A Cat-Ologue of Miss Smudge's Adventures

 

2. Finding My Place

 

 

I told you previously how I managed to get myself into Arrow. The secret now was to work my way up to becoming indispensable, so they couldn't imagine life without me!

 

There was already a huge tabby called “Stig” who had established himself as the mess room cat. He was quite capable of seeing off any one who ventured onto the yard, so infiltration there would be difficult. Stig had also already built up a relationship with a number of the volunteers – smiling at them and rolling over on his tummy – in fact any antic that would get him some ham or cheese from their sandwiches.

 

His weakness is that he cannot give any humans a scratch or bite to warn them off – instead, if he takes a dislike to anybody he just runs off, so he can come across quite shy around the riders and vistors. I suspect this might be down to the surprise trip to the vets one of the volunteers once took him on... 

 

Playing on these aspects I decided to concentrate my efforts and spend my time in the “front of the house”. The first thing to get my feet firmly under the table was to greet all the riders as they arrived on the premises. I quickly made a few friends and they became my favourite visitors.

 

My step‐dad Ken has been given our riders instruction on the proper places to stroke me (mainly around the head –chin and ears) to avoid me teaching them a lesson with a quick bite or showing my claws. This seems to be working out fairly well to our mutual benefit. I was getting a reputation as an aggressive little lady – which was not good for my long term prospects, so with the riders pampering me in all the ways I liked most, I was becoming all the more loveable. And so the infiltration continued...