My dear Meme

Greetings to all friends of the little kittens. I have been absent for a while but wanted to come again, after facing many life events.

My dear Meme is quite a case. He acts as if he were a human, of course he doesn't lose his feline attitudes but he has made us learn things about felines that we would never have known without him.

Our life with Meme is more than just living with a cat. My son and I, we love Meme. To the point that we don't let him out on the street, as we did with our beloved Copito. He passed away but remains alive in our hearts. He is buried in our garden, where he liked to be with me and my plants. Only that Copito grew up being free and it was impossible to keep him locked up even though he put his life at risk several times, being in the street.

Meme stays at home, goes out in our garden, he loves my plants. He lies among the plants, caresses them, smells them. Sometimes when he sees the birds eating fruits in my fig tree, he goes cautiously approaching the tree, in poses that only a feline knows how to do. Until it is time to jump. The birds are more crafty. They are high up in the tree and can escape, while Meme tries to reach the upper branches, the bird has fled quickly.

Meme has learned to respect my sleep. In the mornings he waits for me to wake up, at 5am, 6am or 7am. It doesn't matter, he knows I don't like it when he wakes me up early because I still won't open the front door until 7am.

He waits patiently for me to wake up, lying on the carpet or on a cushion he allotted himself in my room. When he looks at me he stretches his body, meows very softly, and waits for my decisions. Of course, he will always go ahead of me in whatever I decide.

It is my habit to go out after making coffee, open the front door, Meme ahead of me always. He goes straight to what he wants and I go feed my quail.

Yesterday, when I get to the cage, I notice that the cage door is open and a quail is missing. I close the door and I try with my Look to search the floor to see if the bird is still in my garden. I don't see it, then I see my Meme walking very calmly towards Banana's plants and stands static looking down and away.

I thought it might be the bird but I didn't hold out hope as such either. He continued to stare, and I approached. I saw the bird running very fast in another direction. I was able to grab a branch from a tree and approach it to the side closest to the bird and farthest from me. The bird, seeing the cat, preferred to come closer to me and I caught it there.

If it wasn't for Meme's help and his static position he would not have caught the bird. He never attacked it at any time. On other occasions when one of my birds had escaped, another cat from the street was trying to catch it, Meme was between the bird and the cat and was trying to howl at it threateningly with his growls.

That's how we saw it and went to see what was happening, to realize that Meme was attacking the other cat to keep it away from my bird.

At that time I was accompanied by the young man who helps me in the garden and he observed the behavior of the cat, and was amazed, since my cat instead of trying to catch the bird with the other cat, just meowed so that we could hear it and realize that a bird escaped and thus save them from the claw of the stray cat.

There was a time when cats would come to the house and eat my bird. They would catch her sleeping and bite them or take their heads off through the cage. So I had to fix and board up the doors and crawl spaces to keep the stray cats out. I spent many months trying to find solutions until I succeeded.

My Meme never ate any of my birds. I even have an incubator, and when the eggs hatch the birds sing, just like a little bird. He used to watch the incubator until he learned that I take care of them and talk to them like I talk to him. He understands that I love them too by my tone of voice.

Even when I talk to them he comes closer as if he thinks I am talking to him. Once a small bird fell out of the hatcher, which is the place where I pass them when they are 24 hours old. The little bird jumped towards me and fell to the ground, Meme watched it and looked at me. I thought Meme would eat it in one bite, but she didn't. She saw it. He saw it, I bent down, and grabbed it quickly, while Meme looked at it surprised but not grabbing it.

I am very happy with my Meme, my son and I are convinced that Meme is a very intelligent feline. He does things that amaze us, things we never saw in Copito. Meme has his own way of being. He is a tabby cat who always has a brave face, but when he wants to, he looks for us, grooms himself, and stands very close to us, with his body barely touching mine. He wants to be close to me but without hugs or touching. Only when he wants and allows it we touch and hug him, for seconds. He doesn't like us to hold him too much and spoil him too much, always with his brave face. He is our beloved Meme.

He is spoiled, neutered, vaccinated, and controlled by his veterinarian who loves him too. She says that when Meme goes to her office, her day at work is full of pleasant surprises, such as clients coming to pay old debts and other pleasant things.

So far, I hope to visit this feline house more often.

I am @gertu from Venezuela to the world.