Living on a main road is detrimental to a cat's life! Having a fascination with cars is also detrimental to a cat's life and Jonesy was nothing less than fearless where cars were concerned. He would sit on the front garden path and watch the world speed by until one of us spotted him and coaxed him back inside. Short of keeping all 3 of our cats inside, we knew it would be impossible to protect them all the time. The two girls, Ripley and Peanut, seemed to have a healthy respect for the roaring metal vehicles speeding by our house, but Jonesy appeared to believe totally in the fact he had 9 lives! When he was young we would spy him across the main road at some dawn hour of the morning, and in the end we would simply shut the 3 of them in the house at night so we could get some sleep without worrying. There is a strong possibility that Jonesy had some near misses, because he stopped his forays across the death trap pretty quick and roamed the side street instead. The routine in the mornings (...and his waking hour is for another post, lol!!!) meant Jonesy would wake us up, get fed and once we opened the cat flap he would scamper off into the distance. Generally, at around 6.30 am when my husband left for work and walked round to the side street to get to his work van, he would espy Jonesy either rummaging in someone's bin bag that had been left out, or nonchalantly wandering down the pavement to see what he could find. No amount of shooing or coaxing could get Jonesy to turn around to come home. His disdain of our concern was disconcerting, to say the least. Jonesy did as he wished, and no amount of human intervention could make him do anything if he didn't want to do it. If our car was parked on the drive and my husband was washing it, working on it, or simply fiddling with it as men do (!) Jonesy would float around and watch intently. If a door should happen to be open, or the boot, he would slip inside when no one was looking. Cat hair became a feature of the car seats! It took Jonesy to be hurt before he learnt that the roads were not safe for him. One day I went upstairs into our bedroom to find Jonesy lain on our bed, panting and a large wide gash in his side and his leg. He was bleeding badly and to this day we have no idea how he got home and up the stairs...we never heard him come in. I screamed for my husband and we raced down to the vets. To be honest we thought a fox or dog had gone for him, but the vet told us he had probably been caught under a car as it drove off. Cats tend to sit under cars, and he had been caught by the tyres as one pulled away. He was lucky to be alive and adrenalin had got him home. He had to have stitches and stay in. Not only was Jonesy miserable during that time, but so we were......he made it plain, even hobbling on 3 legs, that he wanted be outside and he definitely did not want to take any medicine. Would Jonesy learn from this....did he heck! Once he was better and allowed out we would still catch him down the side road, albeit rather more cautiously, but never ever across the main road. Well not that we knew of anyway!
Lovely.....! :).
ReplyDeleteWhat is it with cats and cars....It a good job their paws can't reach the pedals....!
And, they always wait for to get home, from work, especially in the winter. Then it's straight onto the bonnet, for warmth..! And, yes, as soon as you opened the door or boot, in they get. Look at all the stories that have been in the papers over the years, cats travelling for miles, even in the engines.....Bless'em....! :).