Stray Cat Rescue Part 6 ~ The All Singing All Dancing Song For A Stray Kitty.

She sings, she dances, she’s got Shirley Ballas ankles. If there’s a game to be played, a bag to be opened and a bed to be slept on she’s in. So am I. I’m the same. We’re the same. What were the chances we’d find each other? Soulmates.

Shirley Ballas ankles.

The torturous spell of silence and lethargy had broken and she was back to wandering around the house shouting for some geezer called Raul and tearing around under the sofa in my shoes. I didn’t even know Raul was missing. Anybody seen Ra-ooooool?

Trying on my shoes.

She’s very loquacious with a wildly entertaining and expressive vocal repertoire. Her purr is cute, it’s how a little lady cat’s purr would sound in a Disney movie and it is often very soft and saved for snuggle time on a blankey. Other times she walks in and straight through the room yelling, just yelling. Then we have the ‘arms folded disgruntled mother-in-law’ “Mhmmmmm”, which is not to be confused with the ‘I’m happy and I know it’ “Mhmmmmm”. The devil is in the delivery.

The only time she growls is when she sees or hears an old man outside, and so do I. The only time she hisses is when she plays with her catnip sheep on a stick (think she missed a memo) and I don’t know if it’s a lingering side effect of the vaccinations, but she still has quite a lot of saliva which makes her hisses sound more like raspberries, to my total hilarity. Also, when she has a bath, everybody has a bath. It’s a bit like living with Schnorbitz in an episode of The Two Ronnies. 

Morning.

Then, of course, there is the shrill scream of the undead being dragged back to the jaws of purgatory before the first glimpse of light at the break of every new day. That searing 5AM siren for the final call to arms in the last throws of the apocalypse. Theories abound as to what demonic horrors inspired Stevenson to write Jekyll and Hyde, however I know he must have had a cat. There is nothing so terrifying as having a hangry black kitten throttling you by the throat and sinking it’s rabid tiny teeth into your face in the gloomy fog before dawn, to then be transformed by the inhalation of chunks in gravy into a snuffling warm stole wrapped around your bleeding neck and gazing adoringly into your tragic teary eyes. Breakfast alarm. Freaks. 

Get up and fill this before one of us dies.

Sweetest of all her noises though is the Mogwai song. She sings like Gizmo in Gremlins, sometimes on her own or sometimes with me when I sing to her. I could just die. 

The last thing the lady at the garden centre said to me as she waved us off was “You have to sing to her!” The first thing I sang to her was Elvis’s “Love Me”. She was instantly entranced. She’d stop what she was doing, lock them headlamps on me and walk towards me in a hypnotised trance. It worked every time, I’d just have to sing the first line “Treat Me like a fool...” and she would be on my lap, headbutting me with affection and heavy purring. 

She absolutely loved it, wherever I was in the house, if she was alone and meowing I’d sing Elvis and she’d come running. All cats love Elvis. Then her next favourite song was Simon and Garfunkel’s “Cecilia”, but I’d change the words to “Oh Begonia, I’m down on my knees, I’m begging you please don’t bite meez, don’t bite meez” and she’d stamp up and down in a dance with her tiny tango legs. 

Her nighttime track is Peggy Lee’s “Don’t Smoke In Bed”, the kid’s got class. Jazz cat. 

Come a bit closer.

The breakthrough for me came out of the blue one day. I used to listen to the likes of Paul McCartney confidently explaining how he wrote “Yesterday” in five minutes before he got out of bed and I’d twist in the middle with envy. It always took me months of tormented suffering to write anything, even a shopping list, never mind a song. I’ve never written anything in five minutes, until my Muse arrived. 

My Muse.

I was sitting on the sofa on the 24th of September and made up a song on the spot as I sat staring at her and she stared at me back. I felt like looking behind me to see where the words were coming from, but I could see them coming out of my mouth. She couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe it. I bloody wrote it down as fast as I thought of it. This was our song. This was our future. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, but “Song For A Stray Kitty” was born. 

It just came out, so easily, so I sat on it. It was still my year off work and I have a tendency to overwork, so I was strict with myself. I’d just sing it and she’d love it, but I left it parked in iPad’s pages till the new year. Ripening. 

Musing in the Jungle Room with Peggy and Elvis.