Memories of the past: new houses and new cats
We will always be responsible for those
who was tamed.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery "The Little Prince"
who was tamed.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery "The Little Prince"
History and culture. The continuation of the story with cats in a multi-story modern house was connected with my granddaughter. Some time after Pussy's death, she also began to ask for a cat. And... to our great surprise, the cat came to her.
True, not a cat, but a huge gray cat with amber eyes. Came to the window sill on the roof of the store. He sat down, began to look through the glass and ask to go inside. Well, we let him in, and the cat most clearly began to ask for food, was taken to the kitchen and fed, after which he climbed onto the sofa to sleep.
The granddaughter began to bother him, carried him around the rooms in her arms, and he endured all this without scratching or biting. There were no tray problems either. The entire day that the cat stayed with us, he did not experience any urge to “go outside.” But in the evening he jumped on the window, asked to go outside and left.
The amazing cat Barsik has just finished drinking from the tap! Photo by the author
And in the morning he came again and since then he came regularly. We nicknamed him “the visiting cat,” and it was very convenient to have such a cat. The cat, it should be noted, was very strange, he was kind of stupid.
In fact, all my experience with cats suggests that they are “all masters.” If the owner is not smart, then both the cat and the cat will be stupid. It turned out that way this time too.
Naturally, we wanted to find out whose cat it was that was visiting us, and we found out - the cat of our distant relative from the opposite end of the house, who was a fat and stupid woman. She was very surprised that her cat didn’t eat anything at home, but only slept and shit, and “goes somewhere all day, he’s a pest.”
It is very interesting that Barsik, as he was nicknamed for his orange eyes, drank only tap water. And in order to give him something to drink, it was necessary to open the water and let it flow in a thin stream. The cat jumped onto the sink and drank, extending its tongue towards the water.
Hidden in the gap between the books and the top shelf in the bookcase. And a working vacuum cleaner plunged him into mystical horror. Nevertheless, the cat gradually began to get smarter, began to talk to us, show us what he needed and even play with his granddaughter.
And then he suddenly disappeared. He became so wise that... he decided to leave his mistress, jumped from the roof in front of the neighbors and, running across the road, disappeared among the houses opposite. Amazing, isn't it? Apparently, he decided to “find his own path,” and maybe “see the world.” Moreover, none of us saw him again, and his owner soon died. Did he foresee this with his strange cat mind, did he have a presentiment... Who knows?
And here is the cat Barsya in the country and the fog in the distance... Photo by the author
In any case, the granddaughter was again left without a cat.
But, looking out the window onto the street, we noticed a strange thing: every morning a large white-gray cat leaves the house opposite, runs across the road and climbs a spreading tree right in front of our house. He sits there in the fork, but periodically descends to the ground and runs to the Magnit store, where he begs for food on the porch or warm “dressing room.” And people feed her, some will give her half a sausage, some will pour some cat food, and the sellers pour water into her bowl. In the evening she left her roost and again went to the house opposite.
The cat was very beautiful, and we once took her to visit. We fed her and... She slept on our couch all day until evening. So from then on we began to invite her periodically, and then they told us her story.
It turns out that she was born in this very Magnit store, in its basement. But then her mother’s cat was sent to another “Magnit”, where there were rats in the basement. And this cat was taken in by volunteers who lived opposite us, who sterilized her and gave her shelter, but while working with animals, they left home every day at eight in the morning and returned from work at eight in the evening. And the cat spent all her days, even in the cold winter, on the tree, periodically warming up on the threshold of the store.
And so it happened that one morning she came not to the tree, but to our door and... she stayed with us until the evening, and there we carried her in our arms to her owners, since cars were rushing by one after another on the roadway. to others. And there in their house... there was a real mess and a mixture of the stench of wine, tobacco and animals, because, in addition to this cat, two kittens and a puppy lived there! So it became clear to us why, once with us, she sleeps all the time: it was simply impossible for a normal animal to live and sleep in such conditions, and even with a sneaky owner.
"The cat is walking along the path." Photo by the author
Then the owners tell us: if you want to adopt a cat, take it, otherwise we are getting a divorce and moving away. We immediately took her in, and amazingly, she immediately realized that she had changed owners and never ran across the road to them again! But she regularly asked to go outside “to be on duty at the store.” Compassionate old women wailed: “Oh, what a good cat they threw away!”, and the sellers had to explain that no one threw it away, just... “It’s her habit.”
Barsey destroyed the cat, and she began to live in contentment and comfort. But it also took a long time for her to learn to “talk” to us and respond to her name—no one among the volunteers talked to her. She had such a very independent character from life, but she never bit or scratched, and slept on her back with her belly up (here on VO there was already my article about the unified information field of children and animals), which none of our cats had done before, and even Pussy is homely and homely. That is, the impression was: “Oh, they offered me another house, well, it’s good here, and why don’t I stay here. But I’m a cat, I go wherever I please, and I walk on my own!”
And then something happened that made her fall in love with our house and become deeply attached to us. Some compassionate old woman, who did not know her story, took her one evening and took her to her home in one of the nearby high-rise buildings. We were, understandably, very upset; all the surrounding houses were plastered with notices: “Bring back the cat.” And three days later, in the evening, they called us at home from the store and said: “They brought your cat!”
We took our Barsya, and it was as if she had been replaced: she fell in love with the house, became affectionate and sweet, and she ate as if she had been starving all these three days. And then I once overheard a conversation between two grandmothers, and it turned out that it was one of them who took her away, but had to return her, because she hadn’t eaten anything for three days, she even turned up her nose at the liver - “Why should I?” such a capricious cat! And she was just stressed. It turns out that it happens to animals too.
And then she faced another test: we had to go to Spain, but there was no one to leave the cat with. We remembered about the volunteers, and it turned out that the man opposite was still living there, had stopped drinking, “became a different person” and would gladly take Barsya for two weeks.
We carried her, provided her with food, a tray - everything was done honorably. And two weeks later we arrive, and Barsya is again sitting in the fork of the “cat tree”, fortunately this happens in the summer. She saw us, rushed as fast as she could, and the neighbors tell us that this has been going on for a long time. I went to see the volunteer, and he was completely drunk. He stopped being a “different person”, he got tired, apparently, and the cat... “ran away from him.”
You always try to believe people, to see the good in them, but some are still such crap that there’s nowhere else to go, how can the earth carry them like that? And there are quite a few of them, by no means. Only in the vicinity of my house there are 5-6 people who already get together in the morning and figure out where they can have a drink. And they all have wives and children... These are simply wonderful role models!
Well, this is an involuntary digression along the way. The main thing is that nothing happened to Barsia, and now she lives only in our house and in the country. He doesn’t go anywhere, but admires his cat tree out the window. I learned to do “my business” in a completely empty tray - a container for seedlings! He comes, scratches at it with his paws and... that's it! And then – meow-meow – “take it away.” Or before that – purr-murr – “I want.” He comes and calls to his tray. Like, I’ll go now, and you clean it up. Therefore, the house is clean and there are no problems. I don't like trays with filler. A friend of mine has one, and half the hallway is covered with it. So their cat digs in it well. And they have to sweep it regularly.
And she also eats mice and grass at the dacha! Photo by the author
At the dacha, Barsya only walks around our site and the site of our neighbor, who also greets her. In other areas - no, no, although it happens that he sits on the border and watches what is happening there. But it’s as if he understands that this tightly stretched wire (what a barrier it would seem for a cat?!) is the line beyond which she is not allowed to go.
She also does not go to her neighbors who have a dog, even when neither they nor the dog are at the dacha. At the dacha she catches mice! Oh, how many of them she caught and ate, leaving only the intestines and tails. And this is how she manages to “separate” them like this, because she has neither a knife nor a fork.
Not every cat gets to be in the book. But the cat Barsya ended up in the book! But, unfortunately, she herself doesn’t know about it.
In general, our Barsya has become a real member of our family, surprisingly good-natured and very flexible. I thought, and wrote a book about her life and adventures. And this book was included in the top of the best electronic publications of some year, dedicated to animals in general and cats in particular. It is available both in electronic and paper form. To order.
So the fate of feline animals has changed dramatically over the past half century. In the 50-60s of the last century, the attitude towards them was purely consumerist. “A cat is a cat, damn it!”, and it, that is, this attitude, continued for a very long time, until the early 90s.
Well, then it began to change dramatically, and cats gradually turned into “pets”, and children play with cats in their yards, but no one throws stones at them for a long time...
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