Stray Cat Blues – The Rolling Stones (1968, Decca Records, Taken from ‘Beggars Banquet’)
My daughter is mad about animals, always has been. At first it was owls. When she was aged four I took her to a falconry centre attached to a garden centre and she screamed in delight when their resident owl, Ollie, swooped down and took some meat from the hand of its owner about five foot away. She came away clutching a cuddly owl to add her growing collection of owls and for days she would pretend that her cuddly owl was Ollie. When I went to New Orleans a few months later I bought her a small wooden owl that the market stall owner insisted had been made from wood reclaimed after Hurricane Katrina. I gladly paid him $15 for it and realised when I got outside that the owl almost certainly hadn’t been made with wood reclaimed after Hurricane Katrina.
Then it was wolves (after we found a book in a charity shop all about them), followed by squirrels, which would need to be fed in the park on a regular basis. She went off them briefly when one threw a hazelnut shell at us when we walked under a tree in a park. After squirrels it was cats and horses. She remains mad on cats and horses.
In lockdown we adopted a cat, it was old, overweight, had three legs, and half a tail. It was one of grumpiest cats I have ever known, but my daughter adored him. He was never, sadly going to be a long term pet. We were very much a retirement home for him and his illnesses. My daughter would sit for hours trying to coax him on to her lap or sneaking him treats. About ten months ago, the cat developed a serious problem and never recovered from it. My daughter before she went to bed, went and sat by the back door and waited patiently for him to come home. The tears came soon after when she realised, he wasn’t going to. The cats old basket now sits at the foot of her bed with his favourite toy in it.
About a year ago my daughter took up horse riding. She follows in the footsteps of both her mother and her grandmother, both of whom rode and competed to a fairly high standard. For the last six months or so, we have borrowed a small pony and every couple of days she plods around the tracks and fields of the village happy as can be. She has thrown herself into all aspects of keeping a pony. She will happily stand in the stable and pick up its poo, she will groom it, wipe its nose and sneak extra food into the pony’s feed bucket.
A few weeks ago, whilst up in the stable getting ready for the third ride of the week, my daughter found a cat. One that she assumed was a stray. It is a ginger tom, but it looks like it has been through a bad time, he had a bad coat, which was all matted and dirty, a large scratch under one of its eyes, it was also as thin as a rake. It devoured the small sachet of food we’d found in a matter of seconds and sat there licking its lips expecting more, he then dived in a bundle of hay and came out with a mouse dangling out of its mouth and proceeded to eat it, not one scrap of it was left behind. The mouse to be fair, wouldn’t have felt a thing.
Then the cat curled up on the muck heap and fell asleep. My daughter is already besotted with him.
Sympathy for the Devil – The Rolling Stones (1968, Decca Records, Taken from ‘Beggars Banquet’)
Street Fighting Man – The Rolling Stones (1968, Decca Records, Taken from ‘Beggars Banquet’)
No Badger Required 