Young Love

Friday

Highlight of this week (video introduction to unborn child notwithstanding) has been the resolution of the mystery of how the cat's boyfriend has been finding his way into the house. To provide the background, Princess (the minx) found an identical-but-slightly-larger tom cat friend (let's call him Houdini) with whom she frollicked in the garden all summer. It would appear he lives in one of the gardens backing onto our little terrace and so it's been a case of young love across the backwall and compost bin. They've both had their respective bits off so no need to worry about underage sex, in fact we encouraged this shining example of cat camaraderie and their apparent loyalty to each other - neither has ever been seen even sniffing around another cat, and when our friends brought an overly enthusiastic Labrador (or Retriever - I'm not really a dog person so the finer details of the quite-similar-family-hound escapes me), she ran to the end of the garden and behind the shed (fur standing on end) whilst he gingerly moved towards the conservatory to check if all was clear of the salivating beast. We found this devotion quite endearing, not least as he looked like he was shitting bricks but none the less did what he could to defend his pussy-lover.

The devotion is reciprocal - she sits primly outside the back door waiting for him every morning from 7am (after harrassing us to get up by licking and nuzzling from 6am then finally nibbling us into being awake so we can feed her and let her outside). And waits, and waits, for it seems the boyfriend cat isn't really a morning kind of feline - we've never seen him before 10:30am and he's not that fast on his feet until early afternoon. He does, however, sit outside the back door and wait and wait and wait for her after dark when she's shut up and plonked on a cusion, fear of urban foxes eyeing her as juicy young prey playing on my mind. Yet boyfriend cat sits, his black fur invisible in the dark of the garden, tripping up the unexpectant guest who sneaks outside for a crafty fag on the damp and shaggy lawn. Not even the downpouring of autumnal rain wilts his ardour and he continues sitting through the dark wet cold until the lights go off and he realises she's not coming back again today.

Anyway, as she has now reached the grand old age of 7 months, we figured it was time for her to have her own cat flap to come and go as she pleases. There is, however, an 8pm curfew after which my mind becomes a flurry of fox-eating fear and so she is lured with a bowl of crunchy Science Plan cat food and then her freedom curtailed whilst her appetite detracts her long enough to lock the cat flap. The downside of this is that she still wakes us up unfathomly early, leaving Mr Singh in a perpetually bad morning mood as she purs and nuzzles his beard and disturbs his essential 6am-7am-snooze-button-induced-snoring.

The cat flap is fitted with a special magnetic lock so only Princess, with her cat shaped magnet dangling cutely off her neon pink collar, will open sesame and allow her into the house. Or so we thought. Despite this ingenious locking process, we kept finding Houdini in the house. First of all (and possibly most disturbing) we found them both snuggled up on our bed licking each other. Now, it's all well and good that she has a boyfriend but not in our bed! Mr Singh was quite peturbed and chased Houdini out of the room with his slipper in his hand, Punjabi expletives pouring from his mouth as he told the bhaen-chod-ing cat to get out of his ma-chod-ing house, only to have Princess stand herself between the bulging-eyed angry owner/father and the object of her affections.

Since then, we've kind of got used to finding him around and, to a greater or lesser degree, tolerate it as he seems nice enough and he makes her happy. We have, however, had to draw the line at him eating her food. We choose the vets-recommended-balanced-diet-fucking-expensive cat food Science Plan because we love our cat and bought into the marketing. We agree that a pet food brand available in the supermarket just can't be as good as the exclusively pet-store-vet-and-mail-order option of Science Plan (it just sounds so health giving I can see the fur shine at the mention of it). And all I can assume is that his owner/mum buys him cheap shit from Aldi because he's inside wolfing down her posh stuff quicker than you can say what's for dinner. What's more, he doesn't even bother to run away when we come into the room, taking every greedy little mouthful before Mr Singh's foot comes sweeping through the air towards him (note to RSPCA: this is purely an attempt to scare and the foot deliberately misses - no-one [feline or otherwise] is hurt along the way and no restraining order is required by officials in peaked caps and vans screeching to a halt outside our home).

This has been going for several weeks now, since the supposedly-secure cat flap was installed. We've watched it, we've watched him, we've tried to force it open without a magnet, we've tried to force Princess through the flap with and without her magnet, and we just couldn't work out what was going on. Until yesterday when I sat at the laptop looking into the conservatory at the just the right moment.

It turns out that she comes skipping through the catflap, looking for her top grade nosh, which she guzzles about half of then licks her furry lips. Then she returns to the cat flap where Houdini is peering through the plastic screen pitifully. She pushes the little door flap open with her nimble front paw and then holds it so he can come on through and munch the remaining portion of her lunch. So after all that he's not Houdini and it's not a mystery, she's in love and wants to share a romantic meal with her lover. The little minx.