Cat melodeon – An Irishman’s Diary about four-legged piano players

One night some weeks ago, at about 4am, I was woken by the sound of piano music in the living room below. Luckily, we do have a piano, so this wasn’t quite as chilling at it might have been.

On the other hand, I was fairly sure there was nobody in the living room at the time. And anyway the random notes filtering up through the floorboards suggested this was a musician of no human kind.

Sinister

Of course, even a well-played piano piece can sound sinister in the wrong place or time. Remember how the cheerful tinkling of Mike Oldfield’s

Tubular Bells

became transformed when used as the soundtrack for

The Exorcist

?

So tip-toeing down the stairs that night, I didn’t know whether I should be brandishing a hurley or a crucifix. But brandishing neither, I nudged the living room door open. And there, at the keyboard, was a giant black cat, with hideous red eyes and an expression of pure evil.

Smug

Well, no, actually. It was just our regular black cat, Pete Briquette, who has green eyes, and was walking on the keys. If he had any expression, it was pure smugness.

“I knew that would get you up,” he seemed to say, skipping off the piano and heading for the hallway: “Now let me out of here. It’s 4am – I have things to do.”

There are moments, and this was one, when I regret narrowly missing Pete with the front wheel of my car on a wet bog road in Tipperary 3½ years ago.

He was an abandoned kitten at the time, but doing a good impression of being a scrap of turf fallen off a trailer. At the very least, I could have looked the other way.

Cat-flap

But I didn’t, and since then, Pete has grown to adulthood in the city, in the process forcing many modifications on our life and home, although not – so far – cat-flaps.

There was a time he didn’t seem to need them. He would happily spend the night outside, or inside depending on the weather. That was a good time.

More recently, however, he prefers to spend about half the night in and the other half out, in no particular order. And ideally, we would have a cat flap to facilitate this.

But we don’t want a flap in our front door, and the back door is all glass. So for a while we tried to force a choice on him. He could be out – there are perfectly comfortable cat accommodations provided, front and back – or he could be in. Not both.

Then he realised that, when he was out, he could get back in at any time by miaowing pathetically at the bedroom window of the household’s lightest sleeper (he would try them in turn until one worked). So that became his in-bound flap.

Getting out was more complicated. Even before he discovered the piano trick, he did occasionally manage to make downstairs noises loud enough to wake the house, usually by attacking the (permanently in) old cat.

Hobbies

But I can’t say that was a deliberate stratagem, because attacking the old cat is just one of his hobbies.

He does it every few hours, and the victim’s only defence these days (and nights) is a snarl that either repels the attack or brings humanitarian intervention, even at 4am.

My regrets at not looking the other way three years ago would, I suspect, pale alongside the regrets of the older cat, if only he could could express them. In his feline dreams, it’s probably him driving the car that day, and swerving deliberately to squash every piece of turf he sees.

The piano incident was replicated a few times afterwards. Then it stopped, or if it didn’t, I learned to sleep through it, as you can almost anything. In fact, even the serenading from the bedroom window lost some of its waking power (I can’t speak for the neighbours).

Keyboard

But after a period of nocturnal peace, the piano again woke me one night recently, sounding somehow different than before. When I investigated, this time, it was the old cat on the keyboard, raising the alarm (in G Minor) while Pete looked on innocently, apart from a tuft of white fur in his mouth.

The day I’m forced to call in an engineer to devise a system of cat flaps, secret tunnels, and safe rooms edges closer. In the meantime, my bedtime routine has been expanded yet again. It now reads: plug out television; check cooker; ensure access to cat litter; switch all lights off; close piano lid.