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A tabby cat who faked his own death.
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A tabby cat who faked his own death.

移花接木
楼主 (文学城)

While I was browsing news from the Guardian, an interesting column from the LifeStyle panel caught my eyes. "The pet I'll never forget". Here is one of a peculiar tabby cat.      

The pet I’ll never forget: Shackleton, the cat who faked his own death

--by Michael Hutchinson

Late one night during the first Covid lockdown in 2020, my partner, Louisa, and I were watching TV in the sitting room when a tabby cat appeared in the darkness outside the patio door. He stared in through the glass, sat down and miaowed loudly.

Next morning he was still there, still miaowing. By the evening, since he hadn’t moved or even slept, we decided we had to give him some water. The next morning, we fed him. The evening after that we let him in and made him a bed out of an old fleece jacket. Because he was an explorer who’d been marooned, we called him Shackleton.

 

The vets were closed to all but emergencies, so we couldn’t get him scanned for a chip and try to get him home. Instead, he settled in – shouting for food, pawing at doors, occasionally tolerating a scratch behind the ear or sitting with us on the sofa to watch Stranger Things. In the long, uncertain days of lockdown he was a distraction, something else to talk about. Where had he come from? Why had he looked in at us that night and decided he was travelling no further? We felt chosen, which is exactly what cats want you to think.

Six weeks later, the vets reopened. We put Shackleton in a borrowed box, and in the car park outside a local surgery, we handed him to a nurse. She took him inside. A few moments later the vet came out, and said: “He’s chipped. I’m just going to call the owner.”

The vet was gone a long time. When she returned, she said: “This is a bit peculiar.”

She went on. “I called the registered owner. And told her I had her cat. She said that she wasn’t missing a cat – hers was at home. So I described him. And she said: ‘He sounds exactly like our old cat, Squeak.’”

So was Squeak missing? “No. Squeak’s dead,” she was told. “He was my daughter’s cat, but he died six years ago.”

The vet asked if she was quite sure about that – he hadn’t just run away or got lost? “No. I’m pretty sure he’s dead,” said the woman. “We buried him.”

But Shackleton was indeed Squeak, back from the dead. He was the much-mourned cat of a girl called Sophie, from a village a few miles away. She was nine when her family went on holiday and left Squeak in the care of a neighbour. A few days after they left, the neighbour had come to feed him, and found a dead tabby outside the house. He buried it in the garden, as Sophie requested.

Meanwhile, the real Squeak had set out on the journey that six years later led him to us. I’ve often wondered where he was all that time, and if someone else in the story is missing a cat.

So Shackleton, the cat who faked his own death, went home. We ended up friends with his family, and went to visit. He had the manners to remember us.

He died again in 2023. This time everyone is reasonably sure about it.

 

below: Squeak the cat, briefly reincarnated as Shackleton. Photograph: Courtesy of Michael Hutchinson

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最西边的岛上
2 楼
What a moving story! So cats do have 9 lives after all ;-)

So is Maowi the cat (pic sent by my son and I miss him so much!)

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最西边的岛上
3 楼
Thx 4 sharing!
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7grizzly
4 楼
It smells a mystery/detective stock, typically British:-))
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7grizzly
5 楼
Same here!
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最西边的岛上
6 楼
Agreed! love British detective stories, can't get enough of
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最西边的岛上
7 楼
Sherlock, Morse ..., btw Bosch is also a very good US show;)
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7grizzly
8 楼
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins started it, some say.
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最西边的岛上
9 楼
same author of wInW? interesting. Also soManyMI6&MI5+007:-)
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7grizzly
10 楼
And Agatha Christie sold second only to Shakespeare.
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最西边的岛上
11 楼
yes! who inspired "Murder She Wrote", the show I loved ;-))
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移花接木
12 楼
Cats choose or abandon their poop cleaners
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最西边的岛上
13 楼
& learned some of my English from ;-)
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最西边的岛上
14 楼
haha, there is never a lost cat, they r missing 4 a reason;)
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7grizzly
15 楼
My favorite (I haven't watched many) is Foyle's War.
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7grizzly
16 楼
They always seem in charge of their lives. Admirable.
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最西边的岛上
17 楼
yes yes, watched them 2, very good ones indeed!
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移花接木
18 楼
Squeak's family didn't really bury him in person or had he
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移花接木
19 楼
really risen from his tomb.
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移花接木
20 楼
not particularly touched, Is there conspiracy? the cat left
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移花接木
21 楼
a dead body on the door & went travelling??? didn't want
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天边一片白云
22 楼
Strange.
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移花接木
23 楼
people to look4him? Was he the murderer of the other tabby?
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移花接木
24 楼
or something to do with the care giving neighbour?
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暖冬cool夏
25 楼
Strange that a buried cat came out alive? Or was it made up?
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最西边的岛上
26 楼
100%4sureItWas the neighbour 2whom the cat couldn’t trust ;)
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7grizzly
27 楼
The two families seemed to choose the latter to believe!
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移花接木
28 楼
A same tabby cat died at the door, meanwhile ..

Squeak disappeared... ... 

Guess the neighour couldn't tell the difference of the two cats. 

The owner never dug it out to verify, thought Squeak was buried

But such coincidence is too peculiar, very suspecious

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妖妖灵
29 楼
But wasn't Squeak buried?
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移花接木
30 楼
我猜是埋错了,一个死在门口,正赶上它同时越狱。有点诡异,我不太相信它又在地下活过来
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