Our Cat Mogone

Evening after evening, the cat was slower and slower to run away. And I had the chance to observe him a bit better: I realised he was looking more and more knocked about, and was now clearly limping, keeping the right fore leg raised from the ground.

The situation had to be solved: the duck had to be able to enter the house in order to eat... and the cat couldn't simply be left there in that condition: so I decided to offer him some food...

I tried to allure him into the house, in order to better protect and heal him: but he still feared us, and barely accepted to be patted shortly. We soon understood that something had to be done about its limping leg, that was terribly sore and swollen at the articulation. 

After two days the decision was taken: I swiftly seized him while he was eating, and put him in one of those box for transporting pets, just bought for the occasion! And we directly brought him to the veterinary.

The diagnosis was an abscess due to an infected wound, probably received during a quarrel with another male cat: ...

If you have never owned cats (that was my personal situation before this), suffice to say that they HATE water, even drops of it!, and of course injections! Every small improvement in the cat healthiness also meant a greater difficulty in giving him the treat he needed. Anyway the cat was never allowed to go out of the house during the cure, as advised by the vet, and at the end of three weeks he was finally perfectly healthy, and we were completely exhausted!

He turned into the beautiful, big, curious, gluttonous and affectionate (in a way of his own) cat that you are seeing in this selection of photographs! I (Claudio) never owned a cat when I was a child, and this is my first experience; V., on the contrary, has lived with generations of cats in the parental home. And in many ways I feel that Mogone (yes, I know, you are asking what does it mean... I'll tell you in a minute) has really adopted ME, and anyway I am really proud of him, I love him a lot, and he knows this: for example he squats down in all my preferred places of the house, and wants to emulate me in a lot of ways (e.g.: I was working on the car when Mogone, after a few minutes, came to "give an hand", and I took these photographs)!

V. once, in London, bought a beautifully illustrated children book, for beginning readers, whose title is:

"Mog in the dark" by Judith Kerr

It tells, with wonderfully sweet images, of a cat that chooses the warmth and light of an house instead of the unknown dark outside.

And you must know that in Italian "-one" is the suffix meaning "big": for example "gatto" means cat, and "gattone" means "big cat" (remember "Clotildone" ?). So here it is: Mog is VERY long (almost 80 centimetres from head to tail) and he deserves his name!

Anyway, now we share the home, the kitchen, the sofa, and almost every other part of the house. Mogone is always a bit disgusted by our incomprehensible affection to a strange animal, a white BIG bird, called Clotildone, that we EVEN let sometimes enter the kitchen! As you can see in the photograph, in these instances he generally looks puzzled: first he stares at the "alien" visitor ("WHAT? a bird? in MY home?!") and then at us, as if asking "HOW could you do this to ME? how could you ALLOW such an alien being to invade MY place?"...

The two generally respect and mainly ignore each other, also because Clotildone is really too big for Mogone to see it as a prey, even if Mogone has undeniably a very strong hunting instinct, as the wrens that nest near the house sadly know (Grrr...! I would never imagine that I had a killer as a guest!)

At the moment his tastes are not very clear, he seems to like travel narrative, but I am trying to develop and educate him toward scientific popularisation and science fiction, of which I am particularly fond!

When we return to live, during vacations, in our Italian house, he sometimes comes to visit us (it’s just the next door!) and is still available, or even fond, of our cuddling: but he stares at us with that deep look that cats have, seeming to ask “Why did you go away? Was I not good enough for you?” and then slowly, purposefully, will go back to his new house, leaving us with a lump in our throat… 

But, he is happy.  He has found new friends, both of the feline and of the human species, he has learned to play, and to interact a bit more gracefully with humans. We are really proud of him!  The photograph here shows a behaviour that would previously be unthinkable for him! 

He disapproves, of course, but he has accepted this.  The compliments and effusions that he has profused over us during the two weeks we were in our italian house are a proof of this. 

No more "inquiring stares"! Simply happiness at seeing us again! And a deep wish to spend a lot of time with us.

He weights now about 6.5 Kg, a really majestic and good-natured cat, one of the biggest of the whole residence, and makes us proud to have probably saved his life... maybe he knows, too.