Elvis has left the building

I inherited Elvis the cat about three years or so ago when B and T upped sticks and went to live in Berlin. Seeing as our dear old family cat Gollum is no longer with us ( plus we have a cat flap and a garden) this seemed like a perfectly good idea, so he duly moved in. He is a funny little weirdo cat with beautiful tiger stripes and an ear that has a little nip out of it as if it was clipped by the ticket collector on the number 12 bus when I first moved to London ( for those who remember such things) though more likely be the result of a run in with a fox.

Elvis has always been quite ” spirited”, a term used for me in numerous school reports which mostly means a bit naughty but in his case add “no regard for personal safety”. When he was very small he used to run out of the front door and right up to the very top of the nearest tree and would scamper all the way to the shops after you. This daredevil attitude to life came to an abrupt halt one day when he fell through the stairwell from the top of the house and broke his pelvis. A major operation and months being confined to a cage later he was right as rain, though he still sits in a funny way with his leg poking out at an angle.

We settled in pretty well together and he quickly mastered the art of squeezing through the gate at the bottom of garden to get into the allotment and to navigate his way back round if he got shut out the front ( a regular occurrence as he likes to shoot out of the door as soon as its opened.

And then about six months ago something happened and he sort of disappeared, only coming in fleetingly to wolf down his supper and then legging it back outside. He didn’t seem to want to hang around at all and retreated under the kitchen table, flinching if anyone tried to touch him. It was all a bit odd and I couldn’t work out what was going on with him. This continued for a while and he stopped even eating his food, so I managed to catch him and take him to the vet ( where unbelievably he purred and sat quietly as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth as I tried to explain that there was actually something wrong with him). In the end the vet just told me to keep an eye on him and we left. As soon as we arrived home he bolted.

This continued for a while and I became a bit obsessed with finding out where he was going. On Amazon you can buy tracking devices for cats and dogs that you attach to their collars which you then connect to your phone. Of course I bought one and despite a lot of wriggling on his part, managed to get it on and set up. The trouble with this sort of thing is that you can’t stop yourself from looking at it the entire time. I watched as he went out into the allotments, sat in the allotments, went up the street, went down the street, came back into the garden and then bingo! The tracker kept stopping and pulsing on one spot, four doors down and even when I woke up in the night and happened to glance at it despite all sorts of tracker trails, he was always there.

Now I am under no illusion that cats actually love their owners as much as we would like to think they do and know they are very easily persuaded that somewhere else is more exciting than home, and that they tend to march on their stomachs. And I wanted to know where he was going and why he was going there.

So I went and knocked. Though I have lived in this street for years and pretty much know everyone, this particular house has various youngish professionals living there and we were never exactly sure who lived there and who didn’t, and I didn’t really know any of them. though I did know that there was a cat flap leading into their house from the flat roof above their kitchen as a previous occupant had owned a ginger cat who she used to walk on a lead. A young (and not over friendly) woman answered the door. I explained who I was and said that I thought Elvis had been spending a lot of time in their house and wondered if we could have a chat. She said” I don’t know anything about a cat” and just as she was about to shut the door who should appear behind her on the landing but Elvis. This rather flummoxed her so she mumbled that she would get her housemate to come over when she got back from work.

That evening a rather squeaky voiced woman turned up on the doorstep in a frenzy of plaits and patchouli oil. I said obviously I didn’t mind where Elvis went but I didn’t want anyone to feed him and that we rather missed having him around. ” Oh I don’t feed him” she said. ” I feed the foxes”. To be honest anyone who feeds the foxes in this area is (in my opinion) out of their minds, we have so many foxes, in the gardens, on the allotments, under next doors shed ( where the last litter of fox cubs were born and ended up being killed, mauled, half eaten and discarded around the garden like a gruesome hour film). ” Its to stop them digging up my garden ” she said and proceeded to outline her routine.

9 am Feed the foxes outside her kitchen

6 am Feed the foxes again

She also very proudly told me that she had rigged up a camera outside so she could get them on camera while they were feeding

I asked what she fed them and she replied that she bought Lidl tinned food for them. I asked whether Elvis ever also ate it and she let slip that yes, she fed him separately to stop him eating the foxes portion.. and that she also slipped him a few Dreamies ( which as we all know is like crack for cats). Anyway she was perfectly reasonable and agreed that she would lock the cat flap to keep him out and would stop feeding him.

When I got home encountered M who was back home for a visit. I explained that the woman was obviously unhinged as she had a camera outside her kitchen for fox surveillance. M looked at me long and hard and said, ” Yes, and you have a tracker around your pets neck”.

Elvis is now firmly ensconced back at home and even sleeps on my bed ( annoying but warming). The only downside is that I had to continue him on wet cat food which is revolting, but at least its not from Lidl.