The Cat

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Shortly after I bought the Hobo Kev, I rented a space for awhile in an RV / trailer park in north Phoenix because I had Dr. appts and other business to tend to.

Now, there are those amongst my F&F who might tell you that I am somewhat of an "animal whisperer". I have always had a knack or penchant for observing, getting close to and getting along with our friends in the natural world, both as pets and in the wild. I can't explain it, but animals known to be skittish or otherwise biased against humans seem to accept me and relax around me.

There are also those who might say I'm nuts because I have been observed trying to speak to them in their own language. Can you imagine what you might think if you were to run into a grown man wandering around in the forest making bird noises (I won't call them "calls" because I really have no idea what I might be communicating or how the animals might be interpreting those sounds) or deer bleats and grunts?

Anyway, "Cat Language" is one of my specialties. Everybody knows how aloof or indifferent cats tend to be, but I have had the pleasure of sharing living space with many of them in my lifetime and, as you might expect from someone who has lived with other people who speak a different language, I have learned to speak cat. Not fluently mind you, just enough to be conversational.

The cat in the picture caught my attention by trying not to catch my attention. It was a feral cat living in the rv park and, apparently, living on handouts, which I learned by eavesdropping on an argument some neighbors were having relative to one of them feeding the feral population in close proximity to the others space. Anyway, this particular cat had decided that my moving into a previously unoccupied space that he considered part of the cat territorial access to free food was worthy of showing me his resentment.

While all the other ferals found other routes to the free food area, this cat decided he was not going to alter his course to accommodate such a contemptible human. Oh.....I should mention here that I love being outdoors. Living in a 21foot trailer only further motivates me to be outdoors as much as possible, so I always have a chair and table set up just outside my door and I spend a considerable amount of time there. But I digress......

So the cat was still cutting across "my" space to get to the food two spaces away. Now, I imagine that before I moved in, he likely took a more direct route across my space. But once I was there, and clearly had the nerve to actually sit outside watching him, he was forced to alter his route by 10 or 12 feet. Apparently, this was a total inconvenience for him, and he made sure with every passing that he considered my intrusion the ultimate insult. He literally stared me down every time he came by and OMG! if looks could kill.......

So what did I do? Well, I talked to him. Interesting thing, once I began talking to him, his behavior changed. Not that he stopped resenting me, oh noooo! Instead, he seemed to decide that if his "kill you" stare didn't intimidate me into leaving, then the next best thing was to ignore me completely. So he would come into the space, I would start talking to him, and he would (maybe) turn an ear, but he would not, under any circumstances, look at or acknowledge my presence. So I thought "okay cat, two can play that game", and I started ignoring him back. With one exception, I started leaving little bits of leftovers from my meals (healthy stuff like grilled chicken, not ghost pepper cheese-its) directly in the path he had been taking. Now, I don't know how long it took him to figure it out, I suspect at first he just thought "wow! lucky me! manna from cat heaven!", but eventually he caught on. Then I changed the game again. I stopped leaving the "treats" every day, only leaving them when I knew I would be there, in my outside seat, for awhile. And that is when it happened! One day I had no treats to offer, but I was in my outside seat when the cat came through. He stopped at the "treat station", sniffed around a bit, then sat down. About 8 feet away from me. And I talked to him, in both of our languages. At first, he refused to look at me, but the power of the treat, and perseverance on my part had apparently impressed him enough (or perhaps he was just hopeful), that he decided to actually look at me and acknowledge my existence. The two photos capture the moment: in one, he is still refusing to look at me. In the other, he finally does.

And that is as close as I ever got to this cat.