Discipline—once you get beyond all the blanco and school traditions—means, If You Don't Do What I Want I'll Hit You. One problem here, of course, is that a cat is a hard animal to hit. A dog is always amenable to the famous rolled-up newspaper, whereupon it can go into the sorrowful grovelling, whining and sighing routine that would get a human actor booed off the stage. Hitting a cat is like walloping a furry glove full of pins, and doesn't make a blind bit of difference anyway. A relative who will remain unidentified until the RSPCA Statute of Limitations runs out always reckoned that a half-brick thrown the length of a garden6 was necessary even to get a cat to pay attention. Distasteful though it may seem, however, there are times when even a Real cat owner feels it necessary to Take Action. Here are some options:
…which is the first thing to hand when you're digging7 and you see, out of the corner of your eye, the guilty crouching shape as it sits among the cabbages and peas.8 The GBCOE is the rubber bullet of garden preservation, designed to chastise without actual death. The approved method is to hit ground zero about eighteen inches from the culprit, the resultant short sharp shower of shrapnel causing it to leap two feet vertically and suffer acute intestinal distress for the rest of the day. The trouble is, though, that the cat soon works out that you are a typical Real cat owner, ie, a soft touch, and realises that if it calls your bluff, your ferocious stance will melt and you'll just run grumbling to the United Nations. The four cats that turn our garden into a vegetable Jonestown every Spring have realised this, and sit demurely among the whizzing clods visibly thinking “Why is the funny man jumping up and down like that? And why is his aim so bad?”
Don't think this hasn't been discussed.
Just occasionally Life gets It Right, like the time the sly alsatian from up the road decided to crap in the middle of Real cat owner's driveway just when Real cat owner was coming round the corner with a large onion in his hand.
Even better, though, was Real cat owner waking up from a doze on the lawn to find the current incumbent of the local Mad Feral Tom slot on the edge of the goldfish pond, staring intently at what remained of the inhabitants. Real cat owner quickly learns that it is, in fact, possible to go from a recumbent position into a full-length dive. But life's a strange thing. Cats can walk on water. I'll—that is, Real cat owner'll—swear MFT leapt off the surface.
Where was Real cat, obtained you will remember in order to keep other cats out of the garden, when this was going on? Asleep on chair in kitchen, as is always the case. Anyway, felt so bad about the way he wandered off, gave him free meal of sardines later.
Punishment has no effect on Real cats. This is because Real cats don't associate the punishment with the crime. As far as they're concerned, shouting, slippers on a low trajectory and being talked to in a loud, patient voice are all manifestations of the general weirdness of the blobs. All you have to do to survive it is cower a wee bit and look big-eyed, and then get on with your life.
You might as well challenge a centipede to an arse-kicking contest. You always start off ignoring the animal, and end up treating it with added kindness because it appears to be suffering from something.
Only in the worst case. It's beset with difficulties anyway, because:
1. They're not in the phone book.
2. It's expensive. Four small concrete boots still cost twice as much as two large ones, it's a bit like children's shoes.
3. It is almost impossible to get a horse's head into a cat basket.
Games cats play
No, this isn't all that stuff with the bells and catnip-filled calico mice. Cats only play with special cat toys for about two minutes, when you're around, in order that you don't get depressed and stop buying them food.
The thing to remember here is that cats only appear to be solitary animals, forever mooching around the place by themselves. In fact all cats are plugged into this sort of huge feline consciousness which transcends time and space and, in its own mind, a cat is constantly competing and measuring itself against all cats who have ever existed anywhere. It's as if Steve Davis wasn't simply competing against another man in a dicky bow, but against every snooker player throughout history, right back to the first proto-hominid who needed a really mindnumbing way of spending his evenings.
Cats have subtle, intellectual games.
This needs, as the playing area, something the size of a small village. Up to a dozen cats can take part. Each cat selects a vantage point—a roof, the coal house wall, a strategic corner or, in quiet villages, the middle of the road—and sits there. You think it's just found a nice spot to sun itself until you realise that each cat can see at least two other cats. Moves are made in a sort of high-speed slink with the belly almost touching the ground. The actual rules are a little unclear to humans, but it would seem that the object of the game is to see every other cat while remaining unseen yourself. This is just speculation, however, and it may well be that the real game is going on at some mystically higher level unobtainable by normal human minds, as in cricket.
A popular and simple cat game which archaeologists have found is as old as, well, wet cement. It consists of finding some wet cement and then running through it. There are degrees of skill, of course. Most marks are scored by running through cement which, while still being wet enough to take a pretty pattern of paw marks, is too far set for the builder to smooth them out.
This is similar to Wet Cement, only, er, not quite.
Offside is a cat game similar to Zen archery, in that it is not what is actually done but the style in which it is achieved that really matters. It consists simply of persistently being on the wrong side of
a door, and goes on for as long as human tolerance will stand and then a bit longer. A straightforward little game, only marginally more complex than the old favourite, Staring at the fridge.
However, there are degrees of complexity, and a skilled player of Offside will naturally choose locations which, while preternaturally difficult for humans to get to, will be soup and nuts for the cat to get away from.
The Locked Gerbil Mystery is a case in point.
Neighbour went away for holiday, leaving complex instructions re watering of garden, etc, but not to worry about the pullulating colony of gerbils in the dining room because distant relative Mrs Thing would drop in every day, or two to keep an eye on them.
Night comes, but not accompanied by Real cat. Familiar midnight performance, standing outside back door banging plate with spoon and calling out cat's name in squeaky voice, you know how you do, in tones that you hope will attract cat while not waking neighbours. Fancy takes hold, fears of lorries, foxes, traps float across mind.
Answer rises with dreadful inevitability, like boiling milk. Take torch, put on dressing gown, pad through dewy grass to picture-window of neighbour's house. Cat is sitting dribbling on dining table, watching vibrating gerbil colony, which is going mad. Treadmills are squeaking frantically in the night.
6. If St Francis of Assisi had prided himself on his broccoli, and saw the last little seedling turning yellow because of the ministrations of Itsthatsoddingtomfromnextdoor, he would have done the same thing.