Another Quiet Day

That Crazy Bastard

Kopavogur is an odd part of Iceland.

Technically it's a town in its own right. A place with its own local council, police force and whatnot.

It is engulfed by the capital. Reykjavik has grown to the degree that it almost surrounds what would in any other circumstance just have been annexed into the larger body.

In many cases Kopavogur is closer to the Reykjavik city centre than most of the outlying suburbia.

At the time when my grandparent's moved there, with my Dad in tow, the place qualified as 'countryside' given the poor roadsystem of those days.

As well as the fact that there were a lot fewer of us Icelanders in those times.

Despite my poor grandmother's massive culture shock of having a farm as one of your nearest neighbours they did fairly well on the whole.

It's hard to imagine it not having been a step down for her given her family and background.

It was pretty much as close to an uncool semi-rural life that you could get while still being within commuting distance of the capital.

Sort of mitigated by the fact that my Grandad's always been fairly cool. I wore his old leather jacket for years as a teenager.

The sort of old guy that can start a conversation with a girl several decades younger than him, make her laugh, and not make it look or sound sleazy.

It was into this environment that the cat---later to be affectionately known either as "The White Cat" or "That Crazy Cat"---came to be adopted.

The poor thing had to be hand-reared by my Grandmother. It was one of those circumstances when the kitten really shouldn't have been able to survive without the parent but humans made do and managed to keep it alive into adulthood.

He---it was a male-- was stark white as well, a beautiful cat by all accounts.

As my Dad is fond to say, since he was reared by humans, the white cat had no conception of cat manners.

He knew the basics of human manners. Like when and how a cat is supposed to interact with the monkeys for food.

So the human-cat thing was sorted.

Cat-cat communication was another matter entirely.

He was blind to all of the subtle cat rituals that surround any local cat community.

How you approach a garden you know is monitored by another cat.

How you approach and greet a strange cat in the street.

The curious cat dance of growling and posturing that takes the place of pre-battle evaluation and negotiation.

All those small details.

A strange cat that tried to intimidate the white cat with the standard cat routines and rituals was in for a rude surprise.

Because the white cat would just wade in and smack it on the head.

It's hard to tell whether it was simply the element of surprise or whether the white cat was simply a fairly strong fellow, but the white cat in the end dominated the entire cat population in neighbourhood.

Goes to show that being a sociopath is one of those qualities that clears the path to power.

The fact that a large proportion of the succeeding generations of cats in that neighbourhood were stark white was just one part of its legacy.

It's hard to tell where things start with personality characteristics.

One theory is that The White Cat behaved like it did around other cats because of its lack of cat-manners, for want of a better word.

This, unfortunately, doesn't explain why it was widely regarded as completely insane.

And when I say widely I mean widely, at least for a cat. My sister once was told by at work that the work-mate's grandmother had told her stories about that "Insane Cat" that belonged to one of the neighbours.

Our white cat.

If it saw or smelt something it wanted it took it---to an even greater degree than you see with the already congenitally selfish race we call cats.

Very little in terms of inhibitions.

A little furball lunatic that even on the best of days evoked a shake of the head and a the refrain "That Crazy Bastard."

The main difference between family members and the neighbour-victims is that the family members were saying it with a soft smile.

Baldur Bjarnason – 14/7/06