“If I could find a real life place to make me feel like Tiffany’s, then I’d buy some furniture and give the cat a name!”
the real tiger in the flat
There are few things more depressing than clearing out and packing up ready to move. However, being stuck at home during a T8 with nothing better to do than to clear out and pack up with a cat who is equally climbing the walls is definitely one of them.
This was the situation this week as typhoon Utor struck its path through Hong Kong, bringing gale force winds and horizontal rain. To be honest, I’ve seen worse, and in order to justify being stranded on my island, forced to miss my favourite yoga class, I would want to see worse. But still, better safe than swept out to sea, and it did force me to finally tackle that pile of paperwork that’s been glaring at me from under the coffee table for the past few months. How many important documents I threw away in my haste, I am yet to discover, but the pile has been reduced, a small victory achieved. Next on the list: the stash of newspapers and shopping bags under the kitchen sink. Oh joy! How I can’t wait to be leaving!
“What about Audrey?” My mother asks, as the cat bolts back and forth between bedroom and lounge, desperately trying to exercise in the 500 sq ft of space we currently call home. “Is she looking forward to the move?”
“She doesn’t know it yet,” I say, “but she is. We both are. We need more space.”
Funnily enough, this had not been a consideration when I moved in. Light, bright and perfectly sized for one and a half, “It’s nice,” I thought, “but something is missing.”
Having never really intended to be in Hong Kong long term – certainly not three and a half years! – I’m used to living in sparsely furnished apartments, that sense of always having just moved in. But moving to rural Lamma last year – where a knowledge of Cantonese is helpful, a memory for ferry schedules essential and the number for the Snake Police imperative – made me feel all the more how frighteningly isolated single life could be. As anyone will tell you, I’m not usually one for wanting to share my space, but surely having someone there when you come home at night – someone whose capacity for conversation extended no further than ‘miaow’ – might help make you feel more at home?
Enter Audrey. An example of ask and the universe shall provide.
I can still hear my boss on the phone now imparting sympathy to a distressed parent. Perhaps because she does it every day, but this time it was different. A student was leaving to go to school in the UK and her parents were moving to a flat that did not allow pets. Their beloved cat Qu-Qu was facing eviction and could Liz give it a home? My ears pricked up. Having just suffered a similar fate and been rescued from imminent homelessness over Christmas, I was urged to repay my karmic debt and give a home (and a new name!) to Qu-Qu. It was either that or another unwanted soul for the RSPCA cull.
when you look up at me with those eyes…
So, several days later I found myself with a rather heavy Louis Vuitton bag with an enormous, frightened pair of eyes staring out at me. It was a small, very timid-looking Puss-in-Boots that slunk out of the bag that night to hide under the sofa, refusing to eat until she’d sniffed and rubbed herself over everything in the flat, but once that was achieved there was no stopping her.
Keeping me awake half the night mewing, scratching my yoga mat and biting whenever I tried to stroke her, I was soon led to conclude that Qu-Qu had not been half as beloved as her previous owners suggested, or trained out of such kittenish habits as not attacking people.
For my boyfriend, this was all fun and games. His flatmate was fostering two sick kittens and he liked nothing better than to romp around with them. “But Audrey’s a cat,” I moaned. “She’s not a kitten any longer. She shouldn’t be biting people.”
“If she bites me, I’ll bite her back,” my Mum, who over the years has to my knowledge sheltered no less than 6 cats, 3 dogs, 4 rabbits, 2 guinea pigs, 1 terrapin and innumerable hamsters and fish, warned, and that’s pretty much how I felt.
It upset me when she cowered and flinched, bit and scratched for no reason. We could be sitting there having a nice stroke one minute and the next she’d be spitting and hissing, baring her fangs and ready with her claws. But why am I using the past tense? Audrey is still like this. There are moments we occasionally share, usually when I am ill or reading in bed when she comes and nestles down beside me, nudging the book with her nose as if it is Austen or Tolstoy she wants strokes from, not me. And, sure enough, as soon as I start petting her, she looks at me with sufferance, if not downright contempt, and may allow me to carry on if she is in the mood, or bites me if she is not.
As my mum would say, you get the pet you deserve. Like Paul and Toby.
Toby was a rescue dog. Not like Lassie, rather, neglected and left to starve all day by his previous owner, he had no off-switch as far as the hunt for food was concerned. Forever begging up at your with his enormous brown eyes and stealing food as soon as your back was turned (even when it was a craftily laid, chili-laced ploy to deter him from doing it again), we were all quite assertive enough to tell him to go and lie down when we’d had enough and wanted to be left alone to eat our dinners in peace. But not Paul. Kind-hearted, weak-willed, a complete push-over, Paul would softly, patiently ask Toby to please go away until, enraged and murderous, he wanted to stab him with his chopsticks. “He’s here to teach you assertiveness,” my mum would nod sagely. But in the end, Toby was just a dog and there’s only so much one ravenous mongrel can achieve in a lifetime.
curling up with the kitty
Audrey is, for me, equally symbolic and I persevere, defending her when my boyfriend tries to poke her pouchy belly, giving into her preference for Ocean Fish over Mackerel, and letting her alone to chase the geckos (which, FYI, usually escape with their lives, minus their tails). And for her part, she has learned not to scratch mummy’s yoga mat but now leaps around and over it, joining in alongside me for the occasional cat stretch. (Her downward-dog’s pretty good too.)
a natural yogi
I may have thought that taking on a cat was as simple as making a commitment to staying in Hong Kong and making a new home, at least for a little while longer (another 18 months, as it turned out); taking responsibility for something – someone – other than my little old self. Hence, the name. Looking every bit like Cat from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, it seemed only right that I “give the cat a name” – a proper name.
However, Audrey had more to teach me than just this. She came into my life around the same time my boyfriend, Jonny, did and has been a mirror to my own independence, solitude and intolerance. If I have had to work slowly and patiently to gain what little of her trust in humans is left (after being, I surmise, left alone most days with the domestic helpers, savaged and molested by small children and then ditched on me when they’d had enough), Jonny has had his work cut out getting through the hard shell of my insecurities, anxieties and neuroses. And I have had to learn to love and accept his – mainly, lovingness.
As he says, he’s the dog and I am the cat. He wants to sniff my butt and I want to scratch his face. But we’re getting there, slowly.
Going the distance 