Rorscharch & Connecticat: Farm Cats

Of course, the reason cats get in the way of my photographs is because they are always around the house, gardens and kitchen in particular; always on the lookout for food, a quick cuddle or a bit of a walk.

One cat who insisted on preening in front of the camera was Connecticat. And here he is as a grown-up in Booragoon, W.A.

The sleek, beautiful Connecticat

The two boys and I were living in our little handmade farm house surrounded by our own landscaped gardens, vegetable kitchen gardens and the farm animals.

Josh and I had finished visiting a friend in Lismore and while walking to the car to come home, heard a kitten mewling. Josh was small enough to fit under the pylons of the building and emerged with a wee black and white kitten that he promptly owned. The kitten was delighted. As I recall it was winter and the poor little thing must have taken shelter under the block of units. He purred non-stop for the 45 minute drive back home.

I asked Josh what name he would give the kitten and he said that we had connected with the cat. Well, that became the kitten’s name. Once back at the farm, our resident black and white cat Rorscharch was interested but fairly sanguine about this new bundle of fur. Mind you, the new bundle was very interested in Rorscharch and kept close to him. Smooched against him, played with his tail and generally pawed him all over.

Unusually tidy Rorscharch

We had picked Rorscharch up from a green grocer in Mullumbimby when he was a wee kitten a couple of years before mainly because we had field mice in the feed shed next to the cow bails and the chicken coop. We needed a cat quickly and Rorks, as he became affectionately known, was just the ticket.

Because it was a rural property I had installed a second hand slow combustion stove that filled several purposes – cooking, water heating and warming the house in general. I was and still remain enamoured of the reuse of materials rather following the current trend to buy everything brand spanking new. I am not the ideal type of consumer a capitalist society wants, needs and/or loves to encourage. That slow combustion stove was as heavy as lead!! And we had to devise rollers to get it into situ without damaging the beautiful new floors!

My sister came back from her 3 year jaunt around the world following the ‘hippy trail’ and moving into Europe as well at the end of 1976 and visited me on the farm. She made us a deadline to shift into the house. So we finished the kitchen and inside trimmings before the Christmas of 1976/77. She and I constructed and sanded benches for the kitchen and finished the window and door trimmings. We shifted in for that Christmas and I cut a branch from a tree and stood it proudly in a bucket of sand in the kitchen and we decorated it (well sort of). I have never been into Christmas but hey, when you have two kids and a sister on hand, you gotta go where the majority wants. So I did.

Back to the cats – both of them loved that fire as cats always do. They learnt not to put their paws anywhere near the stove top but loved sitting on the open door of the oven that heated the kitchen up very quickly. I spread cushions over the door so they could enjoy the heat. We all sat close to the stove on carpets, rugs and bedding on cold nights.

The two cats became inseparable except when I was taking photographs of trees and gardens. So here are some photographs of Connecticat with the greenery! Rorscharch just lay about the house when he wasn’t mousing in the feed shed.

Me first. Tree is background!

 

Oh noes! Nearly obscured.

Me! Me! I is still here

It was, in many ways, an idyllic life style. The boys grew up understanding plants and life cycles. Both learned to cook and keep their clothes clean and mended. They learned to be independent which is how I considered my role as their mother. We grew crops for market and for us and our neighbours, milked cows and gathered eggs. All the things you think of with farms except on a reduced scale. It was a subsistence farm that kept us and made some cash which bought treats and I considered as pin money.

Too tired. Rorks relaxing

All of us, including the cats, lived ‘the good life’. Both cats would trot behind me in the mornings when I went to milk the cow(s). Warm milk!! Ah. They loved it. I delighted in squirting milk into their faces. Great fun. Very 1970s, very hippy and very satisfying.

 

 

All things change however and now we are scattered all over the place and both Connecticat and Rorscharch are dead.

Rorscharch from old age and Connecticat because he was skittled by a car after I had taken them both by plane to be with us for our sojourn in Perth.

Farewell Rorks - 18 years.

Cats, Kittehs, Sex and Genetics

Well, Beyno, this post is for you dear nephew and other cat lovers. These events took place long before you were ever dreamed of – yay, before your mother was even thinking of marriage and settling down!!

How beautiful is he?

Cats have been a warm, furry and precious part of my life since I was young. I have since been involved with other species but I have to say that cats take the Whiskas for me!!

When Andrew (my first husband) and I shifted into a newly built bungalow (no grass, no trees, shrubs or anything like vegetation, just sand) in Mosman Park, situated between Perth and Fremantle near the Dingo Flour Factory, I think my heart sank at the desolation and was uplifted by the blank palette which was our new quarter acre block.

 Figaro was dead; our son, David, had been born, I had planted peas and I had a twin Hoover washing machine for washing nappies (!!) etc. I also made sausage rolls and Cornish Pasties every Saturday. How rigid and proper was that! Hmmm – 1964.

I found myself needing something to engage me. I met a Seal Point Siamese cat with crossed blue eyes and found where she lived – up the road from us. I was fascinated by the beautiful colour points (Seal) of this cat and was agog (good word!) to find out more. I do remember the cat being very vocal, physically pushy, totally unfazed by strange people and thought: ‘Ah hah! Here’s a cat I can have heaps of fun with.’

I went to a Cat Show – I can’t remember if it was the Perth Royal Show which was a feature of everyone’s life at that time. We always went to the ‘Show’ but I don’t remember seeing the Cat Exhibition. Indubitably though, the Show would have had one.

Regardless, I attended my first Cat Show and was flabbergasted at the number and variety of the cats exhibited. I was attracted to the narrow-faced, blue and often squint-eyed Siamese cats. I found blue points, seal points, chocolate points and lilac points. I was entranced. AND they were all highly spirited, spoke vociferously and looked at one specifically (ahem, I mean, me). I was a goner.

I had to live with a Siamese cat. No question. So I approached a breeder and found (and bought) my first Siamese kitten.

His name became Bunny (silly name but I couldn’t be familiar and loving by calling him by his pedigree moniker – and I can’t remember it anyway).

Then I found a Blue Point female kitten and she blew me away. She became Ptolemy Blue Chios and I adored her. I called her Chios. She was untimely skittled by a car. Tears all round.

Wish I had had a colour camera

She and Bunny were always together and slept on our bed (why not? – comfort is a feline imperative).

While becoming enamoured of Siamese cats, I was intrigued as to why the colour points were different. It was at this time that I delved into Gregor Mendel and his peas. I mean I had known of Mendel through my secondary school years studying biology (I was most pleased to count Biology as one of my favourite subjects for my Leaving Certificate and in which I gained a Distinction).

Mendel was around at the time Charles Darwin was starting to make inroads into his startlingly clever idea about evolution. He and Mendel never met and I sometimes think about what would have transpired if they had sat, talked and enthused each other with their ideas about inheritance and evolutionary imperatives. Wow! That would have been something.

But it didn’t happen and there are still problems from those who won’t understand about genetic inheritance. So be it. It only worries me when education curricula are accommodationist enough to include ‘creationism’ and its hypocritical cousin ‘intelligent design’ into school science regimes.

Anyway, my interest in the genetic distribution of colour genes led me to be appointed as the West Australian Registrar of Pedigree Cats – Asian Division. I was delighted. I finally had a job that used my penchant for meticulous accuracy of recording and my intense and burgeoning interest in colour point breeding programmes. Whew. How wonderful was that.

I didn’t, at that time, understand the politics of Cat Exhibition and Breeding. It is no different from that of dogs. All very bitchy and one-upmanship – I doubt that I would have recognised it anyway – I was still at the point where I thought everyone was honest and above board. I was still young and idealistic – usually called naive.

In 1953, as young men, Francis Crick and James Watson decoded and described DNA which gave to us the code for how we came to be from our early beginnings and have continued to be. Not only us, of course. Microbes do a good job of evolving as well and it far more easily seen than in us. Crick and Watson described the double helix and genetic inheritance became a very serious and expanding chemical, biochemical and biological consideration.

None of Crick and Watson’s findings was available to me as Registrar in 1965. I had pedigrees back to five generations and I also had the list of show prizes awarded to each cat be it queen or stud. Every serious breeder of cats was aware of the best possible combination for breeding the next generation. However, I can say that every person I ever met involved in breeding, showing and selling cats was as venal as the next person and I had difficulty when I asked for verification of pedigree records. The lure of money and fame made some breeders into liars. How normal!

I would say that I was never approached to manipulate records. What I can say is that my native intelligence came into play and I had severe doubts as to the accuracy of some of the pedigree records I was meant to record throughout the three year term that I served on that Executive. Attending Cat shows merely added to my unease. After three years I resigned as Registrar.

A good face, not too elongated

During the time I was involved, however, I became desirous of breeding the first fertile female Red Point Siamese cat. Oh!  What a breeding programme that turned out to be. Remember I knew some of the ropes and knew what I had to do to make this dream a reality. Breeding Siamese Cats and their Colour points is a treat.

Red cats are usually male and fertile. Figaro was one of them. The fertile female version is a tortoiseshell cat with added colours in her coat, not just red like this beauty. The tortie colours are usually splotched all over the coat – no neat stripy effect at all.

Torties and gingers produce tortie and ginger kittens with the odd black or white splotched coat and sometimes straight tabby-striped cats. It isn’t as simple as I am making it but colour is relatively straightforward in breeding programmes.

1965, me and the cats

That’s why it was a challenge to breed a red-pointed fertile female Siamese cat. I did it. Felt great. All the cats were beautiful and they were all sold to people neutered. Firstly, because it is a responsible position to take. Secondly because no one wants yet more fertile cats in the hands of any caterwauling male on the back fence. Responsible breeders never sell un-neutered cats to the general public.

This photo was when Ptolemy Amen Ra my Gr.Champion was a scrawny baby. He ended up in Darwin (fittingly, haha).

Amen was Chios' kitten; became a Gr,Champ.

I haven’t enough photographs of cats from this period to show the variety of colours in the Siamese breed but this site has a plethora. Enjoy.

The story of Figaro

Well, it’s back to the cats. I haven’t posted anything since June so I may as well continue with the cats that have shared my life. I find it pleasant recalling them with their particular habits and foibles.

Just before I got married at an unseemly young age, I came across the smallest kitten hiding in some fallen tree logs on the property next to my parents’ grounds. A little ginger striped kitten looking a somewhat darker red because of all the fleas attacking its wee body screamed at me as I bent over the wood pile. I hoped it meant it wanted to be picked up.

So I did and immediately regretted it. The fleas jumped all over me so now both kitten and I were screaming with discomfort. I deposited the kitten in the garage in a drawer and found a bowl into which I poured boiling water and Dettol. I am presuming that people still know what Dettol is.

The ubiquitous Dettol bottle

I can’t remember now how long it took me to divest the kitten and me of these bloody hungry insects. I had bites all over my arms and legs, neck and ankles. I had to pick the fleas out of the kitten’s fur and then comb the fur through with a fine-toothed comb to dislodge any eggs and droppings. At least neither of us became infected with any disease from these damned things.

Horrid biting cat flea!!

I went through a lot of Dettol and hot water and it took days to rid the poor animal of these pests. My mother, who was never very enamoured of my domestic companions any way, was horrified and wouldn’t let me bring my kitten inside the house because of the fleas. Blackie and Wabbie were still alive at that time and they marshalled forces to keep intruding and competing felines out of the house any way.

Of course, the best thing to emerge from this was a close physical relationship between my little kitten (who started to look a gorgeous ginger) and me. He followed me everywhere and I picked him up and held him along my arm and took him wherever I went around the house and property. He was a male as are most ginger or red cats. Some – a small minority are females and by and large the females are sterile. It is possible to find a fertile red female but very rare. I will go into that sort of breeding later on. I found colour breeding of cats fascinating.

I had been brought up, inter alia, with Mozart, Rossini, Donizetti et al. Our mother took us to seasons of operas and operettas when I was in my middle teenagerhood. Who could not help but try to emulate Figaro singing Largo al factotum? Here is a terrific rendition by Hermann Prey singing this great aria from Il barbiere di Siviglia by Rossini. Here’s another version by the wonderful Thomas Hampson singing at the Met. Gala Concert in 1991.

Is it any wonder I named my little kitten Figaro? What a marvellous thing it was to stand outside the house calling him not in a baritone but my high young soprano! I had great fun and provided amusement to family and neighbours alike.

Once married, we shifted into a block of apartments and I could exercise my lungs and Rossini calling for Figaro across Nedlands in Western Australia. I made ginger beer once a week or so and Figaro loved it when the fizzy bottles were opened with a pop. He sat on the washing up sink and watched while each bottle was opened. Well, to be honest, when I was about to open a bottle, I would find him (by singing him in, of course) and make sure I only opened the bottle under his watchful gaze.

Unfortunately my only camera was a Kodak Brownie and this is the only photograph I have of Figaro.

Figaro the beautiful

He is crouching against the wall of our apartment on the breezeway. He was a very beautiful pussy cat and I loved him so!

My desolation when he was hit by a car was immense. I was inconsolable for some time but was pregnant with our first child. Inevitably the advent of this baby took my heart and occupied my time and Figaro remained in my memory evidenced by the one photo I have left.

Caturday? Every day & all kittehs

A household I recognise

I have decided I need some light relief and thought a blog post about a somewhat sentimental topic – that of the cats I have known and lived with – would suffice and make me smile. I know that Jerry Coyne is an appreciator of the kittehs as well and I love trawling through his blog WEIT for his Caturday posts and felid contests.  Jerry likes kitteh photos and short (hair) descriptions so that maybe I will cross post someday down the track. But not today.

Ahem, I also read WEIT posts for other reasons of course.

I have been sans kittehs for over three years now and who knows when this drought will end?

I do have some 60 years of memories and funny stories and over that time developed a knack for naming kittehs which I will share with you as I post the photographs that I have. The photographs that I do have are of later occupants of my bedroom – the early occupants were never really captured on the old celluloid. I know there were some photographs but they have been lost in the interminable moves that we have all made over the decades.

The first cat I remember was Judy. She was black and a stray and hung around the bottom of our street where there was the corner grocery store of the old kind (we are, after all, talking about 1955). My mother forbad me to feed Judy with milk or scraps (what scraps? I only knew milk and porridge).

Of course, Judy stayed and was eventually accepted by my mother. The two other kids were complicit in all this anyway. I didn’t yet have my Kodak camera so there are no photos of the beautiful Judy. Neither are there any of her very beautiful daughter named Slinky. Well, she was Slinky because she wound her long, black, lean body through the rose bushes and, of course, those slinky metal lazy spring helical toys were all the rage at that time.

Then my brother and my mother played around with rhyming couplets about Slinky and rubbish bins and she became known as Plipilsium. I thought that was the bestest name ever, for a cat! My brother rose in my opinion and became the Namer of Cats.

Well, in due course Plip had babies and on my bed! How good was that! Three little moggies – my mother was not amused and insisted that Plip plus babies be relocated to the outside laundry.

Plip was smart though. She would pick up one baby by the scruff of its neck and then climb up the fly wire door and push her obviously hard, strong cranium against the wall until the door unlatched its spring catch. Then, with the smugness that only cats are able to express, she would slink her offspring back into my bedroom (this time under the bed where I had bunched some soft clothing for this precise purpose). We stayed stumm, she and I, at least for a while. My sister, with whom I shared my bedroom, was sworn to silence on pain of death.

In the event, we ended up with two of Plip’s baby boys both of which stayed with our family for nigh on 16 or 17 years. My brother named them as well but less grandly and not a hint of Latin to be heard.

My precious was Blackiewack the Drumstick – I have no idea why. He was obviously black. He did use his right paw in an attempt to redirect my loaded fork sideways towards his mouth thus depriving me of sustenance. To achieve this trick, he almost always sat at the back of my chair so he could keep an eye on the fork as it was stabbing his food.

Forever Blackie to me

His brother was a tabby lad and named Sir Wabble Coeur de Lion of the Most Ancient and Honourable Order of the Stripe. He was pretty nifty at being able to use his left paw to reach up to the table edge where there would be peas arranged in a row well, more like a curve (it was a round table). He was skilled in dislodging one pea at a time and swallowing it whole.

And here be Wabbie

He was normally referred to as Wabbie.

We all grew up and left home and left Blackie and Wabbie to the tender love and care of my parents as is the wont of all children who seek the wonders of the world at large and tend not to look back.

Wabbie died first which was sadness personified. Blackie hung on for a year or two, I think and then old age took him as well.

Here endeth the first set of memories.

All photos are from the internet and not of my kittehs but of other very lovely felids. Just a necessary feast for the eyes, really. In looking for black cat photos, I have discovered that October has almost always been known as Black Cat Month. So this photo is of a sleek black cat and I will call him Blackie anyway.

And the brown tabby will stand in for Wabbie. Bless their cotton socks.

Wow – looking at the recommended links I discover Lolcat! Excellent. Plip is only one letter in excess of the other kitteh character. She made the grade years ago.