La Maison Forte
NORSK SKOGKATT

Pedigree: Ramona von Mauenfels
Pedigree: Thorbjørn du Bocherex
The Maison Forte site map

Doin’ What Comes Natcherly

We lost our beloved Ramona on 26 February 2004.
She was, as Alva Uddin said once when nominating her for Best in Show, 'a very great lady.'
We will miss her forever, but she remains the guardian spirit of our home.

This is Adelina, our seventeen-year-old black and white Norwegian Forest Cat, founding mother of the Maison Forte cattery. That is, her pedigree name is Ramona von Mauenfels. But since the day she moved in with us, she has been prima donna assoluta, and the nickname 'Adelina Patti', after the legendary opera singer, seems a better reflection of her personality.

We had read somewhere that if a cat is not taught by its mother to hunt, it will never be a good mouser. That seemed logical to us, and as both Adelina and her mother were raised in an apartment in Zürich, with nary a glimpse of a live mouse, we didn’t expect our kitten to earn her living that way.

Just goes to show how you can underestimate the power of instinct. As soon as Adelina learned to use the cat flap into the cellar, the chase was on. And this being a cellar over 600 hundred years old, the possibilities were manifold! Poor, unsuspecting mouse families, peacefully counting their generations back to pre-Voltairean times!

She was just six months old the first time she came up the cellar stairs with something squirming between her jaws. “Mmrph, mmrph” she mumbled, not wanting to open her mouth and let it drop. I shrieked, first at the thought of my baby as a murderess, then at the idea that there were MICE in my house! We’d lived there for a year without ever a sign of them. As soon as she let it go, I stopped rooting for the mouse and became desperately eager for her to catch it again before it ran up my pants leg. Grabbing the Book of the Cat from a shelf, I jumped onto a chair and turned hastily to the section on hunting. Just as I remembered, there were drawings of a cat stalking, catching, and killing its prey, and I began quoting aloud to Adelina: “Now, bite it on the neck! Shake it a little bit. Don’t let go!” Needless to say, my instructions were unnecessary, and soon Adelina was cleaning her whiskers contentedly while my husband watched from the sidelines, doubled over in laughter at the two of us.

Time passed, and I learned to clean up the leftovers without making a fuss. But Adelina began to fret about me. She noticed I wasn’t eating properly, and intelligent as I seemed in some ways, it was obvious my mother had never taught me to hunt. One day she brought in a nice plump little body with barely a scratch on it, and dropped it into the shoe I had taken off. Giving it a wistful lick, as if to point out the sacrifice she was making for my sake, she sprang onto the back of the sofa and waited, purring mightily, to see what I would do with it. I, of course, too stupid to realize I was offending her, picked up the filthy thing by its tail, and threw it into the kitchen garbage.

Well, Adelina couldn’t believe her eyes! REJECTION! Frantically, she followed me back into the living room, and shoving her little face against my nose, began wailing in a sharp, insistent voice I had never heard before. I thought she must be in pain. Had she swallowed a pin? Had she been poisoned? Frightened as she went on screaming, I was half-way through dialing the vet’s number, when I realized what was wrong. She wanted her mouse back! 'PERFECTLY GOOD MOUSE,' she cried indignantly. 'I meant it for you, but if you don’t want it, at least you could GIVE IT BACK!' And with that she dashed back to the kitchen and began clawing the garbage can. Trying to disguise my distaste, I retrieved her mouse, and she headed off to the cellar, to eat it there in peace.

For a while after that things were a little cool between us with regard to presents, but it wasn’t long before they began showing up again - in my shoes, on my pillow. I make a point now of praising her lavishly for each new offering, and of saying that I’m not hungry right now but will save it for later - then, when she isn’t looking, I flush it down the toilet. I am not the only object of Adelina’s generosity. Visitors - only her special friends, of course - are encouraged to check their handbags before leaving, and house guests have learned to look under the covers before climbing into bed, in case Adelina, in a fit of hospitality, has left them a midnight snack.

After a couple of years, during which Adelina refused to mate with some of the handsomest male NFO’s in Switzerland, we bought her a little friend of her own - a blue and white striped boy named Thorbjørn du Bocherex. (His name means something like 'Thunder Bear' in Norwegian, and he quickly became known around the house as 'T-Bear'.) The idea, of course, was to have kittens some day, and we were convinced she would be happier with one of her own kind for company. Little did we know! She hated him on sight. Who WAS this animal, anyway? Wasn’t SHE enough for us? Did we not LOVE her anymore? Why was he eating out of HER DISH?! She moped and wouldn’t come out from under the bed for days - and when she finally did, she tried to kill the little guy.

T-Bear, calling on the instinctive wisdom of centuries, gazed at her adoringly when she swatted him. In the end his passive resistance worked, because her maternal instincts took over and she started worrying about him. Another critter whose mother hadn’t taught him to hunt! He was a nuisance, of course, and it was quite disgusting the way those humans fussed over him: 'Oh, isn’t he cute. Look how high he can jump! Did you see him inside the paper bag?' But after all, he was a guest in her home. (Underline GUEST here; it was understood that he was only visiting, and that someday SOON his real owners would show up to take him HOME!)

Adelina had always taken great pride in her hostessing skills. Never let it be said that a poor homeless kitten starved to death under her roof! She disappeared into the cellar. We thought she had gone down there to sulk some more, but after awhile she was back, growling under her breath, the inevitable rodent dangling from her mouth. She paused and glared at us, then, still growling, she approached little T-Bear and laid the mouse at his feet. 'There!' she said, and stalked off to watch his reaction from under the piano.

Yuck!' he thought. But as it was obviously some sort of peace offering, he considered carefully for a moment, then, picking the thing up in his teeth, carried it over to Adelina’s hiding place, and put it down in front of her. 'Thank you,' he said politely. 'Thank you very much, but - I prefer my food cooked.'

Right away we could see her start to melt. What a nice young man, after all. What good manners he had; it was obvious his mother had taught him how to treat a lady, even if she had neglected his survival training. Adelina beamed and ate her mouse.

Next day, I came home to find them curled up together on the bed, Adelina washing T-Bear’s ears and purring. In due course there were kittens, and everybody lived happily ever after. And - need I say it? - all of Adelina Patti’s children know how to catch mice!

I bought me a cat,
My cat pleased me,
I fed my cat under yonder tree,
Cat says “fiddle-eye-ee”!
(American folksong)

Paula Swepston©
Ferney-Voltaire, France
Valentine's Day, 1997

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