Receiving Splatt
Anna always spoke fondly of cats for the whole time that I have known her. Towards the end of 2013 she began to talk about them much more, bringing up in conversation whether we could get one. I said yes, if she did all the cleaning up and feeding of them. After a few weeks went by where I heard nothing about cats, other than being taken to the Strawberry Hills shop see a white kitten that was so scared it was grasping tightly onto the clothes of the lady who was trying to give her away, meowing loudly. We decided not to take this cat and the weeks went by with no follow-up and I went to the OPF for a few days and returned straight to the office.
On returning to the office, I opened my emails and saw one that had been sent from Strawberry Hills security saying ‘Dear Mark, please do not turn the alarm on when there is a cat in the apartment’. I thought cat, what cat? Then I remembered Anna’s request and remembered agreeing to it on certain conditions. I phoned Anna and asked her how the apartment was during my time away. I asked her if anything had changed and other lines of questioning which I had hoped would bring out her statement that she had got a cat. She was not willing to say it, so I reminded her of the conditions that she had to honor to keep the cat. She asked me how I knew, and I recounted the security story to her. I was excited to get a new cat and went home early. She was in the lounge wrapped in the protective cloth to protect her from licking her wound which she received because of being spayed. She was a playful cat and makes great company.
Catching cats with Anna
Anna has become involved in a group of cat loving volunteers who would go out and catch street living female cats and take them to a vet to be spayed. Whilst they were recovering, her group would photograph them and place their pictures on a website for potential cat owners to look and select the one that they wanted to care for. I am impressed by how well she did the in placing street cats into good homes.
I remember times where Anna would receive a telephone call from a person who had seen a particular cat’s picture that she wanted. We would then go to the location where Anna had photographed the cat, armed with her leather gloves and the cat box.
Some cats would be willingly taken, falling for the trick of offering them food to enjoy, followed by a swoop to push them into the cage. After this it was a trip to the vet, either to be spayed or neutered then if it were female it would have 10 days recovering in the vet, or 2 days if a male. We would then drive the cats to the new owners. For one cat we took it all the way to Nevelsk. For other cats Anna would arrange delivery of the cat. If there were no takers for any of the cats which had been caught and sterilised, I would drive Anna and the cat to Margarita’s house. Marguerite was another cat mad person in Anna’s group who had a large outdoor area to keep cats during the summer and a shed to keep the cats in winter whilst they recovered.
I remember fondly catching three cats. One beautiful cat who sat on the bus stop seat opposite Dom Torgovni. He had a great seat for catching the warmth of the sun, and a captive audience of people who would feed him.
We tried to catch a rough cat near the stall where the pedestrian crossing reaches the opposite side of Sakhalinskaya Street, near the bust of a famous person. This cat fell for our trick of leaving food for it but was too strong when I tried to catch it and it scratched me. We went to Margarita’s place to find a net but alas on our return the cat was nowhere to be seen.
We tried many times to catch a very rough looking black and white female in the car park of the apartment blocks near the iSOS clinic. It would always run behind the rubbish bins so in our latest attempt we put our fold up chair in the gap to prevent it from running. This cat clearly knew that it was trying to be caught, but it was also hungry. It was particularly good at not spending too much time eating, creating in Anna a sense of not knowing when the best time to catch the cat would be. It would eat, return under the car, return to eat for a few seconds and then return under the car. After about 10 minutes of this we would give up and put its food under the car. We tried to catch it three times and at time of writing, this cat was still at large.
Ecosystem Hotspots 