The fine art of feline diplomacy

The circumstances of her birth were, to put it mildly, difficult. She could not breathe properly, and was in danger of turning blue from oxygen starvation.

Her bravery and fierce will to live against all the odds had twanged my heart strings like Dire Straits were playing Sultans of Swing in my chest, and I had decided there and then that Unity (or Uno as she is affectionately known) must come and live with us.

I felt an overwhelming desire to know more about this tiny bundle of fluff, who had displayed more True Grit than a lorry load of oysters before her eyes were even open.

My fascination with her has not been misplaced, as the story of her arrival at Maison Corfield demonstrates.

It didn’t take long for Uno to get her paws under the table.

Deploying charm and a head-butting degree of stubbornness in equal measure, she has inserted herself into the life of the family as though she has always been a part of it.

As soon as she came to us she had only two speeds: ahead-full and fully-asleep. This is still the case, although she no longer stops mid-pelt and flops over on her side for an emergency catnap so intense she looks as though she’s just been injected with an industrial-sized dose of scopolamine.

She slows now, then sits, then lies, then dozes and for a few precious minutes peace settles over the household like snow blanketing woodland at dusk.

She spent the first two weeks assessing the opposition in the form of the other cats.

It was interesting to watch. With Stanley – our six-and-a-half kilo answer to a feline Arnold Schwarzenegger – she openly flirted, jumping forward, then leaping stiff-legged backwards when he came in her direction, and batting him on the nose with her paw.

Stanley is a simple soul, and despite the fact that he long ago had his encounter with reproductive destiny, he is no more capable of ignoring an attractive young lady’s charms than any other male of whatever species.

It is comical now to watch him allow her to nip morsels of food from under his mighty slavering jaws, and any day now I expect to wake up and find that Uno has managed to insert a ring through his nose.

Errol, our ageing Birman male, who featured on this page at the start of the year, when I told how he came to move to West Oxfordshire from his former life in Florida with my late brother-in-law, was a different proposition.

Since he is no longer troubled by memories of unrequited ardour, Uno has had to resort to a different page of her mind-control hymn book.

She seems to have deduced that simple physical exhaustion is the best answer for Errol, coupled with deftly administered does of coquettish Daddy’s Girl.

She jumps on his head, then sweeps his feet from under him. Then she sits on him and then she washes him. Simple.

Errol is visibly bemused by the fact that a unpredictable and almost unmanageably active presence has arrived to ripple the tranquil autumn waters of his life, and even more mystified to find that it bears more than a passing resemblance to the young cat he used to see reflected in his drinking water.

Yet, Errol tolerates Uno with good grace and is often to be found lumbering after her in a game of cat and mouse that Uno visibly slows down to accommodate him.

With his arthritic joints, this generally means that by the time Errol has cranked himself into motion, Uno has already orbited the garden three times and stopped for a bite to eat.

But there is tolerance there and perhaps even affection.

I was consumed for months by guilt that I was betraying Errol by getting another Birman. I don’t feel quite so bad now.

But with our two tortoiseshell females, that is another story. Wyndham, our dark tortoiseshell, is aloof at the best of times, and after firing a couple of warning biffs across Uno’s nose with her narrow, agile, front paws – each of which sports enough cutting equipment to perform simultaneous brain surgery on a dozen three-headed hydras – Uno got the message and has maintained a respectful distance.

This is not to say that they do not play with each other. They do and it is good-natured.

With Dotty, our light-coloured tortie, acceptance is still coming – with all the alacrity of a glacier grinding across the North German Plain at the start of the last ice age.

Dotty was the madame of the household and is less than impressed by the arrival of an interloper.

When they confront each other it is invariably accompanied by a noise like a blunt electric saw cutting though the steel of a rusty pressure cooker. Something between a growl and hiss with subsonic undertones that have Uno backing away faster than a departing tube train with her belly flat to the floor and an expression of fawning sycophancy plastered across her beautiful face.

I have a feeling that I am watching one of the great philosophical conflicts when I see these two, when an irresistible force meets an immovable object.

I suspect that some form of compromise will be reached, otherwise the fabric of our universe will be sorely tested as it tries to accommodate two such mighty egos.

One thing is for sure. There are no feline favourites in this household. All are loved equally. It remains to be seen whether such a universal emollient will heal the scars of Dotty’s wounded pride.