cats@heart BOOK LOOK Save money — buy direct from the Your Cat bookshop: www.yourcat.co.uk/books ‘LANDING ON 5 TO WIN! MY FEET’ by Adelaide Godwin In this illustrated children’s en’s book, Poohka is a wild cat living a contented life in n Spain before an error off judgement leaves him stranded miles from home. And so his journey begins... Price: £6.99 (paperback). ‘MIA AND THE WOODSHED CATS’ by Will Hadcroft When a stray cat turns up at their cottage, Ma and Pa Croft are happy to feed her. But then three faces appear at the woodshed window... kittens! Will they all be allowed to stay? Price: £7.99 (paperback from www.fbspublishing.co.uk ) or £2.99 (Kindle). ‘BEAUTIFUL CATS’ 3 TO WIN! by Darlene Arden and Nick Mays This book contains portraits of 40 gorgeous cat breeds, from the Bengal to to the RagaMuffin. Every image is accompanied by a description of the breed and an introduction to its history. Price: £12.99 (paperback). 3 TO
‘UNLIKELY LOVES’ S’ WIN! by Jennifer Holland This book explores animal attachments that, at, in human terms, can only nly be called love, including g a dog living in a wildlife fe sanctuary who treats an orphaned leopard cub as his little sister. Or a Dalmation who mothers an abandoned newborn lamb. Behind each of these unusual pairings is a beautiful love story and wonderful photos. Price: £9.99 (paperback) or £6.64 (Kindle). For your chance to win, turn to page 71.
Confessions of a Cat Sitter
By Chris Pascoe
A little while back, I wrote here about a problem we had with a battle-scarred, mean-looking huge stray black cat who crept through our cat flap at night. This lad not only broke into the house through our brand new microchipactivated cat flap, but so totally wrecked it that he arrived in the house wearing the majority of it around his neck. These microchip-cat flaps are brilliant — programmed to your cats’ microchips so that they’ll only open for them, which is an advance on magnetic flaps that open for every cat lucky enough to have his own magnetic collar — a collar that becomes an ‘access all areas’ key to every flap in the area. Microchip cat flaps are only good at stopping neighbourhood cats though; not neighbourhood panthers or ‘The Beast of Bucks’ — both labels which fit our stray Bodmin perfectly. The makers should really write on the box: ‘Will only open for your own pet (please note, may also open for 6.5kg monster cats who repeatedly smash their heads against it until it disintegrates)’! Anyway, I thought I’d update you on Bodmin’s progress, as when I last mentioned him, he’d taken up residence in our back bedroom. Nobody had the nerve to ask him why. When it became clear what a very gentle giant he really was, we decided we could accommodate one more cat — we’d still have a marginal majority over our feline population. But soon after I wrote, as suddenly as Bodmin had appeared, he was gone again. After a few weeks, it looked like our new friend had gone for good. We’d just about given up hope of ever seeing him again, when one morning
he staggered into our garden in a quite clearly terrible state. He now not only looked like a panther, but also like he’d just gone ten rounds with one. Within minutes he was bundled into a cat carrier and whisked to the local vets. I have never seen a vet so unnerved by the overall appearance of a cat. I explained that Bodmin was a stray who seemed to like fighting, and began hauling him from his carrier (Bodmin… not the vet). As more and more cat began to appear, teeth disturbingly bared due to a cut lip, the vet looked more and more alarmed, at one point taking a step backwards. I kept on pulling Bodmin out and more Bodmin kept coming. “He’s, eh… extremely big isn’t he? Is he alright, I mean, is he likely to get nasty?” “Yes,” I said. Another step back “But only if you’re a cat.” I can now happily report that Bodmin has moved back into the bedroom, and everywhere else in the house for that matter. His wounds have all healed nicely, including a huge abscess on his neck that was close to life-threatening, and his previously matted, patchy and dull black fur is full, silky and shiny. He’s managed to somehow mislay 50 per cent of his ears, but he still looks good with what he’s got. He now has his own microchip entry pass for the cat flap, so he no longer needs to totally destroy it every time he comes in from a toilet break. And this week, for the first moment in all the time we’ve known him, we discovered he could purr... ■
“He now not only looked like a panther, but also like he’d just gone ten rounds with one.”
12 Your Cat April 2014
12 yc cat sitter mc chsp.indd 12
26/02/2014 14:58