It is surprising to me, in fact, that it has taken me quite so long to write this story. We have a cat, and his name is Huckleberry. In fact we have two cats. The other one is Huckleberry’s sister, Suu Kyi, and although she is without hyperbole perhaps in the top 5 cutest creatures on planet earth, for pizzazz and personality, she has nothing on her golden-furred brother.

Our pair of cats came into our lives in the same year Milo did, which is why I am surprised to find it has taken me almost 10 years of blogging to mention him. He is a very curious creature indeed. He may well be a human trapped in a cat’s body, or an actual lion so confused by his domestication and constant belly rubs that he forgets to kill us each day.

I don’t really know why I write this blog. Sometimes to amuse myself, sometimes to amuse my mother or my children. But sometimes it is just to record something properly for posterity. I think this story is the latter, so I might just list his many strange habits one by one, some of which might seem unbelievable to you. They are all definitely true and unembellished.

He can open any door unless it is locked, including our front door. He leaps, grabs hold of the door handle with his paws and mouth, dangles and slowly slides down the handle until it pops open. This is completely true and it is a real problem for us. The straight long handles are a breeze for him but I am sure one night, in a dazed state on my way to the bathroom, I saw him do it on one of those stumpy circular handles. He has also learned when the door is likely to be unlocked. He does not bother most of the time, but if we open the door to go out and close it behind us, he will immediately appear and leap onto the door handle. He can execute this move in less than 3 seconds.

Huckleberry has a gross, misshapen, distended, formerly plush little stuffed-toy donkey that he purloined from one of the children at some point, and made his own. We call this tangled little beast ‘Donkey’.

Whenever we feed our cats, Huckleberry will immediately go in search of Donkey. Donkey is usually nearby, but sometimes he has been carried away and left somewhere unseemly like on a pillow, or in the pantry. Anyway, Huckleberry will locate Donkey and then carry him back to his food bowl, with a strange mix of embarrassment and primeval violence in his eyes. He will place Donkey adjacent the bowl, gnaw on him a little, and then take a mouthful of food. Gnaw on Donkey, eat some food, gnaw, eat, gnaw, repeat, until he is finished. He is very much simulating the thrill of having caught and killed poor old donkey while he eats pre-packaged chicken mush, over and over again. Donkey’s nightmare never ends.

Well, in fact one day it will, because Donkey is the second such talisman of the savannah that Huckleberry has had in his life. The first was one of Milo’s first ever plush toys, a cute little fox, that Huckleberry chose to invite into his ‘circle of life’ cosplay. Foxy was with us for many years, he nose pulled and flattened and stretched almost as long as the rest of his body, before one day he finally turned into a pile of thread, and disappeared.

Watching him do this is as weird as it sounds.

Huckleberry is happiest on your shoulder. This was cute when he was a small, agile kitten. He would leap softly from a high place, and land gently on your shoulder. You would then walk around with him up there for hours while he purred and rubbed your cheek gently with his.

Now that he is not small, and increasingly less agile, this odd behaviour is less endearing. He will now leap out from behind a pot plant with no notice and thunder into your neck and chin area while you are peeling carrots. At best this will cause you to drop your carrot and stumble awkwardly to one side as the momentum of his ample frame tries to dissipate into your body. Usually, however, he underestimates the size of either his bottom, or your shoulder, misses his mark and then thrusts his claws into you in desperation as he cascades awkwardly down you back and onto the floor. So then you end up with both a dropped carrot and a bleeding neck.

Linked to this behaviour (probably) is his overwhelming desire to sleep on your face. This was a genuine concern when our boys were babies; the threat of asphyxiation by feline was real. These days it is only Milo and Kuepps’ faces that will do, and it is more the kind of forehead area with the volumous tail and legs sprawled across the pillow. How either of them sleep like this is a mystery to me.

Huckleberry is a many-nicknamed cat. Here are the ones that come to mind:

• Huck
• Huckie
• Huckie Boy
• The Huck
• Punk
• Punkie
• Punkie Boy
• Punko the Munko
• The Punk
• Punkleberry
• The Punkleberry
• Punklebaby
• Huck Bomb
• Spunkle
• Spunkie

I’ll finish with two anecdotes about The Punk.

First – shortly after Milo was born, Kuepps was feeding the baby, and I was heading out to the supermarket. We were both delirious, in that sort of first weeks of baby way. As I was opening the door to leave, Huck pushed up aggressively against my leg, making a most unusual noise – not dissimilar to that guttural sound he makes while brutalizing donkey. His tail was all big and puffy. Once he had captured my attention he motioned for me to follow him. I could not tell you exactly how he did it, but I remember his intention seeming crystal clear to me. So I did, and having walked the 5 metres to the laundry, I found Suu Kyi inside the washing machine. A front loader, the cycle was just beginning, with water trickling in and the barrel gently rolling from side to side, but not all the way over. Suu Kyi could be seen clearly inside, atop the wet nappies, stumbling back and forth, and looking quite distressed indeed. I yelled for Kuepps and immediately switched off the washer. Being a front loader, half full of water, there was no easy way to release her, so we channeled our inner Schwarzenegger, ripped the door off its hinges and retrieved a very bedraggled but grateful Suu Kyi… who immediately began purring. Huck literally saved his sister’s life, and a good deal of mental anguish on behalf of his owners.

Second anecdote – Huck and SK are now very much indoor cats, but they once lived a slightly more outdoorsy sort of life. During this time, we were moving from Canberra to Sydney. We had removalists in our house all day long, packing and moving, and drinking energy drinks and packing and moving. At the beginning of the day I told them about Huck’s proclivities, and warned them of the very real possibility that he may try to stow away in the truck. I asked them to make sure he was not inside the truck before they closed the doors to depart. They laughed and obviously thought nothing more about it because at the end of the day, of course, they had done just that.

It was about an hour after they left, with Huck nowhere to be seen, that I called the driver. He initially scoffed at my suggestion that perhaps he could check, but eventually I convinced him. He kept me on the line as he pulled his large truck to the side of the road on the Hume Highway, levered open the heavy doors and then gasped and said some rude words as he discovered Huck, standing on top of a sofa in the back of his truck.

Fortunately the driver managed to capture The Punkleberry (probably by moving a shoulder into his nearish vicinity) then kept him safe in his cabin until the driver made it to his home in Camden. We were only a few hours behind, and arrived at the driver’s house around 8pm to find Huck sitting on the man’s shoulder, purring, and watching Friday Night Football together.

Huck, the coolest cat on earth, barely looked up to say hi.

One day, I am sure of it, Huck will just start talking to us, with a deep James Earl Jones-type voice, and all of it will finally make sense.

Making light work of our perimeter security