windshield diaries: Blogging Buddies: Scruff and Fee

Hi! I’m Fee from Cakes and Cuddles. I’m a Scottish 21 year old living in England, and I am learning to bake and blogging about it. I live with my lovely boyfriend and our little ragga-kitty, Scruff.

When my boyfriend and I moved into this flat, the next door neighbour had two cats. We didn’t know their names, so we called them Kneepads (because she had white legs with what looked like black ‘kneepads’ on them) and Nico (because I’m in love with the Broken Sword series and my boyfriend did an impression of the kitty and randomly did it in a French accent!). Unfortunately, Nico was hit by a car only a few months after she came into our lives, and as Kneepads became lonely having lost her sister, she began to spend more and more time at our house. It got to the stage where, if I would outstretch my arm when I was in bed, she would come and lay on her back, under the duvet, and sleep like a little human cuddling up to us. It was adorable. We didn’t know her owner, and she’d leave every day when her real owner got home so that she could be fed, but she was round our house all day and all night apart from that.

When our neighbour moved unexpectedly, I was devastated. I never got to say goodbye to Kneepads. She used to lay with a paw on each side of your tummy like she was cuddling you, and I was really missing having her adorable little cuddles. My boyfriend and I decided we’d adopt another cat, and that we’d name it Cooper, after our favourite character from The Big Bang Theory.

I went to the shops one day, and as I was walking home a cat walked directly up to me, then turned around when it reached me and walked by my side. I remember smiling at it, because it looked exactly like a cat I’d had (Merlin) when I was a little girl, except that he had tufts of fur sticking up all over the place and his ear was ripped in half. He kept circling my feet as I walked home, so I took a photo and sent it to my boyfriend via Whatsapp, with a message along the lines of “I WANT TO KEEP THIS CAT.” Here is the exact picture I sent him, all those months ago!

He followed me all the way home, then slowly crept inside behind me. My boyfriend said he had no problem with us keeping him, but that it wasn’t up to us; owners don’t choose cats, cats choose their owners. We had absolutely nothing for a cat, so had to use a bowl and saucer for feeding him and improvised a bed for him by stacking old couch cushions, making a bed shape out of a hoodie then laying a towel over it. Luckily, he settled right in and he’s been with us every day ever since. He didn’t have a collar, but for the first week I was terrified that he’d go back ‘home’ and I’d never see him again. Nobody in the area (5 minute walk from my house) had ever seen him before or reported him missing and he was so scraggly that he’d clearly been a stray for a while, so we decided that we’d give him a home here. As he was so raggedy and had his poor little torn ear, I knew from the moment I saw him that his name was Scruff. As homage to our previous name choice, I bought him a little kitty brush and wrote ‘Scruffdon Cooper’ across the base.

He’s quite an old (starting to grey!) boy – we acquired a cat toy for him and he just stared between us and the toy as if to say “Really? Toys? They are beneath me”. I’m not sure how old, really, but his age absolutely presents problems. His tummy is very sensitive and whenever he eats anything too rich we’ve got an entire kitchen of grossness to clean up. He also gets bored of food really easily; he’ll scoff his food up the moment he’s got a new flavour, but by the second day he’ll refuse to eat it because it has become mundane. He also won’t eat anything unless he actually sees us put it in the bowl. Sometimes he’ll have a bowlful of food sitting there and he’ll stare at it until one of us pretends to put an imaginary handful of food in! He moves quite slowly a lot of the time, and sometimes looks off-balanced when he starts to talk. Apparently this is all part of the process of getting older, and it makes me sad that we’ve come in to his life so late in it, but I’m pleased that we can give him a happy home to live out the remainder of his days.

He has adorable little quirks. He walks on his hind legs if you offer him a slice of ham (pictured is my boyfriend holding ham up for an action shot) and he is the most ridiculously camera shy cat ever! The moment he sees a camera he looks away really quickly and moves his face away from the lens no matter what angle you’re trying to get a picture from – which makes it really hard to get pictures of his face! He also answers to MANY nicknames, including “Scroff” (we Woll Scroffed him!!!) and “Diddle”, short for “Scruffadiddle”. He loves stealing your seat, turning the volume up and down on the TV and pressing buttons on the controller if you’re playing a game on the xbox360 or ps3 instead of giving him all of your attention. His favourite place to sit is across your arms when you’re trying to type, and second favourite seems to be on your chest with his butt in your face! He loves being brushed, too, and even loves the little blue diamante collar we got him as a joke. We thought he’d hate it and want to take it off immediately, but it seems like he really suits being a “pimp kitty”!!

I’ve managed to get a proper photo of him from the front ONCE, and it was when he was sitting on my boyfriend’s lap and we made a little hat for him out of a rolled up sock. The moment we placed it on his head, it was like he was totally immobilised! As cute as it was, I started to feel bad for laughing at him so took the hat off; I didn’t feel bad enough not to take photos and post them on the internet though!

If I have learned anything from having Scruff, it is that you can’t compare one cat to another; they all absolutely have their own personalities, in the same way that you and I do. Kneepads loved cuddling and having his paws stroked, while Scruff will put his paw on you on HIS terms, but if you acknowledge it he’ll hastily take it away. Be prepared for a bit of trial and error before you find the food that agrees with your kitty, too, and don’t be afraid to look online when you’re not sure what to do; just make sure you don’t listen to some crazed feline-extremist who wants to scare all of us cat owners by trying to pass off an ill-informed comment as fact!