloth to him, I was shredded to bits and came to the conclusion that I’d leave him to his own devices. He was a very determined creature in so many ways. This became even more apparent as the days turned into weeks and then months.
Tuppence was the exact opposite. In fact, he washed himself so much, he licked patches of his fur away. When we had KP and Peanut, the sisters, Peanut used to spend all day washing the other cats. She’d travel the whole room and I’d watch some of them following little Peanut with their eyes, waiting for their turn, knowing what a dedicated job she’d do.
Gradually, Casper came into his own. He hid under the bed less and less, but I still kept him and Tuppence indoors. Tuppence had been in the rescue home for two months and Casper for ten, so I didn’t want them to go outside until they fully realized that this was their home and the place they needed to return to when they did escape. I closed off the cat flap and placed litter trays around, but Casper was dead set on getting out – another way in which he showed his determined nature. Eventually, I had to let them out, as Casper in particular was making such a fuss. He never had a proper miaow, just a pathetic little squeak, and I started to melt a bit too easily when he sat at the front door making that sound to get out.
One of our older cats, Clyde, had a bad back, so I’d constructed a ladder for him to manoeuvre his way around. The garden was on different levels, almost sunken in places, and I’d put a plank from the ground to the top of the fence, with lots of smaller pieces of wood going across it. Everyone else would copy, Clyde in order to climb up and walk around the walls.
It wasn’t long before Casper started to disappear. He’d hop up on the wooden planks and skip over into other gardens. I generally tried to get him home after a couple of hours, but he would only come in his own sweet time. I tried not to worry about him, but he was the wanderer of the gang. My anxiety lessened, as I assumed that he was investigating gardens nearby. Then one day, about six months after we first brought Casper home, I got a phone call that enlightened me about the sort of cat we’d brought into our lives.
CHAPTER 6
Casper Finds His Paws
Casper started to go out quite a lot. He changed from being the scared little cat hiding under the bed into a very confident fellow who knew his own mind. I often wondered what was going through that mind, as he frequently seemed to have his own agenda. When we first brought him home, I would never have guessed that he would become so determined to go out on his own terms whenever he felt like it. I always worried about my cats, so I tried to keep them inside whenever possible, but Casper was having none of it.
Once he’d settled with us, he broke a number of windows and even attacked nailed down cat flaps in his desire not to be an indoors puss. I made sure he had a disc attached to his collar with his name and my number on it for when he did wander, in case he got lost or something happened to him I was beginning to think that my initial assessment of him had been spot on: he wasn’t shy or scared when he first came to us; he was stubborn. More of his stubborn streak was being revealed practically every day.
One afternoon, the phone rang as I got back from a shift at work. As soon as a woman asked, ‘Have you got a cat called Casper?’ my heart sank.
I hadn’t seen him that morning before I left and my immediate response came from the heart. ‘Oh my God – he’s dead, isn’t he?’
She laughed kindly, ‘No, he’s fine – actually, he’s in my work car park.’
I asked where that was and was shocked when she said the offices were over a mile and a half away. How on earth had he got there? The possibilities were endless and I had to assume that most likely he’d walked, or maybe he got into someone’s car and popped out when they arrived at work.
As I didn’t drive, I caught the bus to the car park with a basket in my hand. When I picked Casper up, I felt the same mix of emotions that he would inspire in me throughout his many adventurous years: relief that he was safe and anger that he could have been in danger ‘You are a naughty boy, Cassie. Why do you have to get me so worried? Why can’t you just stay at home rather than wander around?’
I couldn’t be cross at him for long as I was so pleased he was coming home again. Although when I realized that the bus had long gone and I would have to walk the full distance after a tiring day at work, carrying a wriggling cat in an uncomfortable wicker basket, I probably did have a few more comments!
Casper’s escapade decided my next course of action: he would have to get chipped. If he had an accident or got lost, then at least I would stand a chance of getting him back again if a vet could scan him and get my details from the national database. I made the appointment for the very next day.
In the morning, I gave him a talking to as I got myself ready. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘This is for your own good. You’re a bit of a wanderer, aren’t you?’ He looked up at me as if he understood every word. ‘Well, it looks like I can’t do much about that, but I can make sure that you can find your way back to me if you ever get lost.’ My tone softened as I gazed at this cat I already loved so much. ‘Oh, Casper, please try to stay close to home. I don’t want to lose you.’
I took Casper into the surgery and plopped him down on the table to have him scanned. ‘He’s chipped already,’ said the vet.
‘What?’ I shrieked. I hadn’t expected that and would have thought the cat rescue people would have given me that information when I took him home.
The vet asked me what I was going to do, but it seemed quite clear to me: Casper wasn’t my cat. There was somebody out there, distraught that their cat had been missing for some time, possibly assuming that he was dead. ‘I have to find out who he’s registered to,’ I said. ‘And I’ll have to give him back, won’t I?’
I went home with a heavy heart. Casper scooted out of his basket and went upstairs without a care in the world, as I threw myself down on the sofa and wondered what I would do without him. He had already become such a big part of our lives that I couldn’t bear to think about giving him up. It would undoubtedly be the right thing to do and I just had to focus on that.
I rang Cats Protection as soon as I felt able to. After I’d told them what had happened and given them the registration number the vet had found, the woman from Cats Protection called the company that keeps all the details. The time passed very slowly as I waited to hear what they’d learned. Within thirty minutes, she rang me back with a request that delighted me, but which perplexes me to this day. ‘Sue, please keep him,’ she pleaded. ‘There’s no way he can go back to the place he came from; it would be heartbreaking. Please, will you let him stay with you?’
Of course this was what I’d wanted all along. I loved Casper dearly, but what was going on? All I could get from her was that he’d been living in a terrible environment and Cats Protection couldn’t allow him to go back there. I got the impression that Casper had escaped from whatever horrible life
he’d led and lived rough for a while before being taken to the rescue centre by some kind person ten months before I re-homed him.
I was delighted by the news that Casper would officially be mine. The Cats Protection lady said that the details on the chip records would be changed immediately to reflect the change in ownership. From that point, I felt that Casper was genuinely mine, but I often wondered what sort of life he must have had.
As time went on, we found out more about him: how he seemed unafraid of traffic, how much he loved cars and lorries and how dogs left him totally unfazed. I picked up a few other hints from the cat rescue lady, and when I pieced it all together, the most likely scenario seemed to be that he had lived with a travelling community. By saying this, I’m not casting aspersions on people who choose that lifestyle, but if Casper had been moved from pillar to post, then it wouldn’t have been the best environment for him, but it would explain why he had no fear of other animals and why he was drawn to vehicles. Still, as with so many of my cats, I would never know the full story. I would simply have to ensure that while he was with me I gave him – and them – the best life possible and didn’t dwell on the past.
I wondered where Casper went. There would be days when he stayed nearby and would come as soon as I called – or when he got a whiff of turkey roll – but there were other times when he wouldn’t come back for hours no matter how long or how loudly I called his name. He had such wanderlust.
He had little fear of dogs, which worried me, as I thought he might meet his match one day. He would lie in the grass wherever we lived and never flinch when dogs went past. In fact, one summer, a neighbour had a lovely little spaniel puppy she used to walk at the same time every day. The puppy would strain at the leash every time it got to our garden path, where Casper lay idly watching the world go by. I think he was desperate to play, even with a cat, but Casper never flinched and never raised his hackles. He looked at the puppy as if he were just another pedestrian going about his business.
Some time after we got Cassie, we moved to Frome in Somerset. I always worried when we changed location, as it can take cats a while to get their bearings. I tried to keep them indoors until they realized they were in a new home and they had some idea of the new smells and sounds around them The old cottage we bought had a huge stone wall around it, which Casper couldn’t get over by himself. Every time he managed to sneak out, he would have a jolly good try at scaling it, even though it was impossible. Eventually he discovered a gate, which, though closed and locked, he could squeeze around. On the other side of the wall was a car park linked to the local doctor’s surgery, and I worried that he was hanging around cars again. However, it was clear that it would take a greater force than me to keep this cat indoors, so I had no option but to let him wander every now and again.
I’d discovered by this stage that I was suffering from some quite severe health problems and I needed heart surgery. Before that could happen, I had to get my blood pressure down, so I was visiting my GP quite a lot. One day I arrived for my appointment and checked in at reception. I was directed to the waiting area as usual, and as I walked towards a chair, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw Casper.
He was sitting, bold as brass, on one of the plastic seats, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I had an early morning appointment and no one else was there yet – thankfully. ‘Casper!’ I whispered sharply. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ He gave me a lazy look, as if he couldn’t be bothered to explain himself, then settled back down again. I looked around quickly, expecting to see a receptionist bearing down on me with demands to get Casper out immediately, but the room remained empty. I gathered him up in my arms, all the while telling him what a naughty boy he was, and took him into the car park, shooing him in the direction of the cottage.
When I was called in to see the doctor, I was surprised that my blood pressure wasn’t through the roof. All I could think was that Casper had trotted into the surgery before me and had hopped onto a chair while I was talking to the receptionist. I felt very relieved that they hadn’t spotted him on this one-off occasion when he had been so cheeky.
The next week I was back at the practice for more tests and I was running a little late. When I got there, I was told to go straight through. There were a number of doctors on duty, all with offices attached to each other. As I sat there with the blood pressure cuff around my arm, discussing the results of my previous tests, I almost fainted when I heard someone in another room shout, ‘Get that cat out of here! This is a surgery not a pet shop!’
I knew it was Casper. After all, how many other cats were likely to be doing exactly the same thing he had done? I couldn’t jump up and say that I was off to get my cat, so I got through my appointment as quickly as possible and hurried home, only to find Casper innocently waiting for me on the doorstep.
After I had seen Cassie a few more times at the practice, it became clear that, despite the doctors being less than happy when he followed patients in for their consultations, the staff were well aware of his presence and were relaxed about him being there.
One day I gathered up the courage to raise the issue with a receptionist when I was making my next appointment. ‘Erm . . .’ I began, hesitatingly, ‘do you know there’s sometimes a cat in here?’
She smiled as if it was the most natural thing in the world. ‘Yes, yes, we do,’ she said. ‘Isn’t he lovely?’
I couldn’t argue with that. ‘Well, actually, I think he’s mine,’ I admitted.
‘Is he? Is Casper yours?’
We had a little chat and she told me that he was in quite often, that they had got his name from his disk and that, as long as he kept out of the doctors’ rooms, they were all generally happy to have him there. This astounded me – how kind and how eccentric at the same time. Only in Britain would a strange, wandering cat be seen as a normal addition to a healthcare practice. My heart lifted at the thought of how kind these people had been to Casper while I had been living in blissful ignorance.
The receptionist told me there were lots of patients who’d commented on how nice it was to see Casper; when they came in stressed or worried, he managed to distract them for a little while. The more I thought about it, the more I felt this was probably why he was so welcome.
I’d heard of programmes that took animals into hospitals to help long-term patients, as they can help lower blood pressure, reduce stress and release ‘happy hormones’. In fact, at the world-renowned Great Ormond Street Hospital, there is a pet therapy project that brings animals in on a regular basis. The hospital has visits from guinea pigs, kittens, dogs and even once a Shetland pony. The medical staff has found that young patients feel much more relaxed and comfortable, even in such a difficult environment, when furry friends are around. Across the country there are thousands of pet therapy dogs and cats who’ve done amazing work, and I felt, in his own small way, that Casper was achieving something similar. The irony was that while he may have been helping the blood pressure of other people, his escapades and travels were making mine worse!
What was amazing about Casper was that he expected to be allowed to go anywhere he wanted. He never seemed to show nervousness about walking into any place that took his fancy, despite many of them being less than cat friendly. I didn’t expect him to read the signs for the surgery or whatever, but surely most cats would have been put off by strange buildings full of people they didn’t know? Not Casper. Perhaps he saw the stickers saying that no dogs were allowed and took that to mean that cats were more than welcome.
Casper had a certainty about him that made people accept him. If he was sitting on a chair in a doctor’s waiting room, then perhaps that was where he was meant to be. It was as if he could persuade people to give him what he wanted just by being there. He was a calm cat who never bothered humans. He liked their company but waited for them to approach him a lot of the time. He wasn’t one of those cats who constantly pushed and rubbed for attention; maybe if he had been, he would h
ave been less welcome. As it was, he followed people into their appointments and trotted about quite freely, but never in a way that suggested anything other than that he was a cat going about his business. He was becoming well known, and finding his feet (or paws) around town, but I had no idea just how popular he was.
CHAPTER 7
A Comfortable Life
I usually went into town to collect prescriptions from the doctor but, as I had to take quite a lot of time off work in preparation for my heart surgery, I needed to find somewhere closer to home. There was a pharmacy attached to the health centre so beloved by Casper. It was used by patients and general customers alike, and I decided to start going there for my medication. One day I popped in after I’d been to the GP. I hadn’t seen Casper next door and wondered where he was. Imagine my surprise when I saw him on a chair in the chemist’s as if he were waiting for his own pills and potions.
The shop had a counter where the pharmacist got prescriptions ready and there were two seats for people to wait while they were being prepared. On one of these sat Cassie, large as life, as if he belonged there. ‘That’s my cat!’ I squealed to the woman at the cash desk. ‘How often is he in here?’
She laughed at me. ‘How often? Well, let’s put it this way,’ she said, ‘we used to have one seat where people would wait for their prescriptions – now we have two! We had to get him one of his own, as he was here so often that no one else could sit down.’
Casper’s escapades were getting more and more outlandish. What was remarkable was that everyone was falling in line with what he wanted. Just like the staff at the doctor’s surgery, all of those who worked in the chemist’s shop seemed friendly and accepting of Casper. They knew his name – they’d checked his tag too – and thought nothing of the funny little cat who often sat there from nine in the morning until he was kicked out at closing time. I recalled the number of days I’d been tearing my hair out, fearful for Casper outdoors, roaming the streets in all weathers, when, in actual fact, he was warm and dry, sitting on a chair specially provided for him. I rushed home to get my camera and took some photos of him He looked like royalty waiting for his servants to fulfil his every need – which was pretty much how it was.