Chloe & the Crocus Leaves

A light-hearted post for a change..

If you have cats, you will never have a dull life or be bored, that’s my experience. I have had cats all my life, and they have been wonderful. I currently have two cats, both completely different characters, and both very entertaining in their way, and great companions. They love you and want to be with you, often wanting to sit on you, especially when you’re on the computer, or on the desk when you’re working. Not only that, they periodically bring you presents – an assortment of small animals including rabbits and even a rare bat one night. Both my cats are long-haired, which means that, however much I clean (and I have to admit I don’t go overboard with house cleaning), there is always going to be some cat fur somewhere in the house. For this, I always apologise to my clients in advance. I’m afraid it’s inevitable when you live with long-haired cats.

Today I want to concentrate on Chloe, who is a very unique little character, and regularly causes concern just by being herself! She came to me synchronistically and we have a strong bond. I love her dearly but she’s not the easiest cat I’ve owned, far from it. One of my clients commented recently that I must have the fluffiest cat in the whole of Devon! Chloe has very long, very thick fur. She is magnificent – no other word for it. The length and thickness of her fur has caused problems for us both ever since she was a baby. Just keeping herself reasonably clean is a challenge. If you look at her from the back end, she has very long fluffy pantaloons going all the way down her legs and around her backside. She may look chocolate box-ey, but she isn’t at all! She does have a soft side and likes her cuddles, but she’s also very feisty, and a real tomboy. Added to this, she doesn’t like being interfered with, which includes brushing or combing – which is essential daily maintenance when you have as much fur as she has. I have gradually trained her to tolerate being brushed for longer periods, and currently we have got up to about one and a half minutes (!) before she is making warning noises, pouncing on the brush, or off out to roll in the nearest patch of mud or force her way through a hedge to get mucky again! There are times, though, like last summer when it was very hot and she was moulting a lot, when brushing doesn’t suffice and she has to be taken to the groomer or the vet to have fur mats/lumps removed with the electric clippers, as she won’t let me do it.

Chloe is not a sylph-like, elegant cat. She is very solid and quite wide. She is, in cat terms, built like a tank! She’s the feline equivalent of a nightclub bouncer, which is certainly helped by having an excellent appetite. Her build is rather apt as she is the guard cat in this home, and behaves more like a dog than a cat. Unlike most cats, she comes when I call her, and is usually obedient. She actively guards the cat flap, me, the garden, the house, and everything she considers to be hers. (Apart from the bedroom – that’s Cricket’s domain). When clients come, or visitors, depending on their energy and how she sees them, she will either warn me about them, ignore or tolerate them, absent herself, or join us and make herself known. Occasionally she accepts people straight away if she likes their energy.

When I first moved to Devon four years ago we lived for eight months in a house with a large half-acre garden which had a two-foot deep ditch running all the way down one side. When the weather was wet, the ditch used to fill with water, and if it was really wet, we had a small stream running down the side of the garden. Chloe has always been fascinated by water, often spending lengthy periods in the sink! You can guess where Chloe’s favourite place was in that garden – yes, the ditch! Whenever I called the cats in, Chloe would eventually emerge from the direction of the ditch, looking like she had been dragged through a hedge backwards (which she had, in effect) and then we had a battle to try and get her cleaned up sufficiently so as to be presentable to any clients or visitors, and to not spread mud, twigs, small branches, dead leaves, slugs, and anything else unmentionable that had got caught up in her long fur, around the house.

And mentioning unmentionable substances brings me to the title subject of this article. The crocus leaves. A kind friend gave me some crocus bulbs just after I moved into my present home, and, this being a smaller garden and not having anywhere in the border to put them, I planted them in pots to await the spring. They duly came up a few months later, and were very nice. Unfortunately, Chloe developed a tummy upset around the same time, and by a process of elimination I realised she had been eating the crocus leaves and they had upset her. There was no grass in this garden so I imagine she had eaten the crocus leaves as a substitute. When you’ve got fur like Chloe, diarrhoea is not a good thing to have! It tends to stick on everything especially the fluffy pantaloons, and then the cat tries to get it off by scraping it’s bum along the floor to try to clean it... you get the idea. What you end up with is an extremely mucky, smelly, miserable cat, a pooey house, and a big problem!

I really thought that by not having children I had missed out on all the pooey, nappy-changing stuff (that’s only one reason I am child-free but that’s another story). But now I have it all in abundance with Chloe, and it’s ongoing as she’s still fairly young! At least young children grow out of the pooey thing. Added to that, she is not at all cooperative about having her back end cleaned up, even though it’s for her own good. Well, would you like to be dumped in the sink and washed, or have your owner and a friend hold you down and try to trim your fluffy pants with a pair of scissors to get rid of all the crusty pooh stuck on them? This state of affairs brought out the worst in Chloe – she has a ferocious temper and really went for it, raging like a little demon. We eventually managed it and got her cleaned up despite the tantrum and being peed all over, but the whole operation was tremendously nerve-racking for all concerned, and I vowed never again – my nerves won’t stand it more than once! I think I probably suffered more than Chloe did because I was so upset that she got so angry and distressed when we were just trying to help her.

Now this year, during this last couple of weeks, we have had a recurrence of the upset tummy. Remembering what happened last year, and that the crocuses are now up again, I have put two and two together and realised she has done it again, despite the fact that I have provided her with two pots of grass to eat. She’s a smart cat and eats the grass in front of me, but on the quiet she’s been eating the crocuses! The tell-tale stink started wafting up my nose about ten days ago, and, on feeling around the back end, my heart sank when I realised she was extremely crusty everywhere and needed to be cleaned up again. I got a sharp pair of scissors and tried a few exploratory snips, but she wasn’t having any! So I didn’t persevere, especially not on my own. Getting her into the cat carrier is another story in itself, requiring considerable subterfuge on my part, so we won’t go into that here! But on Monday last week she was taken to the vet, who is used to her being in a mess, and her bad behaviour, and we did the cleaning up operation there. I held her down, and the vet clipped, and most of her fluffy pants has now been cut away and there was some necessary shaving too, to get the rest. So she's now nice and clean, but a bit bare around the nether regions! It will grow back in time. I have to say she was better behaved at the vet’s this time than she has been previously. On one occasion last year I had to take her to get cleaned up, and it took the vet plus the vet’s assistant, me holding her with thick leather gloves (she did bite me once in a rage), and being wrapped in two towels, to accomplish the job! She’s always angelic afterwards, and much happier of course, but at the time it’s a nightmare!

So I can see clients again without having to apologise for the smell! I have now put the crocuses out of reach, hopefully. But if she manages to get to them and eats them now, there’s very little fur there to speak of, so there shouldn’t be a problem. Until next year...or next time she finds something interesting to try in the garden, that disagrees with her. Maybe I’ll just give the crocuses away or cut them down as soon as they show through..