Ruby, Ruby, Ruby

*I hope you sung the title of this blog post- if you don’t get the reference listen to ‘Ruby’ by Kaiser Chiefs'*

It took me eight years to persuade my parents to get a cat.

Disclaimer: This won’t turn into a cat blog I promise. However, I thought this story would be worthy of a mention on my blog. Plus, I do really love cats. You only need to spend a short amount of time with me before I mention my love of cats. This love of cats has almost become a personality trait (I’m not even sorry about it). I’m definitely the type of person to cross over the road if I see a cat on the other side of the street, just to go say hello to it and give it a stroke. : *Why did Hannah cross the road? To go say hello to the cat on the other side*

I was around two years old when my love of cats first began. One of our neighbours' cats, which was called the rather delightful name of ‘Mr Pringle’, would regularly wander in our garden. I’ve always been a rather inquisitive person, so naturally I wanted to know what this was. Mr Pringles was the first cat that I had met and from that moment on this sprouted my deep affection and interest in cats. This love of cats has been carried forwards into all aspects of my life. I had the nickname of Hannah kitten when I was younger that my parents would call me. Back at my primary school me and one of my friends would even call each other ‘cat’ and send each other cat pictures and cat books. Even to this day one of my other friends sends me cat pictures from time to time. 

My parents finally caved in after eight years of persuasion. I remember when we first saw Ruby and how she fitted in one of my Dad’s hands, that’s how tiny she was. I can recall that when we bought her home how Mum was filling up her food bowl whilst still on the phone and how Ruby jumped on her back and fell asleep. My family and I were looking back at old photos recently, as a lockdown activity. We came across a picture of me with a blanket on my legs with Ruby as a kitten on the blanket. I recall having the blanket on my legs as I was too scared to either be hurt myself or hurt her.

My whole family are cat fanatics. Last Christmas I gave my family a book called: “Life lessons I’ve learnt from my cat”, illustrated by Jamie Shelman. With my personal favorite quote being: “ Don’t work too hard” and then there's a rather familiar picture of a cat lying across a laptop keyboard (see picture below). The illustrations are a joy and we found ourselves uttering ‘HA that’s so true’ for every single page. Every Christmas my Grannie even gets gifts for Ruby, as if it were one of her grandchildren. (She really is a spoilt cat). Not that she shows how thankful she is of course. She carries a rather grumpy perplexed expression all the time and would sniff at the toys for a bit and then go slink off. You will then catch her playing with whatever she was given and if she catches us watching her she’ll stop as if to say “nothing to see here”. Let’s all just pretend she’s thankful. 

*sidenote* I love that, without consciously knowing, we all have a certain voice we put on when talking to animals. It’s also the same voice we use when talking to young children. I know that if Ruby could talk she would tell me to stop using such a ridiculous voice when speaking to her and talk to her like a normal, functioning being.

My family and friends say that I am the animal whisper, I will be able to spot and find any animal. To put this in perspective: last summer we went to Costa Brava. We had just got to our hotel and were walking to our room when I saw something in the bushes. I looked further in and I could see a cream kitten laying in the shade. I later spotted that there were two of them wandering around the hotel accompanied by their mum. Again, they were extremely timid so I was always careful when seeing them. We had bought small bouncy pool balls with us on this particular holiday. So I decided to gently roll the balls towards the kitten and it slowly crept up to it and gave it a sniff. I spent a solid hour just rolling the ball towards it and it began to relax around me and get used to me. They were angelic.

Another rather amusing cat encounter was when my family and I did a cycling holiday in France in 2012 where we saw a cat whose fur had been shaved, except from around the face. We think this was due to the hot weather as it was in the middle of Summer. We named him ‘Lion’ due to the fact that it looked like he had a mane of fur and also due to the fact that he looks like he’s roaring in one particular photo (see below). He kept coming up to us in the hotel restaurant and wanted to sit with us on the deckchairs around the pool.

In typical Hannah fashion, after finally getting a cat it only took me a few years to then want a dog as well as having a cat. When I was younger I used to be terrified of dogs. There’s a particular funny family video of me standing at the top of a slide listening intently as I could hear a dog. It was evident I didn’t like hearing a barking dog. I’ve always been quite a cautious person, this runs in the family as Ruby is too.

That being said, I now love dogs. However, Ruby isn’t so fond of them. My family are volunteers for a charity called: ‘Hearing Dogs For Deaf People’. This means that they contact us if they would like us to look after a client’s dog for a certain amount of time (normally no more than two weeks). We once ended up looking after a dog called Juno. We were only supposed to have her for a few days but it turned into four months. She was such a beautiful dog, so well behaved and friendly. We all miss her to this day. 

Ruby has gotten gradually better with dogs. She definitely isn’t fond of them. She’s always been a timid cat (she’s scared of the kitchen mop), but she once got brave enough to sniff the dog’s nose and then scampered off to rest from the adrenaline rush.

Ruby is now twelve years old, so she’s rather elderly now. She spends most of the day eating and sleeping (relatable). This has been her usual ritual for most of her life. We’ve kept her as an indoors cat as we’re aware of so many cats who have had an unfortunate end in our village due to the roads. Additionally, as mentioned before, she’s extremely cautious so I don’t know whether she would have gone far if let outside anyways. When it's particularly sunny we take her outside with us so we can keep an eye on her. She normally finds a shady spot to relax. Her favourite spot that she recently found was sitting on top of the lid of a well that we have in our garden. We think this is because she can then see the whole garden for any threats and be up above any action that does happen.

Here are some lovable things that Ruby does:

1. Talks back to us as if having a conversation. Sometimes we will ask her “How are you doing,Rubes?’ and she will sometimes miaow in reply. There was this one time in the first couple of years of having her when I said to her “do that miaow again Rubes” and she looked like she was about to leave and then she turned to face me and did the biggest miaow ever. It’s quite a worrying idea that they may understand what we’re saying. I wouldn’t put it past them to rule the world one day.

2. Ruby loves to play hide and seek. This is especially applicable late at night when she doesn’t want to go to sleep. She has a room downstairs where she goes to sleep, otherwise you’ll find that she will nibble your toes in the middle of the night. Her favourite places have been inside my wardrobe, nestled in with the clothes, hiding in the cupboard under the sink and under duvets. 

3. She does sometimes let us know when she wants to go to bed. She’ll miaow until we come and take her to bed or she’ll wait patiently to be taken to bed. She’ll never take herself downstairs to her ‘room’ at night.

4. She does this peculiar thing where her tail shudders. She’ll arch her back a bit and then her tail violently shudders. We still aren’t quite certain what this means, so if anyone has any clue please do let me know.

5. She has mad hours everyday where you will think that she’s lost the plot. She’ll rush about the house and will want you to chase her. You wouldn't think she’s old with the amount of energy she has in these mad hours. She will then proceed to think that was enough exercise to last her a lifetime and go find a comfy spot to spend the rest of the day at.

I couldn’t imagine my life without Ruby and her weird quirks. She is just so beautiful and she has bought so much joy in my life and I’m sure without her my life wouldn’t have so much colour. It is inevitable that when I have my own place, I’m going to have a house filled with dogs and cats. Sorry to anyone in advance who will have to endure it.

I’ll leave you with this accurate picture: