Free Paw Prints in the Moonlight by Denis O'Connor Page A

talking to none other than his highness Toby Jug. I staggered to my feet and realized that Toby had obviously come out of another burrow entrance and had been watching me behind my back. He would have been puzzled at the sight of me lying fully stretched out with my head jammed up against the rabbit hole shouting his name. Both the man and the
woman laughed heartily when I told them what had happened and continued on their way. Meanwhile I clipped Toby Jug’s lead back on and decided that we’d had enough adventure for one day. We returned to the car and drove home with the Toby perched on my shoulder, purring loudly in my ear. Too late, I realized that I was wearing my brand new Harris tweed jacket.
    Later that evening, after we had dined, I retired to the conservatory and was soon joined by Toby. I stroked and fondled him even though he had given me such a traumatic time during the afternoon. As far as he was concerned he had merely been having a jolly frolic. Nothing wrong with that was there? And it was then that I recalled my distress at several ‘fun’ incidents which had almost killed him in the past months. Banishing such thoughts from my mind as inappropriate in this restful setting, I was helped by the glowing sight of the planet Venus rising resplendent above the treetops, a golden star against the inky-black night sky. I took this to be a good omen for the future. Toby Jug was by now fast asleep and emitting faint snores. As I listened to him I wondered what new excitement this exceptional little cat would bring into my life. Tomorrow would no doubt herald yet more surprises.
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    I think that animals tend to be much more accepting of human beings than the other way around. I often found that
cats took the initiative in my relationships with them. But it was a two-way process of communication. Whilst I sought to domesticate my cats, they made me more aware of the natural world by sharing their instincts and demonstrating their skills to me. And how fascinating they were. I totally reject the idea of the ‘dumb animal’ because I have never found it applied to any of the animals I have kept as pets. I’ve always found my pet cats to be graced by an in-born wisdom which perhaps many civilized human beings have lost. This was especially so with Toby Jug.
    Toby Jug was, in a lot of ways, different from the many other cats I have known. He was more like a child to me because, in a sense, I had reared him and he knew no parent but me. I’m sure that some people would dismiss my feelings about Toby Jug as mawkish rubbish but I am equally certain that other people would echo the same sentiments about their own pets in spite of accusations of mad ‘anthropomorphism’ – the name given to attributing human behaviour to animals. Whilst all the animals I have known were special to me, Toby Jug assumed a significance in my life which was out of all proportion to the fact that he was a cat.
    I don’t think there is any doubt that, for many people, love, the strongest emotion of all, enters the equation when an animal becomes a pet. Sceptics would argue, though, that this love is only one-sided – without regular feeding, all of an animal’s so-called affection would soon cease. I’m not so sure
that this is true. In my experience animals need to be loved as well as fed, just as people do. I have known cats, dogs and horses who wanted to be stroked and petted, quite apart from their need for food. This was most certainly the case with Toby Jug who showed feelings of loving attachment for me beyond anything that I had experienced before with any other pet animal and it warmed my heart to feel it.
    During my childhood there were always cats about the house, sitting on walls in the backstreets and in the gardens of the neighbours’ houses and the backyards near my home. I recall the amusement when a cat got into our classroom at the local elementary school and how I