RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30093, 29 March 1963, Page 17

RANDOM REMINDER

CAT A GLYSM

In a Papanui home where the one-eyed monster has just been installed lives a lean, scarred and rangy cat, aggressor in a hundred battles, winner of them all, the master of all the nice little dogs in the street and the terror of the mice, rats and birds —he even gives hedgehogs some anxious moments. He accepted the new television set in the living room on his infrequent appearances and slept calmly through all the noisy lead poisoning that seems inseparable from life, and death, way out west, shut his eyes to stirring family crises, ignored the news and weather, failed to laugh at comedians billed as making cats laugh, turned a bored and rheumy eye to the stri-

vings of athletes and purred in detached contentment in the gloom. But the time came when a lazy eye opened in the middle of a nature programme and there was a swift, sudden and electrifying metamorphosis The cat. alive, alert and in full hunting cry, went to ground and slowly and carefully crept to cover as the camera homed in on a rare little bird, flirting carefree with its mate and quite unaware of impending danger. The cat, keeping to cover, skirted the chesterfield, crept under a fireside chair and insinuated himself along a bookcase before settling himself for the spring. It never came. At close range, he found the picture had disintegrated. And puzzled, he shambled back to his

cushion, settled himself and glanced once more at the screen. And there, nature being what it is, were the two birds with a nest of fledglings, There was a great performance by the cat with even doser attention to the principles of stalking, but again he was angrily foiled. So it went on, while the fledglings ate, grew, gained their wings and left the nest. The cat has never been the same. He appears to have lost all confidence in his prowess and a mouse could run across his nose without him lifting a paw. He still fights cats and dogs but his owners wonder if his aggressive character in this respect will warp if he happens to wake one night during a film of a cat show. Or Crufts.