Tom
A thoughtful Tom
Tom, the youngest of the kittens has a loud mew and a very demanding character.
We think that someone abandoned him when he was only a few months old, possibly because of his mew and possibly because he hadn’t been properly house trained … something I think we have finally dealt with. We are not sure, because one day he just appeared in the middle of the office, looked up at Tatiana my accountant and meowed … loudly.
If he had somehow managed to sneak in … it was now impossible to miss him.
Something like this has happened before. Garfield also just turned up, stood outside the door of the office and just waited until someone opened it. Then he calmly walked in, made his way to the kitchen and started demolishing a plate of Kit-e-Kat that had been laid out for Vita, (my original cat, now 14 years old).
On another occasion, Tatiana looked up from her accounts and out of the window and saw somebody laying down a bowl of food just outside the window and putting a kitten to it, before turning round and running off.
This time, no one actually saw Tom arrive. He was just there. Thinking of our previous experience we went outside to see if we could see anyone, but there was no-one. If someone had indeed abandoned him, then they had long since disappeared.
To be honest, he’s not the most beautiful of cats … like Matilda, (one of my five cats and the only female), he’s black and white. However, whereas she is predominantly black with white patches, he is much lighter and the black fur provides him with a mottled pattern. As is usually the case with such colourings, the white often looks a dirty grey – especially around the flanks of the torso.
He is basically an eating machine. Whereas most of the other cats used to be content to be fed once or twice a day, Tom will stand in the middle of the kitchen floor every two hours and mew – loudly – looking up at me with those yellowy-green eyes of his, demanding to be fed, and not desisting until I have opened the cupboard and put down a plate of something or other. The other cats already know that if they hear his meow from the kitchen, then they need to come running … there’s food to be had. As a result he, and the others for that matter, are rapidly putting on weight and I have taken laying out smaller portions than I used to do.
I am not sure why we gave him the name Tom. Maxim chose the name and it just stuck. Tom, Tommy, Tomik … all variations of the name you can sometimes hear us calling … sometimes in summons, sometimes in despair.
Despair? Yes. You see, Tom is a rascal; running around the place, poking his nose into everything, getting into everything, upturning things and as a result he gets the blame for everything that goes wrong. The telephone’s not working – check to see if he’s pulled the cable out of the socket … again. A cup lies smashed to smithereens on the floor – he’s probably jumped up on the table and sent it flying. The shyrdak hanging the wall seems to have a bulge in it – because he’s climbed up the chair and sneaked behind it. The wallpaper seems to be peeling off the wall near the door, because he’s been sharpening his claws on it. He’s our very own version of Macavity.
On the other hand, he is also very affectionate and it is easy to forgive his each and every misdemeanor. When I am sitting at the computer, for example, he will jump up onto my lap with no warning at all, giving me a start, and then start crawling up my chest to rub his cheek against my jaw, purring loudly and staring at me with those yellowy-green eyes … preventing me from concentrating on my work. Sometimes his stretches his neck and pushes his head forward so that he can take a playful bite at my ear lobe. On other occasions, as lies on my lap and my fingers dart back and forth across the keyboard, he reaches out with a paw, with claws outstretched, and grabs for my hand, the claws sinking into soft flesh as he drags my fingers to his mouth to playfully bite at them.
Tatiana tells me that If I leave the office for any reason at all, then he walks up to the door, looks at it plaintifully and meows.
He walks up to the adult cats and rubs his cheek up against them. At first, they weren’t sure what to make of him. Nowadays, Vita tends to ignore him, although watches him attentively whist trying to create a disinterested demeanor. Matilda, on the other hand accepts his attentions and they can often be seen lying together, washing each other. Only Garfield remains unsure, occasionally hissing jealously at him in warning.
He gets on well with Vasya, another abandoned kitten about a month older than him, but with a totally different character. The two kittens play together all the time – when they aren’t sleeping; chasing each other around the room, jumping at each other, biting each other and play fighting. Vasya’s much quieter and far more sedate – more regal – so much so that he has become everyone’s darling. The kids especially adore him.
If Tom is the hooligan, a loevable rogue like his namesake in the cartoons, then Vasya is the equivalent of Jerry – a real Prince Charming.
Bishkek