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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
July 29, 2007
Consider the cat
It was one of those weeks when the deaths of dozens from Islamist bombings in various low-humidity tropical paradises just didn’t cut it on the front page any more. It was one of those weeks, in the middle of summer, with the muscles tensing for the long August yawn, when any journalist with a speck of seniority is at his cottage, and the newsrooms of the nation are left in the care of lesser mortals.So it was that we all got to learn about Oscar the cat. This is the feline who, according to feeds from Reuters, AP, BBC, Fox, CNN, infallibly predicts who will be next to die in a Rhode Island old folks' home. An otherwise unfriendly cat, he indicates his choice by curling up next the ailing elderly person, or, when put out of the room, by yowling at the door. (One wonders if any of these elderly persons have thought of turning the tables on Oscar.) This breaking story opened the stage to innumerable cat theorists, and cat experts, such as Thomas Graves of the University of Illinois (speak up, Tom, this is your moment), who supply such quotes as, “Cats often can sense when their owners are sick or when another animal is sick. ... They can sense when the weather will change, they're famous for being sensitive to premonitions of earthquakes." ... (Thank you, Tom.) I had a cat once who could sense when birds had alighted on a clothes line, that was tethered at one end to a brick boundary wall he regularly sentry’d. I will call him Ferdinand, for that was his ineffable name. When we first met, Ferdinand was among about 75 strays to whom I was feeding decayed animal parts, on behalf of a charming old lady. This was in Wilcox Road, Vauxhall, London, circa 1976. A butcher in the market set aside time-expired meat at the end of each day, for this lady to collect and feed to those cats. They, in their turn, congregated in expectation, at dusk in a parking lot behind a council estate. The lady took ill, and had to go into hospital. I don’t know if any of her immense tribe of semi-feral cats predicted her demise, but I’m sad to say, she did not come out. Her name, as I recall, was Ethel. I cannot recall why I was selected to carry on her good works; I know I didn’t apply for the job. Fortunately, this was England, a nation of batty animal-lovers, and so an eccentric grand-niece of Ethel, who wore unusual caps and owl glasses, soon appeared to relieve me of my responsibility. In the meantime I had adopted, or rather been adopted by (unlike dogs, cats choose their masters), one of these cats. I named him Ferdinand, after Magellan, the Portuguese explorer in the Spanish service, for his cathemeral activities took him on a circuit of considerable extent. He was the sort of cat I would myself choose for a voyage of circumnavigation. It would have to be a cat, as I am persuaded by nautical memoirists from Joshua Slocum to Lorenzo Ricciardi, that goats make poor sailors. The virtues of cats, at sea, are attested by many of the feline voyagers themselves, from Trim, the famous cat of the famous Captain Flinders; to Mrs Chippy, aboard Shackleton’s Endurance; to Pwe, the “ineffective hunter of albatrosses” who crewed with Miles and Beryl Smeeton. My Ferdinand was by nature untroubled by roll, pitch, or yaw, and seemed indifferent to being splashed with cold water, or any other inconvenience. He was moreover profoundly attracted to rigging, and upon discerning the birds on the jury-rigged clothes line, he set diligently about mastering the art of tightrope walking. Like so many of my heroes, it was not his success but his refusal to quit that I admired. He was, like Mrs Chippy, but unlike Oscar, Trim, or Pwe, a tabby. I have found them generally an intelligent race, though Ferdinand himself among the stupidest cats I ever knew. His very survival was an indication that some angelic presence found his blitheness as endearing as I did, for he tempted fate about once a day. Cats have nine lives, according to the experts of antiquity, but after Ferdinand I concluded that this is only an average. That they have other remarkable abilities I cannot doubt, and I am pleased to see the MSM finally giving them some much-merited attention. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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