You may remember from my previous stories that my old dog Rocky went to university where he studied ‘sheep herding and the modern day kelpie’. Rocky was well educated, wore round gold-rimmed kelpie spectacles and usually carried a copy of the ‘Kelpie Times’ under his arm.
Rocky looking dapper Photograph by Sam Rose
Now for a dog to get into university they have to be pretty smart. These places are usually filled with working dogs – kelpies, blue heelers, border collies, sniffer dogs in training etc.
Brutus you may have gathered by now, is not the smartest dog in the world but probably smarter than he realizes. He doesn’t like to be reminded of the time he attempted to jump in the air to catch a helitac during a bushfire and there are heaps of other examples and we certainly won’t talk about the ‘Tony Abbott doll incident’ either.
Kevin as you may know, is our ginger cat – the one we adopted a week after Gordon crossed over to Rainbow Bridge because quite simply, we could not be without a cat and our little home was incomplete without one.
For those of you that haven’t read that blog entry of how we said goodbye to Gordon and how Kev came into our lives, the link is here:
Kevin – now 7.5kgs of floof and attitude Photograph by Samantha Rose
How has Kevin turned out?
Well he is actually rather magnificent and at the time of writing this, he is 1 year and 9 months old and weighs 7.5kgs. He is a feral bastard – which is why we call him ‘Kevin the bastard’, a title that is more than fitting of his personality.
Kevin attacks my legs, he bites them when he wants attention, he bites them when he is pissed off and he bites them, well just to tell me that he loves me and I now have brown scars all over my legs comparable to a game of noughts and crosses.
Kevin has also turned out to be a bit of a pervert. No, he does not have his testicles as they were removed over a year ago but he still seems to have ‘needs’ and these ‘needs’ involve humping the dogs toys.
He humps the toys while clutching his goldfish fishing wand in his mouth although sometimes he likes to hold the squeaky squirrel but the fish is his favourite ‘sex toy’ which he drags round the house until he finds what he wants to hump. We did try removing all of the dog toys which was not fair on Brutus, but he ended up humping Brutus and of course, Brutus was shocked and disgusted and so am I because this afternoon (8th May 2019), Kevin was rubbing his face on my husbands shoes while trying to hump my foot.
“Mum, can you please get Kevin off my Tony Abbott doll!” Brutus protested once while Kev went at one of the Tony dolls like a champ. “That is disgusting!” Brutus added. I gently reminded him that it wasn’t that long ago that he (Brutus) used to try and hump my arm when he got overexcited while holding a Tony in his mouth.
Tony is Kevin’s favourite toy to ‘love’ Photograph by Samantha Rose
“But that was different!” Brutus blushed. He was right though, Brutus wasn’t trying to get his ‘jollies’ so to speak but Kevin does (we have to wash the toys once a week now).
The squeaking from the toys grew louder as Kev worked his way round them and he even sorted the gingerbread man out. “You are just jealous!” Kev sneered at Brutus. Brutus turned away because he couldn’t think of a suitable reply.
Kevin has sexy time with Brutus’s favourite toy Photograph by Samantha Rose
This went on for quite a while but actually it is a daily event and we just try and ignore him. Well I say ignore him but I shall admit to taking several videos as Kev now has his own Insta account and I post the videos and photos on there and Kev is getting quite a following. Here is the link if you are interested – http://@Kevinthebastard
Kev admired his nails and said sweetly, “Do you like your legs?”
Stupid me didn’t even realise what was about to happen, so I pretty much deserved it really, “Yes Kevin, I like my legs, why do you ask?”
“No reason.” Kev grinned and took a swipe adding to the already growing collection of scars that make me look as though I have been hurting myself on a regular basis.
Another time he got turd caught up in his pantaloons – and for those not in the know, pantaloons are the back end of a long haired cat. If you check out their floofy legs, they actually look like baggy pantaloons – have a look for yourself if you don’t believe me.
Pantaloons! Photograph by Samantha Rose
It was no mean feat to clean those shitty ginger trousers and I had to wrestle 7.5kgs of angry semi feral cat who was insulting me and threatening to eat myself and my family in the night and even when I told him that my family live in the UK, he still threatened to eat them.
Kevin is so difficult to handle that he has been prescribed a sedative from the vet to enable me to bring him to the vets or if I need to trim his nails, so please don’t be fooled by the cuteness of the floof because he really is a bastard and lives up to his name.
Dear Lord, make me a good boy! Photograph by Samantha Rose
Kev is a highly strung, nervous semi feral cat who gets upset if his routine is even slightly out of sync. If we are late putting him to bed (yes he has his very own bedroom), he starts to knock things off the TV cabinet – mainly the modem but will graduate to whatever else may be on there or the coffee table.
One time we had pest control come to do a termite inspection and we had to shut Kevin away. After the guy had gone and my husband went to let Kevin out, Kevin panicked and scratched the crap out of my husband. He did say sorry afterwards and begged for forgiveness, but that was only because prawns were involved.
My House – My Castle!
Kevin is highly territorial and doesn’t welcome other animals into his house, especially cats and he even gets upset if he can see them outside the house through the dining room window. We had a bit of an incident one Sunday with the tuxedo cat from down the road calling round to see us. He often knocks on our front door and asks to come in for a chat – you know me, I would happily chat to him but Kevin said that hell will freeze over before that happens.
This cat is quite cute and I sometimes see him on my way to work sitting outside his garden doing cat stuff. He waves at me and always says ‘Good morning’. Unlike the horrible tabby tom cat complete with testicles that used to piss up my windows and door and call my old cat Gordon a bastard and threaten to shit on my car.
That all ended quite abruptly when I purchased some citronella crystals from the vet to scatter by my door. The last I saw of that tabby cat was him stomping off down the road with testicles and attitude, saying that I had ruined his life.
Anyway, back to Sunday. I was curled up on the sofa watching a movie. Brutus was on his sofa in the dining room and Kevin was being a nosey bastard at the dining room window. Quite suddenly I heard Kevin make a blood curdling screech and his language was pretty ‘choice’ as well, some of it I can’t even repeat.
“Oi! What the hell do you think you are doing? Sitting by my window like it’s yours!” Kevin screamed so loudly that I jumped up off the sofa to see what was going on. I was greeted at the sight of Kevin in full ‘toilet brush’ where his fur had floofed up so much that I could have used him to clean my toilet.
“Let me get that cheeky bastard, I shall kill him with my own paws!” Kev hissed and spat as he attacked the window and flipped the bird at this other cat.
The tuxedo cat outside did not move an inch. He sat there grinning at Kevin while making gestures with his paws and shouting something about ‘no need to be so hostile’ and ‘could he possibly come in and share a bowl of meat or something?’
This of course ended with Kevin getting so upset that he told the tuxedo cat to piss off, then ran over to poor old Brutus who was on the chair, smacked his bum (Kev didn’t have his nails out at all), then chased Brutus into the living room, swiped my legs (nails still not out thank god) and chased me around the house.
Tuxedo cat shook his head and merely walked off down the garden while doing a telephone gesture at Kevin saying ‘Call me’. Kevin who was in more states than Australia, went to his litter tray to take a piss and angrily kicked his litter everywhere to prove a point.
“Well I don’t know what that was all about but I am the goodest boy ever!” Brutus mumbled, still alarmed at why his bum was swatted with Kevin’s huge paws when he was indeed ‘the goodest boy ever’ and rarely if ever did anything wrong.
“Two words” I said to Brutus, “Tuxedo Cat”.
Brutus sighed and muttered something about never understanding cats and especially never understanding Kevin.
I will admit to that tuxedo cat being a bit odd though, he reminds me of something out of a horror movie where these mysterious cats keep appearing just before something happens. He keeps coming to my door despite Kevin threatening to take him out and shit down his neck and each morning I see him sitting outside his house waving to me in the car. I reckon he has another tuxedo friend or brother because at the end of my road, there is another identical cat who also sits outside his house and stares like he is judging my life choices.
It’s almost as though there is a secret tuxedo society that watch my every move and speak in their own language and it is their sole aim to antagonise Kevin and taunt him to watch him lose his temper. Or perhaps I am being paranoid – who knows, not me that’s for sure and don’t ask Kevin, he still hasn’t recovered from the other night.
So What Makes Kevin So Special?
Kevin is feral, aggressive, hard to handle – impossible for the vet to do anything with unless sedated. I think in the wrong hands, Kevin would end up back in rescue. He only just tolerates children – providing they don’t touch him and completely ignore him. If he escaped, there is no way he would be caught. Which is why we are so vigilant with him and actually put him before any visitors that we may have and we would never have children staying with us because we can’t trust kids with him and we certainly can’t trust Kev with kids.
At the time of writing this blog, Kevin bit my hand and latched on, he didn’t draw blood but it really did hurt. He did this because I had shut him out of my office so I could concentrate on my writing and by the time I got out to see him, he was sitting on the kitchen counter looking boot-faced and furious with his pupils dilated in a ‘I am going to kill you’ kind of way. I had upset his routine, his evenings with me and had left him alone in the living room.
With Kevin, we work with what we have, we read his signals or at least try to. We make the most of his good points because when Kevin does allow you to cuddle him, he will ever so slightly relax in your arms and you get the slightest and faintest purr from him and occasionally he dribbles and when you get that kind of affection with him, it’s like you have won the lotto and not just his love for that moment.
He follows me everywhere, to the bath and even to the toilet and it breaks his ginger heart if he can’t find me which makes me feel awful when I have to shut him out of my office because he won’t let me work.
Kevin likes to watch me have a bath or shower Photograph by Samantha Rose
We can never be complacent with him because he can be quite affectionate one day and almost like a normal cat but if something upsets him then he can be spooked and aggressive the next. One funny little indicator of him being upset is that his little nose puffs up and turns what I call ‘electric pink’, we can always tell when he is upset just by looking at his facial expression and in particular, his nose.
So why did we pick Kevin?
When we first adopted Kevin and brought him home, I recall him smacking his legs to the floor, hissing at me and taking a swipe at my hands. He was 7 weeks old when he did that and we knew that he was not going to be an ordinary easy to handle kitten.
He was ginger, he was feisty, he had no fear and he marched up to my husband like a short man with a purpose. I knew he would fit in with us and I knew that he needed to hold his own because at that time, he would be living with two big dogs.
Not all cats are loving, gentle and easy to own. Some of them are nervous, aggressive and need to be accepted as that way which is exactly what we have done. And when you take on a cat like that, you commit to him/her no matter what but most of all, you need patience and lots of it.
Kevin is a young adult cat now, he humps toys, he steals things, he bites, he gives the occasional magical head boop which is often followed by a bite on the nose and he knows exactly what he likes and doesn’t like in his life and relies on us to look after him and protect him.
To have that kind of understanding and mutual communication with him, means we need a certain level of trust between us and him. I think we have that now but he is still a work in progress and we can never drop our standards in care for him and let our guard down.
Kevin is a character, we have never owned a cat like him – ever. He makes us laugh, he makes me cry – especially when he bites my legs and I truly mean it when I say that you have to meet him to believe just what a character he actually is.
Why Kevin when we could have had a ‘normal’ cat? Well why not? He belongs with us, we are the ones that know him best and love him the most.
He is a bastard, but he is our bastard and we think he is pretty darned awesome.
Kevin – the bastard in training Photograph by Samantha Rose
Dedicated to all carers of feisty feral cats in the world – wherever they may be
The Pigaloo Diaries 