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

was the one who managed to catch it and set it free outside again. I remember, too, the time that my grandmother’s cat had two black kittens and my outrage and horror when my father drowned them in a pail of water because nobody wanted them and we were too poor to keep them ourselves. Most striking of all are my memories of my first visit to the zoo where I had to be dragged away from the tigers’ compound. My wonder at those huge, beautifully marked cats knew no bounds. In my spare time I loved to read stories and look at pictures of the jungle cats of Africa and India. The favourite story of my boyhood was Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book in which the Tiger, Shere Kahn, was my hero.
    I also remember a striped tabby we had during the Second World War, when my father was away at sea. I found
him as an abandoned kitten wandering the streets totally lost. My mother, with a family of three children to feed and only a pittance from the Admiralty to live on, reluctantly allowed me to keep it. I called the kitten Tiger. He was silver-grey with vivid dark stripes and he ate anything that was left-over from the family meals. He especially loved porridge. Tiger was always the first to run into the Anderson Air Raid Shelter with the family when the warning siren sounded to alert us to the German bombers which were mounting a blitz against the armament factories and the shipyards along the River Tyne. He survived the war but sadly was later run over by a lorry.
    I have an almost instinctive attraction to cats. Whenever I see one I have to go and speak to it. For the most part cats come towards me and allow me to stroke them. I love to watch the graceful way that they move. To me, the most attractive dancers and actors have the skill of moving like a cat, that flowing smoothness which is a joy to watch. Teachers of yoga advise members of their classes to learn to stretch like a cat and to practise breathing exercises by moving the stomach muscles rather than the chest in just the same way cats do when they are totally relaxed. When I first saw Sean Connery as Special Agent 007 in the James Bond films I was captivated, as were audiences worldwide, by the speed and grace with which he moved; he walked with the stealth of a big cat.

    It was because of these feelings that I was prepared on a cold winter’s night to venture out in a snowstorm to rescue an injured cat. The reward for all my efforts was more than I could ever have expected. It was the bonus of turning a tragedy into a triumph: I found a dying kitten who grew into a wonderful pet called Toby Jug.

SUMMER
    S ummer was judged to have begun at Owl Cottage when the house martins arrived and diligently began to build their nests of dried mud and grasses against the stone walls high up under the overhanging roof of the cottage. It is fascinating to see the dark brown nests finally assume their full rugby ball shape with only the smallest of openings at the side for the birds to enter. Toby Jug sat on the lawn watching for hours, mesmerized by the comings and goings of these amazing birds. To me they were always a welcome sight in spite of the proliferation of their droppings which, as the season progressed, lay encrusted on the bedroom window-sill and marred the elegance of my much-prized and newly tiled patio.
    During that first summer with Toby Jug there were many developments in the life we shared that surpassed anything I had encountered before with cats. For one thing he delighted in being with me, not for him the often haughty disdain that some cats show to their owners as an assertion of their independence. Whenever I called to him, he would come running to me from wherever he was, no matter what he was doing. This attachment extended even to travelling
in the car. My work at the rural-based college entailed a great deal of travelling around the country visiting schools and other institutions and whenever possible I took Toby with me. He would sit or lie on the