sid

I am not a cat person, but I like animals, except horses—big expensive bastards. Tassie devils have little to recommend them. The dog is numero uno and the goat rates high. With cats, it depends on personality.

Fluffball cats, pampered cats, demanding cats, aloof cats: these are not the cats for me. I think of Noël Coward’s lyric, “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” and ask “Why can’t a cat be more like a dog?” and come when called, go for long rambles, and travel in the car.

My good woman’s Turkish swimming cat, Mimi, is demanding, constantly bashing her head into your legs and miaowing for no reason. I have grown accustomed to her face.

But for the most part cats have been few and far between in my life. When my son was in utero his mother and I got a ginger tabby from the dairy farm down the road. Mister Id had spunk, loved the goats, and free-ranged in the back of the Kombi when we migrated to Adelaide.

When the kids were little at Menzies Creek we had a grey cat. Smokey accompanied us on those long shambling walks you take with young children to visit other young children, but one day disappeared without trace.

Today Sid comes to live, on a temporary basis, with me and Jezza the Jack Russell. Sid grew up in this house. Occupying my house while I work in Bendigo, my son and his girlfriend get Sid as a kitten, a manic black Dervish, into, onto and up everything. In time he develops into a long, sleek, miniature panther.

When Mo and Katie move out of my house to venture round Australia Sid goes to Chadstone with Katie’s sister. But the sister doesn’t want him and Mo and Katie are looking for somewhere to rent.

He arrives in a dog-box. He makes no sound. Jezza sleeps outside in the pale sun when Mo lets Sid loose in the house. We grant him 30 minutes to roam cautiously, sizing up the escape routes, then admit the JRT. The rule is that cats run and Jezza chases. But Sid does not run; he stands and stares and Jezza skirts him warily, exactly as I predict.

For hours they pretend to ignore each other, though each is acutely aware of the other. Sid is not impressed when Jezza puts a soft toy on my foot and demands action. I lift the toy into the air with my foot so he can leap and catch it or pounce on it wherever it lands. This is a bit too much action for Sid.

In the evening they pass in the hallway and Jezza cops a four-clawed whack for his trouble. He yelps once and it’s over. He’s been warned. Sid is longer, taller, quicker and younger.

Rock on.