Fiendish felines can sniff man’s weakness from kilometres away

My home in the ghetto has become Chez Hardwick Cat Restaurant for the neighbourhood’s feline fraternity.

Peter Patter cartoon for 15/1/21

IT DOESN’T take David Attenborough to attest that members of the animal world can communicate with each other.

I’ve seen it first hand, particularly since I’ve been holed up in the house with a severe attack of gout these last few weeks.

The second hand cat that I inherited from its one previous owner was quick to deduce that I was incapacitated and spending inordinate amounts of time on the couch with my throbbing, swollen left foot in a raised position.

The fiendish feline quickly realised I couldn’t chase it off the kitchen table or swipe at it when it started to claw at my couch – an activity of which it partakes when he believes I’m ignoring him.

To combat my lack of movement, I had lined up a series of projectiles to hurl at the mongrel moggy when it transgressed but to little effect.

One of the projectiles was an old hair brush – a remnant from the days when I actually had hair – that I had been using to scratch my underfoot which, along with the gout, becomes itchy.

When the cat started clawing at the other lounge, I threw the hair brush with some force but it had ricocheted about 5cm from the cat and landed on the floor in front of it.

That hair brush is now the cat’s favourite toy which it wrestles across the floor to my annoyance when I’m trying to hear the TV news.

But it got worse.

Soon word spread among the feline fraternity that I was incapacitated to the point I could no longer, for the time being anyway, scat the ginger stray cat that wanders into my home from time to time and helps itself to the second hand cat’s tucker.

I was lounging on the couch when I heard the unmistakeable sound of cat’s teeth gnawing at kitty biscuits when I looked down to see the second hand cat on the floor in front of me.

I peered over the lounge to see, not the ginger stray cat, but a black moggy never seen before at my house in the ghetto.

Soon other cats were turning up to dine at Chez Hardwick Feline Restaurant in the ghetto.

The only positive to come out of this was that my throwing arm, dormant since my cricketing days, was getting a good workout as I hurled any number of projectiles at the unwanted feral visitors.

Meanwhile, the overfed second hand cat just stretched out on the floor enjoying a nap as his mates from across the neighbourhood tucked into his tucker.

Fair dinkum, the second hand cat makes Garfield look positively energetic.

Fortunately, I haven’t had many human visitors during my gout inspired hiatus at home for I’m not too sure how I would have explained away the myriad of hair brushes, cricket balls and wooden jenga pieces strewn across the kitchen floor around the second hand cat’s food bowls.