Tom used to be rather afraid of the dog. Janet wonders if he had some encounter with a dog before. She’s wondering why he was so determined to leave his home and move.
He’s the latest in a forty year long history of tomcats arriving, some strays, some voting with their feet, and eventually getting installed as new members of the club. We had Adolf in the 70s at my parents’ farm in Staffordshire - a starved blind tomcat who gave birth to a kitten which was a big clue that ‘he’ was in fact female, and so was renamed to Adolfe. Shortly afterwards came Charlie an true tomcat, who moved house from a neighbour’s. In the early 1990s one ‘Sheep’ arrived - a long haired stray in a poor state who regularly came for food and one day arrived badly injured and ended up in the RSPCA hospital after which we adopted him. One ‘Creepycat’ was caught creeping out from under our bed in the middle of the night, frozen in fear at having been spotted. He had a terrible skin complaint, with bald sore patches on him and a child’s hanky around his neck as a bandage, secured by a tiny safety pin. We found that he was creeping into the house every night and hiding under our bed. Won him over with affection and of course grub. He was named Dňmhnall - more respectful than ‘Creepycat’ - and we had him for fifteen years, moving to Skye with us. With good food and tlc his skin was completely cured and no further creeping was required. The next arrival was Big Tig. He was abandoned when the family across the road moved house and left him behind. He was just left outside his house looking in through the glass into empty rooms. We fed him at first his then our window sill every day until he just came into our house and was fully adopted. He moved to Skye with us too and we had him for six years.
And now Tom seems determined to become the latest, slowly getting more and more integrated. Very very desperate for affection. Hilariously tiny Caoimhe - oriental - chases him off when she sees him. But fights ensue with the others and both of the tom-kittens have suffered infected injuries involving expensive trips to the vet. Somhairle’s tail became swollen with infection and Pangur Bŕn had a bite on his side, infected too, both after fights with Tom. I’m not sure how guilty Tom is. It may be that outside the house he is confident, territorial and guilty of being the aggressor, I’m not sure. But inside the house he is fearful and so it may be that he then will fight out of fear if he feels that he cannot see an escape route.
