The truth about cats and dogs...

I awake to the realisation that I left the kitchen door open last night and that not one, but two, feral cats are in the house.

Shortly afterwards Freddie, my dog, realises this too.



There are breakages.

For does not an old Turkish proverb say: 'A terrified cat will always choose to rampage through a tray of wine glasses rather than head for the door standing wide open'?

After several minutes of extreme havoc and a considerable amount of collateral damage, the feral cats are ejected. I sweep up all the broken glass, feed the dog and yowling resident cats, and take a cup of coffee into the courtyard to sit awhile and regain my equilibrium.


I sink gratefully into the Lloyd loom garden chair and raise the mug of coffee to my lips, but even as I finally take the first sip of coffee of the day, a loud clacking noise starts coming from inside the camel barn. I sigh, knowing what the noise is. My cat Ollie is sitting inside the camel barn, batting the door of the cat flap back and forth with his paw. CLACK! CLACK! CLACK! goes the door. He will continue doing this until I get up, walk over to the camel barn doors, and lift up the cat flap door from the outside, thus allowing him unimpeded egress from the camel barn into the courtyard.



Ollie is 15, very old in cat years, and I indulge him in this practice on the grounds that he may be going senile and have forgotten how to use the cat flap. The possibility remains, however, that he simply sees no necessity to bother with pushing his way through the cat flap when an indentured servant is available to do it for him. I strongly suspect that he manages to get through that door perfectly well on his own when I am not in the vicinity.

With Ollie ushered safely through the cat flap I manage, finally, to drink a few sips of coffee and sit back in my chair, enjoying the scent of the jasmine growing up the courtyard wall.

Then two things happen simultaneously: Ollie strolls over to the flower bed in which the jasmine is planted, just next to where I am sitting, and defecates neatly, and copiously, right in the middle of it. The scent of the jasmine is immediately replaced by something infinitely less pleasant. Meanwhile, Freddie begins to exacavate, with enormous, earth-spattering enthusiasm, the large terracotta pot in which I have recently planted some not particularly robust geraniums.

Once I have disposed of Ollie's little gift and swept up the earth and broken flowers, I bow to the inevitable and decide to take Freddie for a long walk to dissipate some of his energy. As I re-enter the house via the camel barn, in which I will be entertaining some friends for dinner this evening, I notice a very strong odour of Eau du Feral Cat, a souvenir of last night's uninvited guests. When a cat sprays the smell is both disgusting and extremely difficult to eradicate. At this point it becomes necessary, for the sake of my mental health, to move into a state of extreme denial, and I decide to think about this problem later.

Freddie and I set off on our walk, and make our way up to the pine woods with only two motorcycle-chasing incidents (not bad going), and no one moved to throw anything at Freddie or me because they don't like dogs (also good). The day is looking up. We continue to climb and, after an hour or so, get to the high point of the walk, where there is an extraordinarily beautiful view over the Aegean and the islands of the Ayvalik archipelago, shown here in a photo taken last week:




At this very moment, however, as Freddie sits on the ground panting happily and I, gazing at the view, am struck anew by the incredible beauty of this place, the electrical storm which has been threatening for several days finally arrives, with thunder, spectacular lightning effects and torrential rain. We are some distance from any form of shelter, and within minutes I am soaked to the skin. I sit down on the wet ground next to my big, wet dog, give him a big, wet hug and, huddled together, we sit and watch the sheet lightning illuminate the sky over the sea.