THE gleaming enemy approached the cat’s concealed position with seemingly malignant purpose. Hissing to a stop, its sides cracked open and out came the thing. Large and white, it moved on two legs toward him and stopped, as if searching. Fight or flight? The options were fast running out. The cat, scarred old street warrior that he was, felt the tension expressed in hackles rising and muscles tightening. Hunger and fear of discovery drove him forward and he sprang!
Of course, Abdul Mohsen Al-Milhem didn’t see it quite that way. What he saw — or rather, felt — as he stepped from his limousine at the airport recently was a feline fury attaching itself to his big toe, sinking teeth deeply into his flesh and slashing bleeding lines on his feet.
Perhaps as a result of this experience, a first reaction is to regard the cat as an example of a Kingdomwide problem. Almost anywhere you go there will be a cat. Urban feral cats are a common sight, congregating in noisy chorus around rubbish skips and rummaging in litter, finding nourishment in quite unspeakable organic material. It can be a hard life, being a cat. Not your pampered housecat these creatures, but lean tough and sometimes aggressive, they exist in spite of humans, not because of them. Or do they? Indeed, which one is the problem, the cat or the human?
Despite their obvious attraction as pets, cats aren’t particularly bright. A sharp set of teeth at one end and prodigious breeding ability at the other — with not much useful in between. There’s hardly enough skin to make a decent sandal. So why do we tolerate them? Well, perhaps it’s not that way at all. Perhaps they tolerate us.
The cats I know personally are, shall we say, not the feline equivalent of Einstein. They think of little else during their waking hours, of which there are not that many it appears, but feeding and the production of more cats. In one way, it’s not a bad life. The concepts of going to work and social responsibility are entirely unknown to them and there are no airconditioning or phone bills to worry about. Their paramount concern is food and where to get it.
This is where we humans enter the picture. Take a stroll down the North Corniche any Saturday morning or visit a popular family beach the day after a festival or day off. It’s a positive cornucopia of chicken legs, goat entrails and rice all so nicely presented in plastic packaging. I would like to think that a band of happy picnickers looked caringly at each other and as one said, “Let’s leave some breakfast for our small furry chums!” I fear that was not and never has been the case. No, the cats, using the gustatory wisdom with which they are so prodigiously endowed, know full well that grazing humans will leave quantities of food behind for them out of sheer carelessness plus a lack of concern for the environment. The effect of course is the same; it’s good news for cats. Life here is not so hard. The only competitors they have are crows and rats. Rats used to be seen as food by cats. With the advent of fried chicken and mutton, rats are now considered unfashionable by any streetwise cat. Why run after lunch when it will, if you sit around doing nothing but scratching yourself for long enough, be delivered by a Chevrolet?
There is the kernel of the argument. The cats tolerate us as a source of food. From their point of view, what other conceivable use do we have? If it wasn’t for us, they would be reduced to eating vermin, dying off sooner and breeding less. That, from their perspective, is a doomsday scenario! Long may they live in the land of the takeaway kapsa, the open rubbish skip and those long, sun-filled beaches with gently lapping waves, cool shady rocks to sleep under and free food, positively hectares of it.
The war-wounded Abdul Mohsen observed ruefully after the attack that he was really shocked. He made the point that Jeddah is fast becoming a tourist city and “accidents like this could damage Jeddah’s image.” Very true. I really don’t know if Jeddah tourist board advertises itself as a “cat free zone,” but if it does, it ought to have a serious word or two with its copywriters. It certainly can’t advertise itself as a “litter free” or “garbage free” zone either. I would suggest that the cats are connected with the garbage, which in turn is a result of the habits of Jeddah’s human residents. Reduce the levels of available street food and you automatically reduce the levels of cats.
It really is that simple — or is it too much to ask the population to refrain from hurling half-eaten food into the public thoroughfares? Is it impossible to institute a public education campaign to suggest that people take home garbage and dispose of it in a way that shows consideration for others who might want to use the same picnic spot? Is it the cat or the human that is the problem? Look around and answer that question for yourself.
Or maybe we should learn from the cat. We could simply lie around all day, scratching ourselves and occasionally waking up to find out that somebody’s delivered the dinner.
It’s really not a bad life.