Mow yawned and blinked his eyes. He appeared still sleepy but he was a cat and they can come awake instantly. He looked about him and decided nothing had changed and maybe it was too early to wake up.

He was about to go to sleep when Stephanie the Staffordshire Bull Terrier spoke to him. “So you are awake at last,” she said sarcastically. She could not understand that cats were animals of the night and liked to sleep during the day. Mow could not understand why Stephanie liked to be up and about during the day. Neither animal understood the other but they were quite happy sharing the same house and the same humans.

Mow yawned again and gave Stephanie the sort of look you give to your average mentally challenged garden gnome. “Dunno!” he answered in a bored voice. “Nothin’ much goin’ on, may as well have another snooze.” He started to settle again, wrapping his tail round himself so the end covered his nose. It was not so much to keep his nose warm but that it was comfortable that way. Mow was a cat and did not see why he had to give a reason for everything.

Stephanie was not impressed. Having started something she usually saw it through to the end. Bull terriers are made that way, they hang on. “I really can not understand you,” she said. “Do all cats sleep all day?

Mow stirred and thought for a bit. He was not really tired but sleeping is something cats are good at. On the other hand he knew Stephanie would keep on and on until her questions were answered so he decided to answer her. Being a cat he usually was able to turn most things to his own ends and conversations with Stephanie often gave him useful bits of information.

Not a week earlier she had told him about the new tom cat over the road. This gave him the chance to go to meet the new cat and to put him in his place. That is to make sure that he understood who was top cat and who wasn’t. The new cat soon learned his lesson.

Then there was the case of the ornamental pond in the policeman’s garden a few doors down the road. Mow would have found out anyway because he kept a close eye on everything but it was nice that Stephanie had mentioned that there were fish there, obviously the policeman had bought them and thought them a good idea. Mow thought them a good idea too.

If the policeman had been a detective he might have worked out that disappearing fish might be linked to the presence of a tom cat living near by. Sadly for the fish population the policeman thought that all cats were well fed by their owners and blamed the herons who came from the Wild Grounds near the little river that ran into the sea a mile or so further on.

No one ever saw Mow in the policeman’s back garden but Mow had that contented look on his face every morning when he came to be let in. “Like the cat who got the cream,” said the male human. The female human shook her head, she suspected it was fish.

There was no point in having a cat flap, Mow was too big. He was a giant of a cat. They, the humans that is, put him a box with a plastic sheet over the top to keep out the wet and some old blankets to make it comfortable for him inside. After his night’s prowling and hunting for mice, or fish, as the case may be, he would curl up inside his box outside the back door and wait for the humans to stir and let him in. They always gave him a saucer of milk in the morning.

The idea of the box and the rain proof cover had been the male human’s because if Mow did not have somewhere comfortable he would demand to be let in and that would mean waking the whole neighbourhood at five in the morning. Mow could be very demanding when he tried.

Mow decided to answer the dog’s question. Being something of a philosophical cat he hedged his bets and defined his terms. “It depends what you mean by cats,” he said thoughtfully. “Then, of course, I have not experienced all cats. On the other hand most of the cats round here do sleep in the day and go out at night. Some stay in at night and never go out at all. I guess they are what you would call ‘fat cats’ but I don’t count them as cats.”

He paused for breath but Stephanie looked puzzled. Bull terriers are not the most quick on the uptake of dogs and, of course, dogs are not as quick on the uptake as cats. At least that is what cats think. For the most part dogs do not think very much, they much prefer their pack leader to do the thinking. In her case, Stephanie saw the humans as her pack leaders and she was content. As always when Mow explained something Stephanie was more flummoxed than she had had been at the beginning when she had first asked.

She sat and scratched herself as dogs do when they are confused. That is the problem with philosophy, as well as with cats, who are mostly philosophers of the Post Modernist sort. If you try to argue with a cat your words will develop legs and start running off in all sorts of directions you had not thought of and had certainly not intended.

While Stephanie enjoyed her humans and looked up to them, Mow thought of them, as he thought of everything else, as existing entirely for his own benefit. Some people are like that though I should not expect you are because those sort of people do not enjoy reading stories. They most certainly do not enjoy reading stories about cats. Whereas Stephanie belonged to the humans, in Mow’s view of the world the humans were just there and, as good humans should, they provided Mow with the good things of life, like milk, chicken and, ‘oh bliss,’ fish.

Of course there are some cruel and unkind humans. There was the young man down the road the other way, not far from the post office. He was the sort of human who took pleasure in hurting small animals. Mow might have been small-ish. He was smaller than many dogs. However as cats go he was a giant. All cats are agile and strong for their size. Mow was not just strong and agile, he was powerful and a powerful tom cat is a sheer terror. Even a smallish tom cat is quite dangerous if aroused.

The young man tried to hit Mow and to grab his tail and pull it. In a flash Mow had turned and raked his needle sharp claws down the boys arm drawing blood. As the boy tried to push Mow away with his other hand Mow closed his teeth on it. Somehow the youth, desperate now to escape had wrenched himself free and had run off crying in pain and shock, while Mow sauntered back to his favourite lookout place on the high branch of an oak tree near the park.

Most cats can leap up to three times their length or more. They climb trees like lightning and they can twist and turn with amazing speed. No human could ever do what a cat does. In comparison we humans are very feeble and weedy.

Mow did not need humans but they needed him and were happy to provide him with all those little luxuries which cats think of as a sort of tribute humans pay to cats for the privilege of having them live with them. Mow’s humans had the additional advantage that they had a big garden and a large patch of rhubarb under which Mow could hide and pounce out on the birds who came to peck the crumbs which the female human threw out for them.

Some of the antics Stephanie got up to with the humans amazed Mow. He watched from his branch and thought “how can an animal be so stupid, how can she be so lacking in all dignity?” Stephanie was running after a wooden ball which the male human threw for her. She kept it up and would have apparently gone on for ever if the human had not got tired. Mow shook his paws distastefully as he surveyed the sorry scene. Dogs had such a strange mentality and, to Mow’s thinking, humans were just as daft. On the other hand they served some useful purposes.

Stephanie had come first to the house. She had been given to the humans by a friend and had settled in very happily. When Mow turned up the humans worried they might fight. Mow was nearly fully grown but still a bit kittenish. He enjoyed playing with the bull terrier’s tail. She enjoyed it too.

He had been a stray and had turned up in the garden where he had caught and eaten a mouse. The female human had seen him and thought what a good idea it might be to have a cat to keep down vermin. As it turned out it was the one of the wisest decisions she had ever made.

They were eating fish and chips. They always did on a Thursday evening, the male bought them on his way home from work. The lady, who had been watching Mow took a lump of fish from her plate and opened the back door. He husband called after her. “Shut the door there’s a draught,” and then yelled, “your food will get cold.” The female took no notice but held out the fish so Mow could smell it. It was a scent more delicious than he had ever believed could exist. However he was a cat and had to make the woman realize that hers was the privilege to be giving food to a cat. So enticing was the smell of the fish that, having stepped carefully and suspiciously towards her, he then took the whole lump from her hand and wolfed it down.

A look of admiration came over the woman’s face. “Oh isn’t he sweet ,”she said. It was a remark which did not endear her to Mow, sweet? He did not think so. However her next remark did make up for her lack of discernment somewhat. “Isn’t he magnificent,” she said more to herself than to her husband who had now come out to see what all the fuss was about.

Now at this point in the story I must let you into a secret. It is not generally understood by humans that many of the more intelligent animals, and cats are among the most intelligent of all, can understand what we say and even, at times what we think.

The male human did not seem as impressed by Mow as the female. He knew that fate had decided that Mow would now adopt them. There was no getting away from the look on the female’s face, she was totally smitten. However he had to have his little grumble. “He’s a tom cat,” said Bill glumly, “he’ll keep us awake at night caterwarling and he’ll get into fights with all the other tom cats and he’ll populate the area with black and white kittens.”(Mow was a black cat with a white bib, white socks on all his feet and a white patch on his nose.)

By this time the female human had picked up Mow and held him on one shoulder with his face close to her. Mow rubbed his neck against hers, not so much with affection but so as to mark her with his scent glands as a human that now belonged to him. He knew exactly what he was doing and his next ploy was to purr, a deep rumble from deep down in his chest. Neither of the humans could resist him, they were captured while Stephanie looked on with amazement.

Most dogs annoyed Mow. Stephanie was placid and maternal and because she was a lady dog Mow felt protective of her. Not that she needed any protecting. She was a bull terrier and they are powerful dogs who are bred for fighting. No other dog could fight a bull terrier, they were stocky and exceptionally strong and even big dogs like German Shepherds did not have the aggression and the power of a bull terrier. In her way Stephanie felt protective of her humans and of Mow. Because Mow had not been quite full grown that she took to him in the way she did, she was maternal and protective. She was puzzled about a lot of things but whether Mow was a cat, a dog, or a catdog, puzzled her most of all.

It came about in this way. Bill, the male human, was called on one day by his Union Representative who came to tell him about a union meeting or a bowls club match, or something. He stood at the front door talking to Bill about this and that. Human males often do this, talking for hours, and then saying that it is the females who gossip endlessly. All the while they were talking the man’s large black Labrador sat on the garden path behind him waiting to be taken for a walk in the park. Bill’s friend suddenly laughed and said. “I hear you have a cat. You’ll have to watch out for this one(he pointed with his thumb to the dog) he’s a devil for cats.” What he meant was that cats usually ran off when they saw the Labrador, or climbed a tree while the dog went into a frenzy of barking while the cat sat on a branch and watched the fun.

Inside the house Stephanie could smell another dog and slowly began to take a mild interest. Was he from a rival pack, she wondered. Behind the house, in the back garden a large black tom cat with white paws and a white front stalked under the fence and across the grass. He smelled dog. The dog did not smell anything except the more general smell of cat and dog which wafted from the house. He was not prepared for the apparition which came hissing and growling round the corner of the house like a demented steam engine bent on mayhem and murder.

Mow’s fur stood on end making him seem twice the size he was normally. His whiskers were laid back and his growl became a banshee howl of sheer malicious hatred. His tail lashed from side to side with anger at the temerity of this dog that dared to come, without his permission, onto his territory.

The dog hardly had time to bare his teeth in warning before the typhoon of claws and teeth launched itself, like one of Zeus’s lightning bolts, at his face. He was anger personified. His claws raked down each side of the dogs muzzle and, such was the impetous of the attack that the cat’s rear legs swung forward so that their clawed feet beat a deadly tattoo on the dog’s chest.

The Labrador howled in dismay and in pain and managed to free himself. He sprang away from the vengeful fury spitting venomous anger and started to run flat out, helped on his way by more claws stabbing his rear and sharp white teeth burying themselves in his haunches. The cat pursued the Labrador up the road as neighbours dropped whatever it was they were doing to watch this amazing sight of a large dog being chased by an indignant tom cat.

“Cor!” “Blimey!” were the words that dropped from the owner of the dog’ open mouth as he blinked in horror as his “devil with cats” disappeared round a bend in the road chased by the fury that was Mow the tom cat. Not the most profound of remarks but entirely appropriate given the circumstances.

“I never did like that Labrador,” remarked the male human later on to the female. She replied, “I never did like his owner, nasty little man always trying to organize other people. I never could stand men who try to organize people, they’re like little Hitlers.” Mow did not know what a Hitler was let alone a little one. He did not much care, he was dozing curled up comfortably on the female human’s lap while she and the male watched the television. He purred softly, content with life and with his humans, he thought to himself that he had them quite well trained. The male human, who was also feeling a bit sleepy said, “I don’t suppose we’ll see much more of him.” He felt much more well-disposed to cats in general and to Mow in particular after the earlier cat and dog confrontation.

Stephanie, stretched out by the radiator, also felt content. She had Mow worked out now entirely to her own limited satisfaction. The way he had vanquished the Labrador proved to her that Mow was actually the soul of a bull terrier in a feline body. His attack on the dog had proven it. Bull terriers she reasoned were bred to fight other dogs. Therefore, since Mow fought dogs he had to be a bull terrier in disguise. She fell asleep the puzzle solved.

©Roger Penney