A few months ago, we welcomed a new arrival into our family.
He was cute and chubby, with a shock of pale ginger hair.
He fed and slept well, and fitted in nicely with his siblings, after a few initial quibbles.
The only downsides at first were stinky poos and a habit of coming to sit on our faces when he woke up in the morning.
What? You thought he was a baby? Perish the thought. No, Neo is a cat.
A ginger tom to be precise, and boy, has he been a learning experience.
Until now, we’ve only ever had female cats. Winter, our current young lady, is a quiet, pretty thing, who only eats once in a blue moon and likes her own company (preferably in the top of our wardrobe, for the whole day). All our little girl cats have been much the same.
But Neo is a whole new world of feline. He’s like the labrador of the cat world: his stomach has no off switch, and he has an ungainly, lolloping tread, nothing like Winter’s silky saunter.
Mind you, he also has a kooky, dog-like charm. He’s attached himself to our poodle-cross, Teddy, and they wrestle like brothers on the floor, race to the door when someone knocks and smother us (competitively) with affection on the couch. If Neo could bark, I think he’d do that too.
But really, his most prominent characteristic is his appetite. If you’re familiar with Dustin’s pet demigorgon on Stranger Things, you’ll have some idea of the alarming growth he’s undergone.
The rustle of a wrapper at the far end of the house has him pelting down the hallway in a flash, skidding around the corner and hunkering over any available food. I can feel his muscles straining against me as I heave him out of the way.
He barely lets me get the cat food out of the packet before he’s gobbled it up, and the other animals have to be locked away from him to get some dining peace.
Of course, what goes in must come out.
Some day, I’ll tell you with the story of what happened in our walk-in wardrobe the week we went on holidays. Just make sure you’re not eating when you read it.
