Member-only story
It’s Like Herding Cats
A tale about the world’s most unlikely animal rescuer
Gazing out my back window, I contemplated how unkempt my garden had become. Once nicely manicured, lately I’d adopted a more rustic feel for my Australian cottage garden.
That’s a nice way of saying I’d become a bit lazy with the pruning.
I explained it away as being an intentionally wild look. But everything has its limits, I suppose. If things get too untamed, your view becomes obscured, and who knows what could be going on behind the foliage.
A large black cat I didn’t recognise was sunning itself in front of the unwieldy shrub growing beside the water tank. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a cat that didn’t belong to me in the garden, but this one was new.
On closer inspection, it wasn’t an enormous cat but a cat nursing a kitten. Actually, two kittens. Nope, make that a litter of three kittens.
Self-aware of my capacity as a pet guardian, I had only recently taken the carefully researched decision to adopt a single, desexed, indoor-only adult cat. This sudden development inspired panic.
My nurturing instincts aren’t great; I’m more than a little squeamish and spectacularly clumsy. I was slowly beginning to cope with being a guardian to one indoor cat. A total…
