A regular visitor

Herbie used to live with me, he shared my bed, cuddled close all night and regularly washed bits of me. He stroked my hair, sucked my ears and told me he loved me. One day he ran away and went to live with someone else. That was 5 years ago and now he's back, over the road with my neighbour.

He came into my life about 10 years ago, one hot summer day when the back door was open we saw this little face and two black ears peeping over the threshold. When he was noticed he slunk back down and just two tiny ear-tips remained in view. After that evening the little kitten became a regular visitor. Where he had come from no-one knew. My then neighbour, a merchant seaman, was home on extended leave and somehow this kitten managed to climb through the open kitchen window, scale the stairs and sleep on his bed. He was very hungry and the neighbour would walk down to the village shop and get a tin of corned beef to feed him. After a month or so of this I was asked why I wasn't feeding my new cat. "I haven't got one," I retorted. I suggested cat-food would be more appropriate, the neighbour had never thought of that. Another neighbour, also a single chap, had been sleeping with his patio door open due to the heat, every morning when he awoke, the kitten was curled up around his head. He hated cats and tried to get rid of him but still he came. Eventually the general consensus was that I, as the owner of 3 cats already, should adopt him. He needed food, vast quantities, he was too tiny to be out and about on his own and above all he needed somewhere safe to sleep. My other cats protested but really he was just too small to make much of a fuss of so they gave in and just let him be.

Very quickly we named him Herbie, he was a right Herbert, always into something, determined, courageous, and a real fighter. The merchant sailor neighbour returned to sea, only after making me promise I would always look after Herbie. Something about that kitten had struck a chord in his heart and he wanted to know he would be cared for. It was a strange conversation with a totally unsentimental, macho-man. It was the last time I would speak to him, he died 5 days later of a massive brain haemorrhage in the South China Sea, too far from land to be able to get him treatment. He was 42. I lost one of my best friends and Herbie lost his protector.

And so it seemed that Herbie had been given to me for some reason. Shortly after that he started disappearing. The first time was for a couple of days and he came back with a collar which he hated. He spent 5 hours trying to remove it until he got it stuck over his teeth and I had to finish the job. I realised he must have been going somewhere else. To cut a very long story short we discovered he really belonged to the house immediately behind mine even although the owners had initially denied it. He didn't like their dogs and so started a long 2-3 year period where he lived between the two houses. The real owner tried keeping him in, he always escaped. They had him neutered and he came back to me, escaping from their car as they returned from the vet and sleeping off his anaesthetic under my coffee table for 2 days. I tried to give him back but the owners were always out, didn't answer the phone or just said we''ll be round later. They didn't usually bother. They shut him in a shed for 4 days, his cries were driving me to distraction, the owners were away and I was on the point of breaking in when they returned and let him out. I wonder now why I didn't do it straight away. One Christmas, apparently on the vet's advice, they kept him in for 6 weeks. I was frantic. I didn't know where he was, the owners again denied they had seen him. I put up posters all round the village and had several false sightings. Oh lots of people knew him but no-one had actually seen him recently. I was quite sick at the time and very depressed. I was cold at night, my furry hot-water-bottle was missing. I went to the surgery for a blood test early one Monday morning. Imagine my delight when he was sitting on my front window on my return. I later found out he had once again escaped. At this point the owners gave up and subsequently moved house, leaving him and a dog behind. The dog was taken in by neighbours, Herbie remained with me.

At night he slept with me, down under the bedclothes, a furry, warm bag of obliviousness which I could mould into whatever shape I liked and he would never wake up. I had to stroke his head, then he would wash my knee, then came a big sigh and clunk he was fast asleep until morning. He sucked my ears and chewed my hair, he like to lick my scalp. I tried to stop him and consulted our vet. They suspected he had been taken from his mother too soon and I was a comfort. I explained the problems with his real owners and that he just didn't wouldn't stay with them. Even when I handed him back over the fence he had come straight back again. The vet decided he just needed me and wanted to be with me instead. It was just his way.

The wanderings continued, Herbie was seen in other parts of the village, at the shop, on the recreation field and in other houses. He had regular route, across the road, play under the pampas grass, down another road, cross the main road, visit a house near the shop, cross a field, visit an old lady in a bungalow, round the bungalow estate, cross the main road again, visit another house by a stream, slip under my opposite neighbours fence, go under her gate and be back out at the front of my place. It took all day. He left on his rounds at about 10 after a late breakfast and returned at 5 for tea. All this after his first walk of the day with a lady round the corner and her cat-friendly collie. Herbie would race out at 6, meet this lady at the end of the road, walk about 400 yards and then return for a quick snooze before breakfast.

Then came the day a feral cat had six sickly kittens at the top of the garden. We took them in and eventually nursed them back to health, keeping the two worst, Misty and Nelson. This was too much for Herbie and he left home when the kittens were only 5 weeks old and still living in the garden, he had been betrayed. He still walked his daily route, now including 10 minutes or so at the front of here, sitting staring up at the windows in disgust. If we went out to speak or to stroke him he tried to bite us and spat. He spent 18 months living near the shop, where we don't quite know. Then he moved again and lived with an elderly couple about 300 yards away from here, one of the houses he had always visited. He took over, slept in their bed to the point of lying full length on the chap's stomach with a paw on either shoulder. Just after Christmas the lady of the household went into hospital. Another betrayal, so now Herbie is over the road at my opposite neighbour's most of the day and night. He doesn't like their cat's prescription cat food so eats elsewhere but otherwise has made himself at home yet again, sleeping alongside her disabled husband in his downstairs bedroom and keeping his back warm at night. Yesterday morning I opened my curtains to see him sitting on her window cill.

He's been getting a bit friendlier again recently and I have stroked him a few times although I wouldn't pick him up. He's a big strong cat now, twice the size of when he lived here. I still miss him at night, no other cat has come so close and been quite so trusting. He still misses me too I'm sure if I see him outdoors he keeps watching for ages and will follow me from a distance. Occasionally he will come round the back and just look until he realises he has been seen, then he runs off. I wonder if he will ever come back, I like to think that one day he might and his wanderings will turn full circle.