Cat among the sleeping pigeons

Ginger, Ginger," she calls, in the pitch black witching hours, making little attempt to keep the neighbours sleeping peacefully cocooned in their comforters.

I envisage every member in every abutting household sitting up in disoriented alarm, rumpled bed sheets higgedly-piggedly, the odd protruding limb unsheathed, the odder-looking once-coiffed tresses suffering ignominious dishevelment following their pressing engagement with the pillows, eyelids battling slumber's gravitational pull.

"Ginger, Ginger." Round and round the cul-de-sac echo the calls, chasing each other like ghosts in the dark. It takes a while for the horizontal restfulness of semi-dreamed comfort to right itself once more, for the brain to click into wakened gear and begin rationalising.

Of course! It can only be old Miss Reynolds, who inhabits another time meridian altogether. Miss Reynolds who has willed self-incarceration upon herself. A prisoner looking for an escapee. Ginger's done the bunk once more. Vamoosed over the colour bond fencing into the night. Lured, no doubt, by the scent of what's out there. It's that time of the mating cycle again. Ginger's gone AWOL. And Miss Reynolds, though she knows it, prefers this temporary state of denial, calling out, hopefully, "Ginger, Ginger."

I have a reasonably good idea where Ginger heads off to when the musk and the catcalls of "the other one" out there become unbearable to resist. A mere three houses away. I saw her there, once, consorting with her paramour, the one I call Fred because of his high-stepping gait.

Fred, with his smoke-grey coat and almost-blue eyes, is a lovable rogue. Fred also appears - by accident more than by design - to be the only eligible "tom" on the block, so to speak. He ought to, in reality, have been christened Henry - after that king - because of his inability to produce a male heir. He can - and has - helped deliver a handful of heiresses at each cycle, much to the chagrin of Miss Reynolds who's left the task of finding homes for Fred & Ginger's daughters. Finally, in what was seen as a common sense move, Ginger got herself a big cathouse which she loved, undoubtedly, until she realised that she was a prisoner there too. Thereafter - I'm surmising here - must have begun Ginger's plan for escape, with the mating deadline drawing scarily, furrily close.

Desolate night

Much in the manner of the classic prisoner-of-war films - The Great Escape comes to mind - a tunnel was pawed in the sand, under the cathouse, and precisely on the night when Fred miaowed his longing to the moon and the desolate night, Ginger wriggled her copper and black form free and stealthily made her way across the courtyard for a rendezvous beneath the stars. A tryst that almost never came to be. "Why doesn't she simply take the cat to the vet and have it neutered, or whatever they call the operation so it won't have any more kittens?" asked a neighbour, one time.

That question, apparently, had already been put to Miss Reynolds years earlier, litters earlier. "It would certainly save her a lot of bother," offered the neighbour. "It's not the way Miss Reynolds sees it," said the other person. "She might, as with the case of the cathouse, try to prevent these pregnancies occurring too frequently, but she absolutely refuses to take the cat to the vet."

Miss Reynolds, apparently happier joking the whole kerfuffle off, has been know to say, "One old maid on the premises is more than enough, thank you. I have no intention of denying Ginger her life or her lifestyle."

Generous, one would have to agree. Go on then, Ginger, get a life. But for goodness sake, could you kindly be home by midnight, so that I can get some decent shut-eye?

I have a life, too, and being woken up by banshee wails of "Ginger, Ginger", mid-dream, does not constitute life, to me. A good healthy night's sleep, after all, should be more than a mere catnap.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.