An explanation of cats...

On any given day we are visited by any number of cats as I have mentioned before. Their relationships differ as does our relationship to them, but they all have names of some form, which we have bestowed on them for various reasons. Many of them make their way inside for whatever reason they see fit, some we can touch, and others are a bit scary… but they are among the cats of Doha and they like the cat food and milk we put outside for them. All the cats live outside and are just visitors, as we are here.

Our first visitors after our arrival were “mummy cat” & “kitten”. As you would have seen previously “kitten” has become a fixture of our home and can be an affectionate little thing (although it is slowly outgrowing it’s “kitten” status). She plays, sleeps, and generally just hangs around most of the time. Mummy Cat on the other hand has only just started coming inside for the occasional nap and pat… she also only has a stumpy tail; don’t know what happened to the rest of it. Both of them still head off together, but “kitten” normally returns far more frequently than “mummy cat” does; she normally announces her return by jumping off the roof onto the window sill via the air conditioning unit (which makes a load thumping-kind-of-crashing sound).

Next is “big moza” formally known as “moza 2”), who sort of just turned up a few months ago. She is never too far away and often sleeps on one of the dinning table chairs in the evening. She likes a pat, reluctantly puts up with “kitten” but is not really friends with “mummy cat”… they sort of give each other a wide berth as the pass (or some times just sit there facing each other sounding not particularly happy with their world). She is one of the few fluffy cats you see around here, as most have short smooth coats.

pretty cat

The other two regular visitors are “moza” (formally “moza 1”) and “pretty cat”. We think these two must be sisters (although they don’t look alike), as they don’t really have a space issues between them and eat together out of one bowl. They also turned up together not long after we arrived, but both are still very skitty so only venture inside for a walk and sniff around then head straight back outside. “Pretty cat”, who actually vanished for about a month but is now back, is so-called because she is a very pretty and fluffy cat. We can’t touch either of these two at all!

big moza & moza

The story behind the “moza” name is based on a little girl at Kerry’s work who once said “I have nose. It’s dirty”. Both the moza’s have black on their noses, hence their name. “Big moza” is fluffier and bigger than the other “moza” plus has a white stripe down it’s back… so if we had put more time and effort into naming (which you should have guessed by now, we didn’t) it’s name would have probably been something more skunky! Don’t know if the two moza’s are related, but they seem to tolerate each other better than some of the others.

There is also the “skitty cat” that turns up normally once a day, and is very skitty! She hides under the chairs out the back, eats and drinks, then runs away.

skitty cat

There are also some male cats around, but they obviously give each other a pretty wide berth. The female cats don’t really have a problem with the male cats and basically ignore them for the majority of the time. There is “male moza” who I think is possibly the moza’s dad as he has very similar markings. There is also “ugly cat” who I think may be the dominant male and possibly the father to both “mummy cat” and “kitten”. He really isn’t ugly, but just very solid and beaten up. There are others that we only see now and then. “Big-head cat” is a young male who kind of has the whole big Garfield head thing going on… he is looking a bit beaten up lately and has only been around once in the past few weeks. I picked him up one night and brought him inside, and he just flopped on Kerry’s lap… very nice natured cat but I think when he was beaten up once too often by one of the other males and has now been scared off. There is also “tiger cat” who sort of has tiger stripes, is another nice-natured big male who loves a pat, but he has only been around once in the past month and now has a pretty badly damaged foot. We also had another kitten with a damaged foot visit us for a few days, but that was has now disappeared.

male moza

Finally are the hillbilly cats. There is a male and female who we see on the top of the back fence (I have yet to see them in our backyard)… the reason they are the hillbilly cats is the male has what looks like an overbite (or at least a big bottom lip) and the female looks cross eyed, so they both look like the bad result of a little bit too much inbreeding!

If you think that is a lot, they are just the ones that visit our backyard. You can drive through the compound or on the surrounding roads and see others who obviously have their little area they stick to… all of them look related to at least one or two of the ones that visit us.

At the end of the day you can’t look after these cats too much… this is not the place to be if you feel the need to take in strays otherwise your house would be full in a week! It is hard not to get attached to our little furry friends though and our evenings would not be the same if we didn’t look over and see at least one of them asleep somewhere.