As far as I know, nobody ever gave him a name. But he's been around for the last couple of years, and throughout 2008 he became a nuisance.
He started coming into the house at night(using the cats' door, of course), waking me as he ravenously devoured the food in their on the washing machine at the opposite end of the house, clicking the bowl against the wall as he reached for the last pellets. I didn't mind that too much, as I sleep lightly anyhow, and usually wake up several times a night. At first Timoteo and Pandora were upset, and Timmie chased him away several times.
But when he started spraying inside the house early last year, Timmie decided something had to be done about it and there were several battles, both in the house and in the field across the road. Timmie seemed to be getting the worst of it, and had to be treated with antibiotics on several occasions for bad abscesses from claw punctures on his cheeks.
I considered adopting him several times, but he was extremely mistrustful, and neither of my cats gave any sign that they would consider peaceably accepting his company.
The cats' door is right behind me in this little study, and a couple of hours ago I heard coughing and looked back. I though at first it was Pandora - she's a blue and yellow tortoise-shell, but in the twilight behind my desk all cats are grey... But on closer inspection, while the body was Pandora's size, the head was the big, broad head of an un-castrated male cat.
His face was swollen, and he seemed to have a weeping left eye. And he was obviously very ill, as he allowed me to stroke his head. He was wet - it's raining - and evidently feeling cold. So I went and got some towells, dried him with one, wrapped him in another, and took him to the workshop, where I mad him a bed with two more towells and left him covered up while I came inside to fetch some food and water.
He was just as I had left him when I returned. He refused both food and drink. I stroked him, and he seemed to appreciate this, but whenever he started to purr it would set off a fit of coughing. I don't know if he'll make it through the night. He's skin and bones.
Why did he come in while I was here, so close to the door? I've never shown him any kindness, never given him a sign that I might symathize with him. I am filled with remorse for not having been firm with Timoteo and Pandora - both of whom were adopted from the street. It was easier to tell myself that he was doing OK on his own, and that his spraying and his enmity with Timmie were preferable to going to all the trouble and expense of taming and castrating him, vaccines, and especially establishing some degree of conviviality in the household.
Why did he come in? Surely he has safe, warm, dry places in the neighbourhood. He never tried to sleep in the house or the workshop on the coldest winter nights.
Yellow Cat knows that he is my conscience. I just went to the workshop to see him. He's huddled up under his towell, accepts my light stroking of his large head and bony body. Why did he come in? Does he think I can save him? (If he's still alive in the morning, I will of course call the vet...). Or does he know that my garden is also a graveyard of loved pets and abandoned strays?
It would have been so much easier if he had just ceased... just never appeared again, so that I could suppose he had been run over by a car, or died in some fight with a stray dog. But no, here he is in my workshop, accusing me of callousness. I weep for him, for his dreadful loneliness, and for the horrible human selfishness that has brought him to this indifferent home.
Yellow Cat is my conscience.
