That Darned Cat
Last week, I was working at the Melbourne Showgrounds on the same day as the ‘2010 World Cat Congress’. I’ve no idea what exactly was going on in the Grand Pavilion. I’d like to think the cats were perhaps drafting their resolution on Afghanistan (proposed interim measure: install giant scratching post). I did see the delegates – the cat lovers – traipsing in, many of them attired eccentrically, as though for a vintage car convention or Vicar of Dibley re-enactment weekend. And it did remind me of the time, many years back, when I was among their number.
Having grown up around cats, having known what it was like to be awoken regularly by the lightly pumping claws of a cat masseur, it pained me to spend over a decade residing in a series of ‘No Pets Allowed’ scenarios. Even when I moved into my first proper house with a back yard, the landlord let it be known that he regularly swept the property for evidence of feline cohabitation. Surprise inspections were mounted with Hogan’s Heroes-like regularity.
Then, one day, a cat appeared in the back yard. A tattered black and white specimen, staring in through the glass door with a paranoid glare and mouthing urgent meows as though the place were on fire. But as soon as I started for the door, it bolted under the house. The next day it was back and, again, as soon as I appeared, it shot off like I was a cartoon dog with a butterfly net.
This happened every day for the next two months.
During this time I was able to establish that the cat – Ron Wood skinny and permanently wearing the haunted expression of a freed hostage – lived under our house, amid the inaccessible stumps, empty paint tins and coils of wire. One time I saw it dragging a dead bird in there. Another time, an entire schnitzel it had presumably purloined from the neighbours. Eventually, I started leaving out a bowl of crunchies every morning. By standing on the kitchen bench, flattened against the wall, I could observe its approach undetected. Ever suspicious, it would at first spend a good hour scoping out the yard for potential traps. Then it’d scuttle in and wolf down as much as it could in thirty seconds, before darting beneath the slats and back to its dusty hideout. It would be six more months before the cat felt safe enough to stroll up and tackle its meal in a relaxed manner, rasping the bowl dry and vacuuming the surrounds for crumbs. But even then it was alert for the slightest tremor from within the house and at the first footfall would scramble frenetically like someone had shot a thousand volts up its back passage.
It was a further year and a half before it let me get close enough to pat it gently on the head. And even then, I had to do it in ultra slow motion. The slightest hastening and the cat would make a sudden Snagglepuss-style exit (stage left). My then girlfriend, convinced my obsession with the cat was sending me down a one-way path to madness, did observe that my shabby, matted friend was a he. Thus enlightened, I named him Mungo. Although, he never once responded to that name, and in fact seemed to regard it with haughty tail-swishing disdain.
I wish I had some funny stories about Mungo, something that could have gotten a round at the Congress, but all he did for the next six months was shovel down crunchies, look panicked, shit himself and run under the house. ‘Why are you bothering?’ people would say. ‘Well, I’ve started it now,’ I would reply. ‘But what do you get out of it?’ they’d ask. ‘Scratched,’ I’d say.
But just when it looked like I might finally be able to coax Mungo inside, for a feed and maybe a movie, something terrible happened. He showed up with his head split open. Like someone had flung a tomahawk at it, Daniel Boone opening titles-style. Bizarrely, he seemed completely unaffected, but I couldn’t get anywhere near him. Instead I went completely mental. ‘Who the fuck could have done this?’ I bellowed, striding through the house, like the culprit was going to step forth from behind some curtains and apologise.
I remember having heard several times my next-door neighbour – let’s call him Mr X – chasing Mungo over our fence amid a flurry of curses, possibly after having just lost a schnitzel, but I had no evidence whatsoever that X was responsible for this outrage. Nonetheless, see what you make of the following.
I barged out my front door. Mr X was on the nature strip, casually hosing down his car. (This was a couple of decades back. You could still do that sort of thing.) ‘Have you seen what someone’s done to that black and white cat?’ I screamed, girlishly. And, without saying a word, Mr X carefully laid down the hose, still running, in the gutter. Then he walked briskly to his front door, went inside, and quietly closed it behind him. I stood there for what must have been five minutes, the water still trickling into the road. Was he coming back? Apparently not. I walked to his fence, leaned across and turned off the tap.
But despite receiving no medical assistance – no one could catch him – Mungo recovered. Every day he’d appear at the back door, his head looking like two mismatched coconut halves pressed roughly together, acting as though nothing had happened. But it was a long time before he let me pat him again. Daniel Boone, whoever he was, had set my ‘program’ back six months. When he finally let me pick him up, cowering and poised to leap to safety amid a whirl of claws, I realised he was mostly made of fur. A catskin purse containing a rattling skeleton.
Then we moved. And with no guarantee that the new tenants would assume control of this thankless, hissing, project, I decreed that Mungo would have to come with us. Dangling a fresh piece of steak, I lured him out from under the house and bundled him, terrified, into the car. The ten-block drive to his new home was like sharing a car with a flying ball of barbed wire. At the house, I kept him inside, quaking under a chest of drawers, for a few hours. As soon as I let him outside, he shot into the dark. Two days passed and there was no sign of him. On a hunch, I returned to the old house. And there he was. Like some low-budget Incredible Journey, he’d made it back, crossing one of Melbourne’s busiest roads in the process. It didn’t seem possible. Surely it was a different cat?
Amazingly, he let me ferry him to the new house again. And again. Every night for a week. Each time, I’d have to return to the old property, not yet occupied, and somehow get him into the car. This could take hours. But, on the sixth night, he stayed. And then left again the night after. In all, he made the ten-block return journey twelve times. Encouragingly, the interval between departures would grow longer, to the point where he waited three full weeks before absconding. On the drive back, he would stand with his back paws on the passenger seat and his front ones spread across the dashboard, peering through the windscreen, like he was memorising the route. One time, just to fuck with him, I went the long way round. I swear he gave me a dirty look.
But at some point, he gave up escaping and took up permanent residence under the house, behind the hot water cylinder. Aside from several months where he appeared to take on the Carl Williams role in a cat version of Underbelly, seeing off several rivals in a territorial battle for control of the block, there were still no funny Mungo stories to be had. And, three years later, he finally dropped dead of what appeared to be old age. There was a sad backyard burial in the rain that has, in my memory, become indistinguishable from the monkey funeral in Sunset Boulevard.
The very next day, a dog came to visit and, late in the afternoon, I found myself shouting these words to my startled guests: ‘Come quick! The dog’s trying to dig up the cat!’
There is still, stuck to my fridge, a photo of Mungo, lolling with uncharacteristic languor on his back on a lawn. His expression gives nothing away. Who knows what he got up to under the house. I always picture him rolling his own cigarettes and placing a bet with the TAB on a secret line. Then he checks the tripwires, before curling up to sleep, with a gun under his pillow.
Tony Martin is the Melbourne-based author of ‘A Nest of Occasionals’ and ‘Lolly Scramble’. Podcasts of his radio show ‘Get This’ are still available for free download at iTunes (type in: ‘Get This: Richard Marsland Lives’). Most recently, he directed new episodes of ‘The Librarians’, which returns to ABC1 on October 13.
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