Rufus is the most wonderful companion. He's four years old and all black - actually he has a lovely chocolate-coloured undercoat. He spends most of the day asleep in his bed in a corner of the living room but come dusk he's up and after a small meal goes about his business.
He is immensely curious and very friendly - but on his own terms, if you please! Once when chatting outside with my next-door neighbour he marched straight in through her open front door as if he owned the placed. He gets through collars at a frightening pace. I've had them returned by neighbours from a considerable radius, where they've found them hung on branches.
He wears a kind of high tech bell, which stops him from catching birds. Very
early one summer morning he came in, announcing something very important, very
loudly. I opened my eyes and a small bird flew at me from across the room. I
pulled the covers over my head. I was not rugby tackling birds at 4:30 in the
morning. I found it later - it had drowned in the toilet. I wasn't proud of my
laziness.
The collar allows him catch mice, though. He's allowed to bring them into the house. If the mouse is alive, I'll try to rescue it. If the mouse won't be rescued then that's that. I'm not chasing mice round my house; I keep cats for doing that. Some may think this cruel, but it's a mouse's lot to be preyed upon by owls, stoats and cats. The mice he brings home are a small proportion of those he takes every night. It gives both Rufus and George some added interest to their lives and the mice die pretty quickly.
Rufus is a left-handed cat. I've never met one before that had such a preference of the left-hand side of everything. Pick him up and he's only happy on your left shoulder. Put him on your right shoulder and he'll struggle to move. He sits on my left on the sofa. He'll only eat from the left-hand food bowl. He follows me to bed (bringing with him an unconscionable amount of grit) and insists on sleeping on the left-hand side of my head. Here he snuggles against me, if I move away he pursues me across the bed. George generally regards his intrusion on the bed as an affront. If giving Rufus the old hairy eyeball doesn't work (and it rarely does) he vacates the scene with much huffing.
When it's wet outside, he varies his routine on entering the house. Normally he will always stop at his scratching post when he enters the living room. When he's wet, he comes straight to me. I keep an old towel on a radiator and I swaddle him in this. He adores being held like a baby, wrapped in a towel. His left paw comes up like a Maneki Neko and he purrs very loudly. I'm sure that he does this on purpose; I've had to dry him several times in the course of some evenings.
In August 2003, I had to take the heartbreaking decision to put Rufus up for re-homing through the RSPCA. Having once in the past tried to adopt a cat from them and been rejected, I know how very careful they are. I had decided on a major change in lifestyle and house. Rufus is an extremely outdoor cat and I knew that I could afford nowhere that would be safe for him. I have heard that he has been adopted by a family with children and a large garden. I've no doubt that he will be as loving to them as he was to me. Of course I was very upset to have to do this, but this was a selfish emotion and did nothing to give Rufus the best possible home.
Page last edited: 14 November 2003