Written in May 2025:

Kattie (pronounced “cutty”) is a male ginger cat that my wife and I met about 9 years ago.

I wanted to include some writing about Kattie, because he certainly provides a different perspective for me to view life, and he has helped me think about the nature of life.

One day in May 2016, my wife, Marianne, saw a very small but frisky orange kitten at our back window. She couldn’t believe it! She loves cats and especially cute little kittens. We went out through our back door to see if we could get a better look at it. It was very flighty, and took off around the far side of the house, probably when it heard us opening the back door.

In another couple of days, it had returned to our back window. This time, we managed to get outside and get a better view of it. It had retreated to a position near the opposite corner of our house. We spoke to it, and gestured kindly to it to encourage it to come closer to us. It stayed put.

Eventually after a similar meeting, it did come over closer to us. Marianne was so happy. This kitten was certainly very cute. It was also very flighty. After about a week of similar visits, it came close enough for me to touch it briefly. Marianne was also keen to touch it and eventually, she did. She was so happy with getting to touch it. Over the next week, we managed to pat it softly, and it seemed to like it. And we certainly enjoyed our interactions with the kitten.

Marianne named the kitten, “Kattie”, which is a generic Dutch name for cats that she had always used for her own cats when she was growing up in The Netherlands. Kattie would regularly visit us, and we would give it attention, but we never fed it. Kattie was a kitten and obviously ‘belonged’ to (or was the responsibility of) somebody who lived nearby. We did not know who Kattie’s owner was. We knew some of the neighbours but we also knew that none of them were Kattie’s owners.

Kattie came to visit us regularly, before sometimes not visiting us for several days. For some reason, it usually seemed to like spending most of its time on our property (outside in all weather conditions – it has always been an outdoor cat).

Kattie was a young kitten when we first met it, and it seemed to spend most of its time on our property. Obviously, it wasn’t in a close cat family situation, similar to a human child with one or two parents taking constant care of it. Kattie wasn’t getting the same level of education that a young human typically gets. Kattie has had to learn as much as it can from interacting directly with the world in which it lives. I have noticed over the years, that Kattie has learnt many things well.

One day I saw Kattie setting up to do a wee in our garden. Kattie squatted like a female mammal to do a wee. I then noticed that Kattie didn’t seem to have a penis, and so I thought that Kattie was probably a female. We treated Kattie as if it was a female cat. We found out about six years later from its owner, that Kattie was actually a de-sexed male cat. It is interesting that both Marianne and I treated Kattie differently when we thought that Kattie was a female, rather than a male. Such differences in treatment to different genders seem to be a big part of human socialising. Luckily, the different treatment we exhibited to Kattie doesn’t seem to have made much difference to Kattie, but it is really hard to know whether that was the case or not.

Kattie has killed many rats and mice in our back and front yards, plus a number of birds. I didn’t even know that we had any rats or mice living on our property. I am amazed at the number of rats and mice Kattie has killed over the years. When I would come across a dead rat or mouse, I would usually be surprised to see that the dead rodents rarely showed evidence of having been killed; no obvious cuts or lacerations from Kattie’s claws or teeth. Some however, did have their heads removed or were disembowelled in rather gruesome ways.

One day, I happened to look out of the kitchen window and I saw Kattie flicking a mouse about a metre into the air with his front left claw. After the mouse hit the ground, it ‘kind of’ bounced a little but really its movements were just from having been thrown up into the air and allowed to fall to the ground. I could see that the mouse didn’t move under its own ability; that the mouse was either dead, or very close to being dead. But Kattie would see the extra movement of the mouse’s body after hitting the ground, and he would rush up to it and take it in his mouth and thrash his head about with the mouse still in his mouth. He would eventually release the mouse from his mouth and he would flick it up again with one of his front claws. I have not seen such behaviour from Kattie before, or since. It reminded me of seeing part of a TV documentary by David Attenborough of Killer Whales playing with the bodies of seal pups that they had just killed – flicking them into the air and grabbing their bodies again after they had landed back on the water.

I remember David Attenborough mentioned that there was no definitive answer from the researchers who witnessed this behaviour as to the reason behind this behaviour. One suggestion was that it was a form of play. Another suggestion was that it was a form of learning; learning about the prey, and how it can be handled. I thought about both of those possible motives for Kattie’s behaviour. Or, maybe it was one way that he found to kill some of the rodents he came across.

After a couple of winters, watching Kattie sitting and sleeping in our garden, through the cold days, and often during light rain, I decided to try to make a shelter for him. I used a largish cardboard box that we had used for moving house. The cardboard walls were double thickness. I closed the bottom of the box securely with tape, and cut a suitable opening for Kattie to get in and out of the shelter in the flaps of cardboard at the top of the box. I secured the remaining sections of flaps with tape. Then I wrapped the shelter in black plastic, to keep the rain from damaging the cardboard, then I tipped the box over so that the entrance was on the ground. I cut a couple of pieces of carpet and placed them inside the shelter to help insulate Kattie from the cold of the ground. When I took the shelter out to the front of our house and put it in place, we were both really pleased that he seemed to like it, and he just walked straight in to explore it. We saw Kattie sleeping inside his shelter many times. He also seemed to really like sleeping on top of his shelter, in the sunshine.

We were not certain who Kattie’s owner was, until she eventually came to see us in early 2022. She was from a house a couple of doors down the street from our property. We had seen her about from a distance at times, but had never really talked with her. She said that she was going to be moving house, to a few suburbs away, and wondered if we wanted to keep Kattie and look after him? She said that she had noticed that he would spend most of his time with us, on our property. She also told us that the cat’s name was “Megatron”, and that it was a de-sexed male. We were quite shocked by what we were told about Kattie being a male, and having just been asked to now take on responsibility for him. We asked if we could take a few days to think about our decision. We both thought that we really couldn’t look after Kattie as he really should be. I had never had a pet before, and Marianne said that she was quite young when she had cats in The Netherlands, so she wasn’t completely confident about taking responsibility for him. We also couldn’t see how we could then travel. Who would look after him while we were away? We told Kattie’s owner that we thought it best that she continued to look after him.

His owner moved away, taking Kattie with her. We were very sad. Kattie had always been a very positive interaction for us, especially during the difficult COVID times. However, we also realised that we had had the benefit of his company, without being responsible for him.

About 8 days after his owner moved away, we saw Kattie’s little head at our front window. We couldn’t believe it! He looked quite weak and dehydrated. Had he walked his way back to our property (his territory) from his new home a few suburbs away, or had his owner dropped him off close to our home, hoping that we would now look after him? Either way, we quickly decided that we better now look after him. We now had to quickly learn what and how to feed him, etc. We looked after him as best we could. Luckily, he is a pretty tough little cat, that can take care of himself most of the time. We don’t know how he managed to find his way back here, if he did do that on his own. He tends to be extremely careful about cars and trucks, and he would have needed to travel along some major roads to get back to our property. And how would he know which directions to go, to get back to our property? He was certainly taken well outside the region that he would have known well, surrounding his territory. It was much more likely that his owner brought him back and dropped him off close to our home. Either way, he was obviously very sad at his new home, and wanted to get back to the territory that he knew.

My wife has now died (in May 2024), so I now look after Kattie by myself. He has been very good for me, since that traumatic event.

Kattie seems to approach everything with the confidence that he is able to cope with any demands that may be made of him. I guess he has no choice. He often looks quizzically at moths, butterflies, bees and flies that buzz around him. I have seen him try to catch butterflies and moths. I have watched him sit out in the backyard, facing an area of the yard, and he will just sit there motionless and patiently for 20 minutes or so, looking for something that might be out there. What does he really think of moths, butterflies, bees, flies, mice, rats, lizards, and birds?

I was outside on my knees cutting some bushes back that had overgrown, when the next thing I knew, Kattie very quietly came through the bushes, and proceeded to walk quietly in front of me and sat down on the ground for some attention and stroking – he is very endearing, and he is very trusting! If I do anything outside, I have to be constantly aware that he might show up at any time. He is always very quiet on his feet. He can also be amazingly quick if he decides to run and jump.

Throughout most of the times that I had spent with Kattie, I found myself reflecting on questions about the nature of life, from his reactions to things. I wondered whether he had a notion of “the nature of life”? I wondered if he had a notion of the future, or the past? I feed him early in the morning each day, and then again late in the afternoon, so he seems to have at least some rough perception of time, and the concept of some time in the future for his next feed.

What does he think of the moon? What does he think of the sun? He seems to accept that each day is a sequence of day time followed by night time.

Kattie’s lack of language abilities that we humans have, has been very noticeable. It would be nice to be able to ask him what he feels like eating, or tell him that “the weather is going to be much better tomorrow”, but we can’t. It makes me feel more appreciation for our amazing language abilities, and for just how amazingly more detailed our language abilities can allow our interactions with others (who also understand our language), and our interactions with the complex world around us.

Kattie does purr, and that gives some feedback as to when he likes something, or is feeling happy. Apart from that he meows, and also sometimes gives out little noises which sound like disappointment or concern. I tend to talk to him, and that does seem to make us both feel more relaxed. If there is a sudden loud noise coming from the street that gets him alert, if I say something in a relaxed way, such as, “that’s okay, Kattie, that is just ..blah, blah”, then he usually settles back down and seems to try to ignore it.

I am often outside with Kattie at around sunset, and often wondered if he finds the beautiful spectacle of many sunsets as something to enjoy? I really don’t know, but probably not.

Rocky Beach, Devonport. 15 cm x 10 cm, blue biro on scribble pad paper.
Main theme: Simplifying the depiction of a landscape, based on patterns.
Date produced: December 1980.