Taz today - always completely relaxed and happy

Climbing trees was Taz’s downfall. We live in KwaZulu Natal, on the east coast of South Africa, and the climate is semi-tropical. What this means to Taz is that he has lots of fleshy leaved vegetation of all kinds to play in and many trees to climb, the favourite of which is the avocado tree.

One morning, at the grand age of ten weeks, he decided he’d try to climb a little higher than usual, and once he started, it was maybe just a little too exciting to stop. Before long he was in the top, thin branches, wondering how to get down. A hesitation, a step to the side… and he lost his footing. Without warning he plunged straight down, head first, to the ground.

I thought he was dead. I looked up at my son and shook my head. At thirteen years old, he didn’t really think it was okay for boys to cry, but tears streamed down his cheeks anyway. My own tears seemed to be stuck in a choking lump in my throat. I sat on the grass and stroked his lifeless body, reliving every moment of Taz’s short life with us.

He moved. With a gasp, breath rushed into his winded lungs and his eyes opened. His breathing became a little steadier – he didn’t attempt to get up, but he was definitely alive! We found a roomy cardboard box and a soft blanket for him to lie on. He wasn’t very strong, so we kept a close and constant vigil, stroking him, talking to him and watching for any change in his state. Three hours later he lifted his head and began to purr, and I knew that he was on the mend.

Taz looked very scraggy when he stopped grooming himself...

...and so the puppy would step in and help out.

We looked after him like a baby, which was indeed how he acted. He cried every time he wanted to climb on something, so we’d rush over and pick him up. He couldn’t jump, so to reach his food, which was kept up and out of the way of the puppy, we taught him how to climb a set of kitchen steps. He completely forgot about his sandbox, and found a favourite corner of the lounge carpet instead – so we spent a lot of time scrubbing and deodorising. He almost stopped grooming himself and, being long-haired, he looked pretty scraggy as a result. Oddly enough our puppy, the same age as Taz, stepped in and took to licking his little friend clean.

It took a fair amount of patience, but he made up for it with his completely trusting and loving behaviour. He’d sleep on his back on my bed, with his head on the pillow and limbs stretched out, or he’d call to be picked up onto my desk, where he’d find a pile of files or papers (usually the ones I was working on at the time) and curl up on them, looking at me as if to dare me to move him. Of course he always got his own way!

Gradually his drunken-sailor walk improved, but he needed a lot of encouragement to start climbing and jumping properly again, and of course, it was also proving difficult to re-train him to use the sandbox. We had help from an unexpected source – a stray kitten of about the same age moved into our garden and befriended Taz. Within a month he was clean, grooming himself (although sometimes he still forgets) and climbing trees again – a lot more carefully!

Taz is almost a year old now, and has the sweetest nature of any male cat I’ve known. He’s completely secure in the fact that everyone loves him; he never fights, never strays and obviously believes that nothing in his world will hurt him. He even sits on the front doorstep during a thunderstorm, unafraid and quietly watching the lightning.

Whether his lack of fear is a result of his fall or the memory of his besotted humans nursing him back to health, I’ll never know. I’m just very glad we still have him.

Christine
LocoNotion Idea Studios Inc.