Cats

21 April 2012
Saturday
1.00am

The battle between winter and spring wages on; the snow cover of a few hours ago was washed away by rain only to be replaced again two hours later. The temperature is bang on zero but as the snow continues to fall, the gutters and down pipes are alive with running water.

...

Sitting outside the school kitchen with a coffee as the snow was falling earlier on, the ginger cat from next door meowed and ran under the chair next to me. I leaned over and held out my hand while making a clicking sound out of the side of my mouth. The cat, as usual, ran up to me but didn't stop.

I had seen him yesterday in the grass field as I was on my way to the supermarket. He saw me and scarpered.

He's an odd cat.

On one of my first days here, he came in through my open front door. I thought I had a new companion but he seemed to realise that he had made a mistake and turned round and left the way he had come.

He may be an odd cat but he is nothing compared to Gerard. My Finnish ginger is a younger version of Gerard who arrived at my house in Hollicondane Road in Ramsgate together with Ludovic, my French lodger a couple of years ago.

Ludo is an eccentric manager of Ramsgate's only cocktail bar. He's eccentric in a gentle way. A gentle and quiet eccentric cocktail maker with a very special talent for making extremely good cocktails. He has only two problems; his extremely strong French accent which most of the locals of Ramsgate cannot understand, and his very laid back and slow approach to cocktail mixing. He's a lovely guy but his eccentricity has rubbed off on his cat, which he named after Gerard Depardieu.

...

I generally don't like cats; I am a dog person and find cats too arrogant by far. I don't mind arrogance in cases where it is deserved but I see no reason why a cat should be so proud. Their eyes look through you and make no emotional connection; there's just a cold blankness. They don't know their names and only respond when food is on offer.

My sister Katie has a cat which frightens me. I am sure the thing hates me and although I have known this cat for a number of years, I have no recollection of ever having heard its name. If I have heard it, I just haven't registered it. I walk into a room and this thing has a tendency of appearing from nowhere and frightening the living daylights out of me with its hissing and spitting. Why does it do this?

And besides, I am allergic to cats.

A dog, on the other hand, exhibits real emotion through its eyes. A dog doesn't just know its name, it understands many words.

However, I don't have much time for people who talk to dogs; that's taking it just a bit too far.

...

The ginger Finn is the only cat I have seen here in Finland so it is difficult to make a generalisation about the character of Finnish cats. If this cat is a typical Finnish cat, then their personality is between that of English and Japanese cats.

I have often found that cats in England can easily be misled; they come to you when beckoned and even strangers in the street can be persuaded to follow you. I used to see a black cat on my way to the station in the mornings when I was commuting to London. After the first couple of times of noticing this cat, I quite easily tricked it into thinking I like cats and befriended it. It often accompanied me on my morning walk.

Japanese cats are quite different. They have no trust in strangers at all and will run away at the slightest hint of being noticed. I used to wonder whether this was because they were mistreated by little children but I was unable to verify this.

Because of the way the cat is revered in Japan, this would have been strange but would fit in with how I saw a lot of dogs being treated which were often left chained up outside.

Perhaps Japanese people just have a preference for cats over dogs. Cats are quite deeply ingrained in their culture. The good-luck cat seen in Asian, mostly Chinese, restaurants in London, sitting up and beckoning to passers by to come in, is actually Japanese. They are usually white but can be gold.

The foremost Japanese author of the Meiji period (1868-1912), Natsume Soseki, penned the famous satirical novel Wagahai Neko de aru; I am a Cat, about the erosion of Japanese culture through the aping of Western norms. The protagonist is a cat that speaks in the formal language usually expected of the noble classes.

The cat appears in a wide cross section of Japanese culture, including some of the famous Studio Ghibli anime films; The Cat Returns and Kiki's Delivery Service about a black cat and a young broomstick-riding witch who sets up a flying delivery service.

...

Cats that run away from you in a country where cats are placed on a pedestal, to cats that follow you in the streets in a country where man's best friend is the dog.

I wonder where the cat stands in Finnish society. In the flesh, my ginger neighbour is a mixture of the two; he runs up to me but carries running right on by.