THE STORY OF GORDIS AND PEQUE

This is the eye of Gordis, always watching and surveilling around him, but his story, or history, which goes hand in hand with that of Peque started as far as I am concerned about four years ago.  At the time I lived in a house that was an old farmhouse renovated and turned into flats, I had one of them, and of course, had neighbours, for the most part very nice and friendly people.  One day one of them that lived on the flat below mine came to ask for a favour. He had picked up or found two cats that he had been feeding, but since he was about to go on a trip, asked me if i could feed them and just make sure they had enough milk.  At the time neither of us knew that cats should not drink cow’s milk, it can be bad for their tummies, so i dutifully fed them their milk until I was fed up of having to go down everyday feed the cats and then decided that if they wanted to drink, they should learn to come to my front door. And they did, very quickly.  Then this daily routine pushed me to think about what would happen if they came inside the house, would they create havoc and turn everything upside down or not? the only way to find out was to try, so we did try and they of course were delighted to have another place to explore, went sniffing around all over, but did not touch anything and behaved very well. The next step was stay overnight and that went well too.  I must say that these two cats, of different ages, one, Gordis, must have been two or three years old and Peque was just a tiny little kitten. Although I do not have their pedigree, we all believe they are not blood related.  By the time the neighbour returned from his travels, I had decided that unless he was opposed to it, I might keep them and adopt them – although in all honesty it is they who adopted ME!  Anyway, Hans agreed, as they were not his either, they had just appeared at his doorstep one day.  So we mutually adopted each other and since there was no paperwork or any other administrative procedure, except make sure they had their medical checkup, up we went to the veterinarian office.  Up to them I was sure they were “girls” and did not want to become “grandma” as I sincerely believe there are enough children and cats in the world to bring more, so my idea was to have a microchip  in each one of them, with the information regarding their names, address and mine also, and castrate them so avoid having kittens.  So the vet, obviously more knowledgeable than me regarding the life and doing of cats and other animals embarked into a physical checkup of the cats and Oh Surprise!!  both were boys or male for the purists of separation between humans and animals. Still, both were castrated and both received their microchip and both became legally mine.

Now, in my former house, there was  big garden, unfenced, so they could go out and have the whole town for them, but if and when they wanted to come in or out, the doorwoman of service was yours truly and that after a couple of days became a nuisance, especially when the lords of the manor decided they wanted to go out for a stroll in the middle of the night.  So they went out hunting for mice or other cat-goodies and I went out hunting for a cat-door that would work independently from me, i.e. that they could open and close without human intervention .  I found one that opens and closes if the chip of the cat is the right chip, that is if they have the right key, they can simply miaul “Open Sesame” and the door lets them in.  To get out, like in most cases, you can leave whenever you want, going in is hard, but getting out, good riddance and that is that.  But this magical door requires some work, a hole in the wall or door or wherever you want to place it and in my case, after asking the help of a friend, who despite all his good will did not have the necessary skills for the job, i was forced to call a carpenter who had to take the door out, make the hole of the right size and set the cat-door, finally the only thing left was to teach the cat-door to recognise my two little balls of fur. Ever since the cat-door was installed we all were happy, they could go in and out at leisure and I  could just let them be.

Since them awe moved from the house with open garden to a flat on the 6th and last floor of the building, of course without garden but with three balconies, and view to the street, to the passing trains, to the buses and to the kids playing, all of these are hard to resist temptations to just down and share the fun, and me fearing that as they can pass their heads under the balustrade, they will not realise we are six floors up.  Cats may have seven lives, but…..