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| Name: |
Phantom
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Age: |
Four years old
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| Gender: |
Male
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Kind: |
Moggie
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| Home: |
Adelaide, South Australia |
This
is our boy Phantom. He's looking supremely smug in this photo,
because he's just evicted me from my seat on the couch, and he knows
he's so sweet and furry we'd never push him off. We adopted him from
the RSPCA shelter on Anzac Day in 2002, when he was about one year old.
We had gone there to get a kitten, but he won our hearts with
his beautiful face and friendly ways. He came right up to the bars of
the cage, and rubbed his face against our fingers, and purred, before
demonstrating his understanding of the use of litter trays. We'll never
know how he spent his first year - I would dearly loved to have known
him as a kitten - but whatever happened, it left him with a stiff back
leg, a fear of vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers, garbage trucks, small
children and other creators of loud scary noises, a very strong sense of
the dignity owed to a cat, and the ability to defend that dignity.
After he came to live with us, there was a period of training and
adjustment. He taught us that the back door must be open any time a
human is in the house, and that some things claiming to be cat food are
just not so. He is the undisputed ruler of the household, with
inalienable rights to sleep wherever he pleases, and as much food, cat
milk and cat snacks (Whiskas cravers) as he wants. He is the Tabby
Prince, and when gentle reminders are not enough, or sometimes just for
the sake of amusement, he lets us know his displeasure by treating our
feet as prey. Sometimes, before he has a good grip, we can escape just
by walking away (very carefully), but if we bring hands into the game,
ie to unwrap the beast from a sensitive foot, he either transfers to the
hand (and becomes a tabby Enjo glove) or repeatedly leaps back into the
fray, aiming higher and higher, until we can distract him with a toy, or
a soft blanket. I have never known a cat to get so aggravated, and I
wonder if it was something that happened in his first year that
sometimes just sets him off against humans.
When he's not living up to his name in that respect (The Phantom
Menace), he's a dear dear boy. If he's nearby when we get home, he
greets us in the driveway and rolls for us, exposing his soft white
tummy fur. This position is known as 'tabby trap', and may or may not
work out well for the hapless human who falls for it, but we can't help
trying. Mostly he really does enjoy it, but sometimes he's in a playful
mood and is looking for a game. He loves playing in trees, dashing
about above our heads, puffing up his fur, and getting big black eyes.
The game is to try to touch his belly fur without losing skin, and he
almost always wins. (But he gets so cute when he plays that game, we
can't resist).
He enjoys lying around in the garden, just watching things and sniffing
the breezes, and will sometimes spend several straight days and nights
outside, with the occasional visit to check on us. One of his
favorite sleeping places inside is on top of the hot water heater
(winter or summer), although he has spots under the beds on old
quilts and not so old polartec blankets. He loves to sit on my lap
(only when I'm sitting in the proper cat-lap position though), and
enjoys a good neck and face scritch, and a good dribble too. He is
fastidious with washing, keeping his whites pristine and his tabby bits
shiny and healthy. And he's the only cat I've ever seen do a
coordinated two-paw face-and-head wash.
His latest fetish is rolling in rose prunings and rubbing his face on
the prickles.
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