NEWS AND VIEWS: As I buy The Times daily, I know of Carol Midgely. As well as being a columnist for The Times she occasionally helps out at her friend’s animal rescue charity. That’s nice. It tells me that she is a decent person. She went to the home of a recently deceased elderly lady who had a cat, to collect the said cat and bring him/her back to the rescue. She admits that she was an idiot to simply try and grab the cat who was sitting on top of a high cupboard.
The cat was there for safety as they were scared. Their human companion had probably died a day or two ago leaving the tabby cat confused and alone. It is highly likely that the cat lived a quiet life enjoying a very close bond with the deceased lady. The sort of scenario that leads to shock when it all suddenly changes.
Carol Midgley is an award-winning journalist who has been a feature writer, reporter and columnist for The Times since 1996. She has worked in newspapers for 23 years and won Feature Writer of the Year in 2004 – Google Books
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The cat defended herself against Midgely’s outstretched arms and launched a furious attack of her. It must have been bad. I can feel the pain from here. She said it was excruciating to the point where she vomited. She was bitten and scratched deeply enough to injury the nerves in her hand. Electric shocks were shooting up her arm.
She said it felt as if she had put her hand in a ‘furry blender’. She even thought her arm might have been broken. Perhaps she was joking. But it was bad. And true domestic cat attacks are truly horrible. Serious injury can follow. She went to the local NHS walk-in centre for treatment.
The nurse was great she reports. Nice to know seeing as my experience of the NHS is not as good. She wisely prescribed antibiotics. These are vital as a cat bite infection can take hold and it must be prevented early on to avoid a serious bacterial infection.
She’s fed up because you can’t sunbathe on antibiotics (strictly speaking) nor drink alcohol (also strictly speaking). Her hand became badly swollen.
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She rightly admits that the incident was her fault. It was. She should have been aware of the possibility that the cat would be very defensive, respected the cat and taken appropriate precautions.
She was a dangerous stranger from the cat’s perspective. An invading ‘hostile’. Perhaps if she had taken some nice food and a cat tease (toy) it might have been enough to reassure the cat to allow her to place her in a carrier with relative ease. A safety measure would have been to wear thick clothing to protect the arms and thick gloves to do likewise for the hands. But you can’t blame Midgely as some domestic cats are more confident than others and this cat might have been able to accept the sudden change with greater equanimity.
However, the wild cat within the domestic cat comes out when they are scared. The deserve a lot of respect during those stressful moments.
What is the best way to extricate yourself from the “cat bite and grab” in play?
