Old cat, new tricks
an old cat should be set in her ways, but 15-year-old annie decides she’s game for something new.
IWENT home to Spain last month to see my mum and Annie, her 15-year-old cat. Quite frankly, I half expected her to have passed away, so it was an extra nice surprise to see her again: Annie, not my mum.
At 15 — that would be about 90 if she were human — Annie is a little skinny but she’s always been a slim girl. Her fur is per- fectly soft, her eyes are bright and she minces along as elegantly as ever. If you were to see her, you’d peg her at no more than 10 or so.
There are tell-tale signs that she’s an old lady, though.
For one thing, Annie spends a lot of time resting upstairs in my mother’s room. Annie has her own pillow and commands quite half of my mother’s bed. She also has her own chair that stands in front of the window. From here, Annie can see into the garden below and across the street.
In addition, she is a little stiff when jumping up on tables, counters and walls. Annie used to be able to just soar, but nowadays she pauses a second and you can see her hindquarters bunch and tense as she sizes up the leap. There’s no point in offering to give her a hand; Annie doesn’t like being picked up. She’s a very independent girl.
The other thing is that nowadays Annie is a bit more assertive than before. Annie has always had a passion for iced water but she used to have a mannered politeness that meant she’d ask before dipping her whiskers into other people’s drinks.
These days, she’s a total menace. Take your eye off your glass for a second and you can guarantee that Annie has snuck up and pushed her fuzzy face into your water.
She’s also inspecting plates. Now Annie isn’t a food thief. In fact, she only likes one type of cat biscuit. In all the years we’ve known her, our finicky girl has steadfastly refused cat treats, gourmet pet food and even goodies like steak and fish that the average cat would kill for.
We’ve always put Annie’s weirdness down to the fact that she was shot with an air pistol and run over when she was a kitten. The bullet is lodged in her skull and she has a tricky hip and jaw that we keep an eye on.
She’s old and rickety and we love her, so when Annie decided to adopt the role of food inspector, we shrugged and let her have