I’ve got two cats: Dude and Fred. Fred’s a ginger boy cat, and Dude’s a mix of several gradations of grey and she’s a girl cat. Yes, I know it’s unusual to name a girl cat Dude but I figure, she’s a cat, she’s not likely to have any gender confusion issues. Anyway most of the time I end up calling her Puddy.

Fred’s the younger of the two, just about three and a half years old now. Dude’s a fair bit older, probably around 10 years old or so. It’s hard to be sure because when she came to live with my flat mate and I, she was already an adult cat. Dude had the luxury of being the Queen of the castle for about three years until I decided to adopt another cat.

We got Fred when he was three months old from the Singapore Cat Welfare Society (www.catwelfare.org). He was living with an adoptive family and was called Cookie at the time. I decided to name him Fred because of his ginger coat (Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, geddit? Well, it made sense in my head). Now I just can’t imagine him being called anything else. In fact, I can no longer meet a man named Fred without sniggering inside.
 

Fred has a very un-catlike characteristic – he’s incredibly needy. When my flat mate and I come home from work, he gets right up to us and meows and meows until we acknowledge him and stroke him. Every morning, when I open my bedroom door, he meows and meows again for attention and affection, and will not stop until I give a pat on the head. I blame it on him having spent his formative months living with a dog at the adoptive family’s home. I like to joke that his Chinese name is Fred Soh Nee Di (so needy).

Dude could not care less where in the world we were so long as her food bowl is full.

Another doglike behaviour Fred has – eating everything on the floor. True story. This was a few months after we got Fred. One morning, my flat mate and I were both leaving the house to go to work. Fred came running over to say goodbye as usual. That was when I noticed something trailing behind him. I thought something had gotten caught on one his legs. Upon closer inspection, we realised whatever it was was trailing out of his – how do I put this delicately? – derriere. I held him up and my flat mate had the task of gently pulling the offending item out of his behind. The poor thing gave the most pitiful yelp. Turned out it was a ribbon. We’d been wrapping a present the night before and a ribbon must have fallen on the floor. Fred, of course, ate it.

Dude only eats from her bowl and she’s incredibly discerning because if the food has been there for a few hours, she’ll park herself in front of her bowl and wait patiently until we top it up with fresh food.

I’ve seen Fred eat Dude’s vomit up.

We should have learned from the Ribbon Incident (something like that deserves to be capitalised). We once had a rug with tassels. It took us a while before we noticed, much to our horror, that our rug was almost tassel-free. Fred had been snacking on it. (Maybe he needed the roughage?) We do realise we’ve been lucky that he hasn’t gotten sick from this terrible diet and we make an extra effort to make sure nothing gets left on the floor now.

Maybe the adoptive family also kept a goat.

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Make sure you pick up the new issue of Reader’s Digest that will hit newsstands next week. It’s the much-anticipated 7th Annual Humour Special and we’ve got laughs galore!

3 Comments

on November 02 2010 at 12:11:21 AM

divine on October 15 2010 at 01:21:57 PM how lucky i am to recieve free issues of readers digest every month.whenever i open the pages i will first read the editors letter, i really admire Dora Cheok in sharing her lives and experiences to all readers of Readers Digest. its really amazing and i admire her very much. and im also thankful that i have read your latest topic in healthsmart.The Life Saving Vitamin. i found out how important is the sunlight to our health.now i have a reason to wake up early every morning.just to catch the early morning sun.. divine martizano, Philippines

on September 08 2010 at 11:30:03 PM