Confession - I have just done a "BAD THING"

Phoenix, hahahaha! Never fear, you have my support . I have 2 cats, a young, ginger tabby called Ziggy and a white & black van called Marley (no, I'm not actually a reggae fan ). There are several cats in my neighbourhood but at the property that backs onto mine lived a black female called Cleo. My Ziggy seemed to delight in winding her up by trying to climb up the fence to her when she was sitting on the top. However, she was having none of it. I had tried to befriend her (twit and traitor that I am ) but she was an unfriendly little madam. I even found her in the house once, with Ziggy and Marley sitting at safe distances from her. When I tried to shoo her out she hissed at me. 'Huh! I ain't having THAT!' I thought. 'Not in my own house! '. She ran into the garden and up onto the fence at the bottom, then she didn't want to budge. Marley - the braver of my two - sat near the bottom of the fence while Cleo glared down at her. So, not having a convenient glass of water near to hand, I went into the house and fetched one. I walked calmly over to the fence and swiftly threw the water at her. Needless to say, she scarpered, leaving Marley wondering what the hell happened. I actually haven't seen her lately but two cute and lovely grey and white tabbies have materialised and love investigating my garden. I don't think they've met my two yet .

Now look here, when we first adopted Digby, this so called summer, via Cats Protection, he came with the name "Tiggy" (Riverwalk , I have discussed the naming of him before in another post, but can't for the life of me remember which one, so this recap is mainly for your benefit), which Mr P felt was rather a "camp" name for such a big boy. I wanted to call him Kevin, because he looked like a Kevin. Mr P was not sure. We settled on Digby because it wasn't too far removed from the sound of the name "Tiggy" so we thought it wouldn't confuse him too much.

As it turns out we could have called him Hieronymus Bosch, Frederick Finkelbaum or Eleanor bloody Roosevelt for all the notice he takes. At least Maurice, who we have had from a kitten and is therefore a well brought up chap with good manners, has the decency to respond to his name. (He sometimes gets a bit over keen, and will turn to us with an enquiring look if we happen to mention going shopping in Morrisons, but once he has realised his mistake he averts his gaze, as he isn't one to listen in to conversations that don't concern him).

And, for the record, he may have come sans gonads, but he does have a micro chip, which the others don't (I have been tempted to sneak him into the self service area of Asda, scan him, and see if "Unexpected item in the bagging area" comes up, but then I might get charged for him by weight, which would never do.) And anyway, I have it on good authority that long tails are just soooooo last year.

I've never put a cat in a cattery but, years ago near here there was a cattery that many people recommended. Now, each cat had it's own indoor private space but could go outside into an enclosed area that all the cats had access to. I assume that, with cat flu and allsorts of catty diseases appearing in recent years it had to close down but, at the time friends I knew that used it said their cats were blissfully happy there and never wanted to come home. I just assume that the cats all got on because it was 'neutral territory' and, no matter how good the recommendations were my cats were never going to go there, but I've often wondered about it and why it worked so well.

Neutral territory certainly works with dogs. When I was a child we had a dog who was a complete nightmare to take out. She would try and attack every dog in sight. When we went on holiday she was always put in kennels and apparently spent the whole time happily playing with all the other dogs and even sharing food with them.

phoenix You can get some very good water pistols.... evil

crimson that is interesting, I too am giving some thought as to the reasons that there wasn't any "pawsicuffs".

Rocknanny you must have posted while I was still typing away, otherwise I would have responded! Our Maurice is such a sociable chap, he used to invite his friend Fluff Gordon round for a gumming of cat biscuits. (Not over endowed in the tooth department, was old Fluff)

Oh well done! Poor Digby!
However I also have to admit to showering cats. Our last cat, Effie, died in October and we decided that we would not get another cat. We had always had two kittens together and our last pair Stan & Effie were lovely but we decided not to have any more.
I have set up several bird feeding stations in the garden and so now I am busy firing water pistols at three cats who do what cats do..wait hopefully by the feeders!

Maybe she was being owner protective Deeda, and was different when she didn't have her family to protect? The local farmer got annoyed with the S.O. who, when walking the whippet on his land one day was confronted by a very angry looking German Shepherd. The farmer shouted that the problem was that our dog was on a lead and, if he let her off they would play quite happily. S.O. replied that it was difficult to ascertain that scenario when confronted by a large set of Alsation gnashers and also that the whippet had just had an operation and had stitches down one side of her body. Said farmer did actually [there's always a first time] apologise.

nanaej when we took down our real Christmas tree on Sunday, it had hardly dropped a needle and still looked really good. I remarked to Mr P that if there were not so many cats in our little road, I would have loved to put it outside decked with fat balls, coconut halves and other bird feeders. Although it would have looked lovely, I just couldn't bear the thought of it becoming an easy hunting place for cats.