A House for Pangur Dubh

I’ve been putting food and milk out for Pangur Dubh for over two weeks now. He comes each day and eats it all. I don’t know when he comes; he doesn’t seem to have a regular pattern. Some days I see him several times, other days not at all. But each morning the bowls are empty.

I started off by putting the bowls under a trailer at one end of the house. I did this to prevent the magpies from stealing the food before he arrived. Then I moved the bowls to the other end of the house behind a wooden panel. Pangur had no problem finding his tucker. I noticed that he had sprayed the panel to mark it as his territory. After another five days in the same place I moved the bowls and panel to the side of the house next to the bins.  

My plan was to move the food bit by bit to the back of the house. An old shed languished there and I wanted to fix it up for Pangur. I reckoned he slept in the old graveyard, probably under a fir tree. This was probably the place where he had been born and had grown up. He always ran off in that direction if I came out of the house and startled him. I wanted to offer him a home. I was hoping that he would become my resident guard cat against rodents.

I had a cat box that my late father had made. My ex-wife had a cat and my father made the box as a present. But her cat, called Izvestia (my ex-wife had been a Young Communist), never took to the box. When we parted I reclaimed the box and stored it. I brought it down from the loft and cleaned it up. I would put the box, lined with old clothes, in the shed and place the bowls next to it.

All seemed to be going well, when one evening I came home to see a strange ginger cat on the black bin above the bowls. Pangur Rua - was this a pal or a rival? I had got used to Pangur Dubh and didn’t want to see him ousted. On the other hand, if Pangur Rua was a practiced rodent killer he would be welcome too.

I proceeded with my plan and fixed up the shed at the back of the house with the lined cat box. I just didn’t know if one of the cats would take to it.