Old Stripy Bum

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I’m still repop­u­lat­ing the miss­ing photos from the old entries. It’s boring and tedi­ous, so I’ll write about my cat because it’s more fun.

A couple of months ago I adop­ted a young cat from the local anim­al shel­ter. The profile said he was play­ful and curi­ous, had a miss­ing tail and needed a lot of atten­tion and activ­ity. He came with the name “Orio” (not even spelled correctly), but he didn’t answer to it, so I renamed him Jasper.

When I visited the shel­ter after having my flat inspec­ted for suit­ab­il­ity, I had him in mind, but also wanted to see all the cats. Before I met him, I stroked anoth­er friendly cat that approached me, and he star­ted crying and complain­ing as if to say “but you came here to see me“. So I picked him up and had a cuddle and he star­ted purring loudly. The woman who ran the shel­ter said “that’s defin­itely your cat, he’s picked you”. Appar­ently he had snubbed all the other people who came to see him. When I collec­ted him the follow­ing week, he put himself into the cat carri­er imme­di­ately, and strolled out into my flat with this air of “yes, I live here now”.

He was taken away from the previ­ous owners because they were abus­ive. A social work­er went to visit the family about their chil­dren and saw them being extremely viol­ent to the cat, and made them give him up to the anim­al shel­ter. They wouldn’t explain what had happened to his tail. It’s surpris­ing that he wants anything to do with humans, but actu­ally it’s the oppos­ite. He thinks anyone who doesn’t hit him is bril­liant.

I have my suspi­cions that the abus­ive family might have stolen him. He’s defin­itely part Bengal cat, and he clearly came from a good home origin­ally, as he’s immacu­late with his litter tray and food bowl. I doubt people like that would pay a lot of money for a cat and then treat it like that. I’d love to know what he’s mixed with too- he’s big, and got the silky Bengal fur, bold mark­ings and rabbity feet, but he’s also got big poin­ted ears which are not stand­ard.

At any rate, he knows he’s a pretty boy, and he delib­er­ately poses for photo­graphs and begs for atten­tion from visit­ors. He’s also a giant wuss, and rubbish at hunt­ing. The only thing he’s ever caught is a bee, and he ended up with a swollen paw for half an hour after­wards (even if he did look very smug and self-satis­fied about it).

He also likes to be involved in everything, and super­vise it to make sure it’s done prop­erly.

Pretend­ing to be a sports­cat and not fool­ing anyone. He regu­larly gets outwit­ted by a feath­er on a string.

 

 

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