The prodigal cat and other developments

The local beach is superb at this time of the year. The sea’s the warmest it’s been all summer owing to the sun having been warming it for months on end, coupled with the fact that in mid-October the air temperature is a much more tolerable mid-20’s rather than upper 30’s, making the sea, at around 27ºC, feel like a warm bath. Also, the ‘bodies’ are sparsely spread too, so all in all it’s a wonderful time to be able to swim and sip one’s coffee and appreciate life in general.

This past few days have been frustrating and mystifying in equal measure. Frustrating because I ordered a new battery for my aging MacBook Pro about three week ago, was told it would come within two days and then waited three weeks. When it finally arrived the bloke in the iLab, Lefteris, showed me that they’d sent the wrong model, and thus the whole process of ordering had to be done again, coupled with the need that Lefteris has now of sending back the ones he can’t use. I say ‘ones’ here because, apparently a MacBook Pro Retina like mine actually used two batteries in tandem. Something to do with how they fit it all into the space available in the Mac’s case I suppose.

Why mystifying though? Well, if you’ve been reading my musings for any length of time then you’ll know only too well that we used to have a cat called Mavkos. Some time early last spring he left us without a word of explanation and never came back, well, apart from one very odd visit at coffee time on the terrace one morning when he showed up months after he’d left, sauntered across the terrace in front of us, then disappeared yet again, this time apparently, or so we thought, for good. In the ensuing months we’ve been courted by three cats all vying for a place in our affections, and I’ve previously named them as Whitesock, Groucho and Ginge, the latter being the only one of those three that lets us stroke him. We’ve tried not to feed them too much, because we don’t want them to become reliant on us, it simply wouldn’t be fair on them, after all. Of the three, it seems that Ginge has won the territory battle and now all local cats defer to him when it comes to our garden, terrace, and veranda.

It all changed the day before yesterday, though. Some weeks ago while we were sipping Ellinikos with Angla’i’a and Giorgo, we’d mentioned how Mavkos had disappeared and Angla’i’a had told us, quite dispassionately, that she reckoned that he’d been run over by a car, since she was convinced that she’d seen a large black cat suffer that fate a while back. I didn’t like to press the point that Mavkos wasn’t black, but rather black and white, which to us made a difference. It meant that we could live in the hope that Angla’i’a had got it wrong. We let the subject drop and tried not to think about the possibility of it having been true. We’d have had nightmares dreaming about dear Mavkos suffering had it actually been him. Before he finally left us he’d grown up with us from a small kitten to a formidable Tom, who let us pick him up, smooth him and cuddle him until the cows came home, which they seldom do around these parts anyway, since there aren’t any. His life with us had spanned a couple of years and, by the time he abruptly abandoned us he’d become part of the family, and no mistake.

Our heartbreak at having lost Mavkos was yet another reason why we couldn’t allow Ginge, Whitesock or Groucho to wheedle themselves into our affections to the same degree as had Mavkos, I’m sure you understand why. Anyway, the day before yesterday I had to shoot down into town at around 6.00pm in order to get my Mac’s batteries fitted, a mission that you already know proved spectacularly unsuccessful, but when I drove back up to the house at around 7.00pm, Yvonne charged out of the front door in a state of agitation. As I got out of the car she pointed excitedly toward the veranda and said, “It can’t be, surely, can it? That looks like Mavkos on the chair round there. Go and have a look, quick!”

Thinking that this couldn’t be possible, I shot around to the veranda and there, curled up on what used to be his favourite chair, was this big, healthy-looking black and white cat. I approached him slowly, at which he perked up and stared at me, alarm in his eyes. Now, if you’ve ever owned a cat you’ll know that you never mistake your puddytat for another. You know your cat’s markings intimately, don’t you. And I knew instantly that I was making eye contact with Mavkos, our ‘Mavs’ whom we hadn’t seen for six months, maybe more. Yvonne had already fed him a few titbits, but he hadn’t allowed her to get near enough to stroke him. As I gradually closed up the distance between us, he shot off from the chair and ran a few feet away, then took a look back at me as if to say, “No closer, OK?“

I tried talking to him, using his name frequently, but he was having none of it. Maybe, we thought, maybe he was unsure as to what kind of reception we’d give him after all this time. At least he wasn’t skin and bone, anything but, in fact, so wherever he’d been he’d been well fed all right. But on this occasion he shied away from close contact. After a further few minutes, he took one more look back at me and strode off across the terrace and out of the garden, leaving us none the wiser about how he’d survived for all this time. We went inside, both excited and dismayed at the same time. How could he not trust us to smooth him, pet him, when he surely remembered us so well? Maybe wherever he’d been living he’d been well fed, but not mollycoddled like he’d been with us, who knows. Any cat psychologists out there?

Fast forward to the following morning. I pulled back the blinds on our French windows at around 8.30am, and there, back on his chair, was the familiar shape of Mavkos. Opening the door, I crept out to him slowly, and this time he stayed on the chair. He even ‘spoke’ to me like he always used to. Stretching out my hand, and fully expecting him to recoil, I went to stroke his head, and he stayed put. I succeeded, and he behaved just like he always used to, even partially closing his eyes with pleasure as I ran my hand gently across his fur. Fortunately we still had some cat food in the cupboard, so I poured some into his dish (which we still have too, of course), put it down for him and watched while he tucked in ravenously, whilst also allowing me to pet him as much as I liked. Mavkos, it seems, is back. No explanations, no clue as to where he’d been all this time, but he’s back…

Of course, we’re not so daft as not to think that maybe we’re simply his ‘fall-back’ home. What if the people he’d been hanging out with had up and left the village for whatever reason? Surely he’d think, “I know, I’ll go back to those two mugs and they’ll feed me again.” We always fed him dry food, as we believe that it’s better for him than the wet stuff. Cats though, are like kids, right? If the other people that fed him gave him juicy meaty chunks, then no doubt that would have been why he’d stayed there and left us in the lurch, who knows. Answers on a postcard (or maybe in the comments below)…

Yesterday evening he was back again, seemingly quickly adopting his old habits. As luck would have it for him, we’d had baked potatoes with tuna/mayo filling for tea, so he was able to mop up the scraps of leftover tuna, which he lapped up rapidly, before strolling off to sit against the wall like he was back in his domain. Oh, and he’s already had one faceoff with Ginge, who’s not at all well pleased that this far larger Tom is back on what had become his patch.

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OK, so time for some photos…

This first batch is yet another collection from a night-time village walk, we’re talking midnight on Sunday…