The cat named Bandit
Dec. 22nd, 2024 10:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
injunjaneWhen I was twelve, I found a young stray cat at the backyard of our long multi-apartment building ('a human anthill') where we're living in Kyiv. He was apparently less than 1 year old, very thin and hungry, probably from a litter born in the depths of a huge basement under the building. A survivor feeding on scraps from the trash bins.
When I brought him home, begging my mom to take him (we didn't have any domestic animals back then), she was trying to say a firm 'no', but something in that cat touched her. She took him in her lap, and immediately, with a swift move of his paw with long sharp claws, the cat destroyed the front of her favorite blouse.
- Ah you bandit! - shouted my mom.
We took him in and named him Bandit.
He knew his name, and when we called it in the well of the backyard, in a second he was running back to our apartment no matter how far he was during his adventures (yes, he was a still a stray cat, so he continued his yard and basement life even after we sheltered and ennobled him).
Despite his hungry kittenhood, he refused to eat the thing we called 'sausage' (not the normal sausages full of spice and meat we know now, but a strange smooth product in which there was more starch than meat, popular in the shops back then).
- He knows there is no meat in there, - mom was saying.
Instead, Bandit adored raw sea fish, so we were buying big frozen blocks of the cheapest one to satisfy his appetite. When devouring it, the small grey cat was making strange noises of a roaring tiger feasting upon some deer.
Our apartment was on the 1st floor, and I developed a crazy technique for going home fast from the backyard (our 9-story human anthill was very long, so it took some time to go around it to the front door). Instead, me and my brother climbed our balcony like monkeys climb trees. Our parents objected but there was nothing they could do. Even after one day 12-year me slipped and for some seconds was hanging head down from the edge of the balcony - nobody saw it, I told no one, I helped myself to get back on the balcony.
Wild masters of a wild cat. Bandit was surprisingly fast in learning that he can climb the balcony like that (and exactly the same way we did).
But one day he went away to roam the backyard, and never came back.
I was heartbroken.
When I brought him home, begging my mom to take him (we didn't have any domestic animals back then), she was trying to say a firm 'no', but something in that cat touched her. She took him in her lap, and immediately, with a swift move of his paw with long sharp claws, the cat destroyed the front of her favorite blouse.
- Ah you bandit! - shouted my mom.
We took him in and named him Bandit.
He knew his name, and when we called it in the well of the backyard, in a second he was running back to our apartment no matter how far he was during his adventures (yes, he was a still a stray cat, so he continued his yard and basement life even after we sheltered and ennobled him).
Despite his hungry kittenhood, he refused to eat the thing we called 'sausage' (not the normal sausages full of spice and meat we know now, but a strange smooth product in which there was more starch than meat, popular in the shops back then).
- He knows there is no meat in there, - mom was saying.
Instead, Bandit adored raw sea fish, so we were buying big frozen blocks of the cheapest one to satisfy his appetite. When devouring it, the small grey cat was making strange noises of a roaring tiger feasting upon some deer.
Our apartment was on the 1st floor, and I developed a crazy technique for going home fast from the backyard (our 9-story human anthill was very long, so it took some time to go around it to the front door). Instead, me and my brother climbed our balcony like monkeys climb trees. Our parents objected but there was nothing they could do. Even after one day 12-year me slipped and for some seconds was hanging head down from the edge of the balcony - nobody saw it, I told no one, I helped myself to get back on the balcony.
Wild masters of a wild cat. Bandit was surprisingly fast in learning that he can climb the balcony like that (and exactly the same way we did).
But one day he went away to roam the backyard, and never came back.
I was heartbroken.
