Cat Homework

We are at the library on San Pedro, right next to the park. The park was famously the site of Yuanaguana, a Payaya village before the Europeans showed up, although being mostly nomadic, the Payaya didn't leave much behind in archaeological terms. This is possibly only the second time I've been to this park because the first visit was a bit weird due to the presence of numerous down-at-heel drag queens and the spectacle of the spring, or the fountain, or whatever the hell it's supposed to be. It's at the centre of the park and resembles a giant version of the candle made from Father Jack's earwax in the Passion of St. Tibulus episode of Father Ted.

We are at the library on San Pedro because we've been obliged to attend a class in much the same way as reformed jailbirds or recovering substance abusers. The comparison isn't entirely arbitrary because this is a class which Bess and myself have been obliged to attend so as to tick all the boxes on our having become a licensed cat colony, as recognised by the city council. Specifically it's a class for the TNR programme, TNR referring to the trap-neuter-return practice by which feral cats are allowed to remain at large without producing a ton of kittens. As joint CEOs of our own officially registered cat colony this sort of thing will soon be our responsibility.

'Let's hope they're not holding a T'n'A class at the same time,' I tell my wife as we enter the building. 'Can you imagine the confusion?'

Gratifyingly, she gets the joke and duly concedes a chortle.

'We're here for the TNR,' she says to the women at the front desk, who point us towards a side room.

We anticipated a class of three or maybe four weird old ladies bringing with them a certain aroma and probably talking to themselves, because the image is difficult to dispel even for crazy cat ladies such as ourselves. However to our surprise, the class is packed, twenty or thirty women and a few guys, mostly younger than us, clean, tidy, and not a tinfoil helmet to be seen. Three women are at the front with a table full of t-shirts and a humane trap. Behind them is a screen on which will be projected whatever is required to illustrate their testimony. Bess and I take seats at the back, there being only a few of the folding chairs still available. Our classroom seems to be the section next to the large print books. I can just see Michelle Obama's autobiography on the shelf to my left.

Our mistress of ceremonies is a regal older lady of distinctly Texan type - which I state as compliment in case there should be any ambiguity here - in so much as that a foreigner like myself is easily able to imagine her wrestling critters and ornery types and taking it all in her stride. Unfortunately this is the noisiest library I've ever been in and I have trouble hearing all that is said. Maybe the cat homework has coincided with an amateur wrestling class held elsewhere in the building.

We're there for about an hour, long enough to contract square-botty from the chairs - as the condition is understood by the medical profession. Mostly we're learning stuff we know, the wisdom of the TNR policy balanced against the usual clueless complaints traditionally made by people who simply don't like cats; but happily there's plenty of new information, not least being the operation of the humane traps which we loan from the city, where we take the cats to be fixed and so on. The hour is genuinely useful and informative, and it feels as though we've joined a secret society, which we sort of have.

The opportunity to ask questions comes at the end, and inevitably there are a few from those who just like to ask questions.

'I'd like to know, on the sheet of paper where you've given the number we need when we want to get in touch with you to ask a question, that number there, is that the one we need when we want to get in touch with you to ask a question?'

No-one actually asks that, but a few of them come close. I raise my hand and ask whether cats taken in to be fixed at the recommended clinics are checked to see whether they have an ID chip. I'm thinking about the wombat, one of our own feral regulars. He's a cat who resembles a wombat, albeit a ginger wombat. He has massive nuts and although we feed him, we otherwise can't get near him. Given his build and general disposition, I have a theory that he may have been an indoor cat who escaped and somehow ended up at our place, so we need to see whether he's been chipped.

I'm told this is a very good question, which is nice.

A bucket is passed around and we all chip in a few dollars towards cat food and similar supplies. Our own cats occasionally benefit from a free bag of the dry stuff which has been sent our way by the Feral Cat Coalition, the voluntary organisation which has arranged this meeting.

We seem to be done so I pop outside for a smoke, seeing as I'm back to smoking at the moment, because the year 2020 has thus far been a bit of a twat, even though it's still only January, and I only smoke in response to stress. Some young black dude approaches me and asks if I have a spare. I roll one for him. He has a strong African accent and seems a bit lost. He's trying to get somewhere, he tells me, but I can't work out why, so I say sorry because I'm not much help. He goes to sit on the bench outside the library to smoke his cigarette.

I look around for my wife but she's nowhere to be seen. I guess she's gone back into the library.

Back inside the library, she's talking to one of the Feral Cat Coalition people. We tell her about our neighbour who hates cats.

'I had one of those,' she tells us, and describes a scenario much worse than our own with a neighbour getting pissy over the slightest feline incursion into his precious yard which, according to our narrator, resembled a tip and was full of all sorts of junk he'd found at the side of the road.

'He was a pyschiatrist,' she tells us, rolling her eyes.

'It's always the way,' I say. 'How many cats do you have?'

'It was fifty at the time.'

I can actually hear Bess thinking holy shit! and that's what I'm thinking too. We don't have anything like as many. Our colony is pretty sane by comparison.

The woman describes how she was fined, and how she had the bad luck to be up before a judge who hates cats.

'You had a cat colony license and you were fined?' I'm trying not to panic. 'How can that happen?'

'It was a couple of hundred dollars, but that was before I had the license.'

Bess and I share a huge sigh of relief.

We go home, and it feels as though we're now part of some mysterious strike force.