At the very moment I met Mo and Minnie at Battersea Dogs & Cats Home four years ago, when they were kittens so small I could sit them in the palm of each hand, they were looking out the window surveying London longingly.
I gave the furry sisters their freedom. I also gave them the questionable pleasure of being loved with a ferocious intensity by my two young daughters, so it’s no wonder our feline friends bolt outside whenever they get the chance, sometimes disappearing overnight and giving me a scary flash-forward to my daughters’ teenage years. Being woken at 4:30am by car-alarm-level meowing at the front door: not cute, but a weight off my mind.
So, when I’m given the opportunity to find out what Mo and Minnie are actually up to, I jump at the chance. Crucially, I want to know where they are at 10pm when I want to be in bed but am instead pacing outside in my PJs, rattling a bowl of cat biscuits to a silent street. Let the surveillance begin.
Day one
I kit out the kitties with the new tech and … nothing. After breakfast they sit on the living-room shutters, peacefully looking off into the wide world instead of going there themselves. When I head off for a meeting, I push the cats outside to jumpstart their adventure.
I know they’re both social creatures; I’ve frequently walked into my street to see Minnie in the arms of a random child, or Mo writhing around the legs of an office worker on their lunch break.
While I’m out, I watch the live feed of their movements and discover they’re zigging and zagging the road, apparently scaling rooftops with ease. The GPS doesn’t show height, so Mo and Minnie could be breaking into people’s houses. Cat burglars! By the time I get home they’re both innocently sitting by the front door, then head straight to the sofa for a well-deserved nap.
Day two
According to the tracker, while I’m trying to enforce a 10pm curfew, Mo is crossing the railway tracks at the end of the street, exhibiting a kamikaze boldness I’d never credited her with. When she sprints into the back garden I scoop her up in a relieved hug instead of a scolding.
Day three
I can’t find Minnie anywhere come bedtime, when I want to shut her and Mo in the kitchen. On the tracking app a signal flashes loud and clear from our house, so I spend 20 minutes searching in all her favourite hiding spots: behind the novels in the bookcase, under the sofa, in the bath lapping up old bathwater. Nothing. She’s not even in the panic room, the cat-sized shelf at the top of the stairs where the vacuum cleaner never goes and the kids can’t grab them for a cuddle.
Then I text my next-door neighbour and she discovers Minnie hiding under her stairs in a nest of trainers. This is not the first time. To be fair to the tracker, our terraced houses are so close that Minnie was no more than nine metres out of range.
Day four
Little to report from the trackers, but on the home front Minnie has caught a fly! It took a prolonged period of stalking and then a four-hour nap, before retiring to her bed for the night.
Day five
The girls are out on the town at 22:19 – just check out the intersection of blue and red lines on the satellite map. The green spots indicate where they stop to spend more time; evidently at a guest house several doors down with a leafy roof terrace. I hope they’re not running up too big a bill. As is so often the way, the girls start off together then someone gets chatting to someone else at the bar or whatever, and they have to find their own ways home. Sitting in bed watching their movements on my phone is far more exciting than walking the street in my PJs, calling out their names to an empty road.
Day six
At the back of our yard – “garden” feels generous to the point of dishonesty – is a studio where Mick Jagger and Amy Winehouse have recorded. I’ve long thought being sandwiched between my residential road and the forklift trucks of the council depot was an unglamorous setting for rock’n’roll, yet this makes me more fascinated by the mysterious goings-on within. At 9pm I use the tracker to check on Mo and discover she’s inside the studio, probably getting a preview of Ed Sheeran’s new album before it drops. I pump her for information, but the cat stays well and truly in the bag.
Day seven
So what have we learned? My cats are as at home among rock royalty as they are in their actual homes. They roam, but not so far as to cause concern – more raise eyebrows over their owner, often seen knocking about the neighbourhood in her PJs circa 10pm. And some days they just sit around catching flies.
Of course, the honest verdict is that the trackers could be a bit of a gimmick, albeit a fun one – and even if I could pinpoint exactly where my cats were hanging out, I still wouldn’t get the full story.
Ideally, I’d like to get spy cams on Mo and Minnie and discover who persistently craps underneath my bike cover when there’s a perfectly good litter tray. The other option is just to let cats be cats, and enjoy a bit more time hanging out with them myself.
Whatever they get up to, cats need different nutrition depending on their lifestyle, breed and age. Royal Canin creates tailored breed-, age- and lifestyle-specific cat food for optimum feline health. Find out more here
.jpg?w=600)
