Safe and Sound

He had a prodigious poo in the garden, right in the middle of the grass, and tried, ineffectually, to cover it with grass. MasterB was hiding in a shrub. Ginger has biffed him a couple of times in the past few days, and although he had approached MasterB with his tail hoisted in the flag of friendship, my boy was taking no chances
I sat on the edge of a flowerbed and watched. I spent around an hour and a half watching, grooming, stroking, this evening. Ginger was friendly but skittish. Sudden movements made him run. I gave him the catnip to play with; stroked his head and experimentally held a clump of his fur on the back of his neck. He stayed calm, but we were yards away from the cat basket. Bluebottles buzzed around the cage. Very unattractive.
It was getting close to seven o’clock. Despite the lack of anti-biotics, Ginger’s face was much less swollen, although I could see a big pink hole just below his mouth. I fished around in the cat basket and found a biscuit. I offered it to Ginger. He leapt on it and ate it. A hungry boy.
I moved back to the basket, fished around some more and oiked all the biscuits I had hopefully put there on Sunday onto the ground. Ginger advanced. So did MasterB. I cuddled MasterB and stroked Ginger.
There would never be a better time.

Screwing my courage to the sticking place, I scruffed him, and, to the surprise of both of us, got him in the cat basket. My heart was racing like a train. He was bashing his head against the lid and trying to escape.
I put him in the car, strapped the seatbelt around him and rang Ann from the cattery. Thank goodness she answered. She was out, but said she would ring Chris and say I was on my way.
We set off. An ambulance screamed round us. An accident. I did a U-turn. I never do U-turns, although not for reasons of ideology. We travelled to the cattery by slow stages, red lights a feature of our journey. I talked to Ginger almost constantly; told him he’d be safe, warm and fed, that tomorrow (I wasn’t going to lie to him) would probably be stressful and involve a vist to the vet, but she loves gingers and would anaesthetise him if she thought he couldn’t cope.
Normally the road by the cattery is a nightmare. On Sunday, when I collected the cage, I had to park a quarter of a mile away. I apologised to Ginger in advance for any distress he would experience as we walked the pavements back to the cattery.
There is a god. A huge space just a few doors down from the cattery.
Chris was in a rush, but she let me follow her with Ginger down to the run that will be his temporary home. I told her about the poo. She opened the lid and Ginger hopped out.
He’s handsome, she said, and reached a hand down to him where he stood by the cat scratching post. Then she put her hand under him and lifted him up to say hello. No struggle, no hissing. I had been feeling fairly heroic until that point. My goodness, I said, you’d have caught him in five minutes.
By the way, she said, he finished that poo in the basket
Back up the garden path and she promised that I shall know the outcome of the visit to the vet. So please keep your fingers crossed that there are no underlying health problems, that Ginger will get treatment for his healing abscess, vaccinations, neutering and eventually find himself in a home where he is the centre of attention, loved and adored, in a lap of luxury beyond his wildest dreams.
You know he’s worth it.
And I do have a scratch, but not from Ginger, just my own ineptitude with the cat basket.

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