My Cat Invited His Cat-Friends to Tea… and then the Big Cats Arrived

So, it’s been quite a while since I’ve blogged here about something that isn’t writing related, but I just couldn’t not blog about what happened an hour ago. I mean, I tried tweeting about it, but Twitter’s 140-character limit didn’t exactly work in my favour.

If you follow me on Twitter (@MadelineDyerUK), a few days ago you may have noticed that I remarked on just how popular my cat is–by this, I mean that we’ve suddenly found ourselves inundated with pet cats in our garden.

The two usual cats my Sparkie is friends with–two small females–have been about (as they regularly are), but we’ve noticed another black cat too. We called her Blackie and saw her and Sparkie walking peacefully together. We joked that Sparkie had invited all his friends around and laughed.

And then tonight, we were surprised by another cat.

A big cat.

A big black cat–much bigger than Blackie. Much bigger.

So, allow me to the set the scene:

My mother and I had just finished the evening rounds, checking the animals (ponies, etc) on our farm, giving them their last feeds of the day, and were walking back to the house. Sparkie, our black and white cat, walked with us, as he usually does.

It was pretty dark but we could still just see–you know, the last light of the day, when the shadows seem deeper and darker than they actually are. When you imagine all sorts of crazy things that could happen.

And then something crazy did happen.

We’d just got to the house, rounded the corner, and were a couple of feet from the back door when my cat shot forward hissing. And a huge black animal jumped out.

At first, I thought it was a dog. A black lab or something. (And my cat has been known to hiss at dogs).

But then the ‘dog’ roared.

And it was the most aggressive sound ever.

I jumped right back and grabbed my mother. My heart rate went through the roof.

At that point, I realised this was a cat. A big cat. Huge. (About three times the size of my cat–and Sparkie is a large male farm cat.)

Now, there are pumas in the forest around where we live. We’ve seen these big cats before, but normally they’re scared of us. We see them in the fields, usually far away–okay, I did have one close and sudden encounter with one when I was 19; I’d crossed the field bank and come face-to-face with it, but it was just as scared as I was.

But this one today? It went into a pretty aggressive mode. I’ve never heard a cat make that sound before! And my cat was hissing at it, looking tiny in front of this thing.

At that point (and only a couple of seconds had gone by since it ambushed us), my dad had heard the commotion and stuck his head out the studio window, shouting at the cat when he saw it. We all shouted then and clapped our hands. And soon after that–a couple of seconds, at the most–the cat ran away.

But what was it? Was it really a puma? Judging by its sound and noise, I’d say it definitely had big cat genes. Whether it’s one of those crosses (they are breeding with domestic cats, apparently) or it really was a puma–maybe a young one–it was still super scary. And seeing it right next to our back door (in what should be a safe place) made it even more scary.

And that’s why I just had to blog about it tonight. (And please excuse any typos–my tablet seems bent on ‘correcting’ and removing much-needed apostrophes.)