What a fun week I’ve been having, whilst it’s cold outside mummy and I still go out and enjoy our walkies together every day. It gets dark early according to mummy but that doesn’t make any difference to me! It might be cold on the paws and a bit muddy and squelchy but I don’t care I’m outside exploring, doing what I love to do, with my best buddy mummy by my side or sometimes underneath me.
Now I might have been a bit naughty and taken advantage of mummy letting me free climb and climbed a bit too high in the tree. Usually I stop and perch at a height that mummy is comfortable with and knows I can easily get down from but sometimes I just can’t help myself. We had gone out a bit earlier whilst it was still fairly light and there were plenty of birds flapping around getting ready for bed. This is the best time for me as there’s so many interesting noises to listen to and to practice my hunting skills with. The birds were flapping around the top of the tree teasing me and I can’t have that, I’m the queen of these trees and these are my gardens! I just had to show them that I’m the boss so I went a bit higher than I probably should have to get to those pesky pigeons. As I started to put my paws up to climb higher mummy said “Jenny. No. Don’t go any higher please” “Sorry mummy I can’t hear you from up here with all these birds” I meowed back and up I went, following the noise of the birds then across along the branch until it felt a bit wibbly wobbly and I had reached the limit of the branch holding me. I could hear mummy walking around underneath telling me to come down but I hadn’t finished with the birds and I could still hear them flapping around above my head.
Mummy waited patiently and then finally I figured I had shown the birds that this was my tree and thought I’d best come down. “Mummy” I meowed, “I’m ready to come down now” and I started work out my way back down. The birds had got me twisted around in the tree top, following them this way and that way so it wasn’t as easy as just going back the way I came or following my paws scents as they were everywhere! It’s ok though I can figure it out and reach down to find a new branch to climb down onto and then I heard mummy’s voice calling to me, then I heard the sound of her hands tapping the tree.
Mummy and I have an amazing bond when we’re outside and we’ve built this up over years of daily walks. Little subtle movements of the lead or pressure to let me know to go around a tree or follow the lead back the right way out of a bush I’m exploring. When climbing with a lead on I can follow it back down and mummy can guide me a little bit if I go a different route to normal and haven’t practiced getting down as much. I’ve trained mummy well to be my climbing buddy and whilst we train this way mummy also taught me how to follow her voice to get down and also the sound of her tapping on a branch or tree trunk to guide me too. It was only after a long time of training that mummy ever let me free climb, she had to be sure that I could use techniques other than the lead to get down should I climb high up.
I trust mummy completely and follow the sound of her voice to help me figure out the way back down, then as I get lower and lower she turns to the tree tapping and I follow that noise to get all the way back down to mummy and then we have big cuddles and on goes the lead again. You absolutely can’t go walkies or climbing without trust in each other. Mummy trusts my climbing skills to know I will get down one way or another (she always stays calm, no matter how high I go) and I trust mummy’s navigation skills, even if it doesn’t feel quite right to me I’ll always follow her voice to get back to her. It might take a while but we always get there in the end.
After that little naughtiness I normally don’t get to free climb the bigger trees for a while, just so I get back into remembering the training basics again and do some easy climbs.
As it gets a bit darker and the birds go to sleep I can hear the foxes come out and sometimes when they’re out in the park I sit and listen to them from my lookout post. Recently I can smell a lot of new scents around, I know the foxes have been out playing the night before and there are also a few more cat scents that I’ve picked up on. I’ve met a couple of new cats recently and whilst these are my gardens and I was here exploring them first I don’t mind sharing them, maybe the other kitties might even want to play with me like my friend Dashain used to.
Recently though mummy got really excited by something, we were up right at the end of the gardens and I was exploring the bushes by the park and mummy suddenly said “Oh wow Jenny I think I’ve just seen a bat!” I thought mummy was going crazy, she’d finally lost the plot as I have super blindie hearing…I can hear things that mummy can’t, I can detect the smallest quietest bird in a bush, I can hear the rats running around under the buildings, I can hear the animals in the park and my doggie friends coming before mummy even knows they’re there and I didn’t hear anything, not a peep, no swish, no flap, nothing at all. In fact I really didn’t believe mummy at all but she stood there watching the nearly dark sky saying, there it is again, there’s another one. Well then I guess it comes back to trust, if mummy can trust that I can hear a bird deep in a bush then I guess I trust that mummy saw a completely silent bat flying around. Either way it made her happy to see them and if mummy’s happy then I’m happy.
Happy New Year my friends and thank you for following my adventures for another year. I hope you carry on enjoying my stories and they keep bringing you entertainment, joy, fun and smiles whilst also showing what us perfectly imperfect blindies and tripaws are really capable of doing. Here’s to another year of being an adventure cat.
Jenny’s Story 