The ultimate betrayal

Behold, this will be one of the many posts about Palace de Geyerstraße which I’ll write with just a tad too much attachment and then sob over when we’re living in a barn somewhere in the German countryside.

This is a story of The Mussa and his ultimate betrayal.

We first met The Mussa on our third day in Palace de Geyerstraße. We had ventured outdoors to admire our new home and were just in the middle of high-fiving, slapping each other’s backs and making wildly exaggerated hand signals because IT IS SO AWESOME when, out of nowhere, a little blur of white and orange dashed past us.

This blur turned out to be a rather cute ginger kitten, who proceeded to sit a few metres away and stare at us shyly from behind a twig, all giant paws here and large innocent eyes there. And we were all OMG SO CUTE! and immediately got on all fours and patted the ground.

Little known fact: this attracts kittens.

A dog or human or any other animal would consider this behaviour threatening and get the hell out of there. But cats are all WHAT IS THAT? WHY ARE THEY DOING THAT?  WHERE IS THAT CLICKING SOUND COMING FROM? Until it becomes irresistible and their buts begin to wiggle and the next thing you know, they’re in the centre swatting at anything that moves.

And that’s what happened with The Mussa. Within seconds he was purring and swatting and cuddling and we were THIS close to just hiding him under our jackets and taking him home. But we’re not that insane, and also we suspected that his owners would eventually come looking for him, and it would be awkward to explain why he was chained to my bed.

Instead we set up a regular routine whereby whenever we ventured outdoors, we’d scream “MUSSA” in a voice loud enough for The Mussa to hear, but not so loud as to let our neighbours know what was happening (moderately confident that we failed at that). And The Mussa would come screaming around the corner and greet us with his bunny face, and giant paws and pink nose and Awwwwww....

Things could have gone on like that forever, in those innocent pre-catnapping days, but they didn’t. One day in early March, after another successful interaction, The Mussa started trailing us. Every time we’d turn around, there he’d be half-heartedly hiding behind a wall or a car or a bike with a look of Take Me Home With You I Have Giant Bunny Paws. Just the kind of look that makes normal people want to cuddle him, but makes Simon and I want to put his head in our mouth.

The natural next step was to catnap him.(obviously).

Actually, if truth be told, we weren’t really planning to steal him. I mean, we had talked about it because OMG purring Mussa on the bed (!!!), but on the day it happened we were just being good Samaritans.We had returned from school to find The Mussa sitting in front of our door with pleading saucer-like eyes like My Adorable Bunny Paws Can’t Reach The Door Knob, Could You Help A Mussa Out? And we totally helped a Mussa out. What kind of sick, evil person wouldn’t help a Mussa out?

But of course we shouldn’t have helped a Mussa out because The Mussa didn’t live in our apartment building and was in fact just being a naughty, curious kitten. So when we opened the door he bolted inside and immediately made for the stairs.

What is it with cats and stairs?

He ran up six stairs, and then down two stairs, and then stuck his little bunny face out between the posts of the balustrade. And we were like “Ummm I don’t think The Mussa lives here. We should go grab him”. But there was no grabbing The Mussa because he had gotten to the stairs and the stairs are the Best Game in the History of Cat Games. One that goes like this: well-meaning human approaches; run up three stairs. Well meaning-human stops, come towards well-meaning human. When well-meaning human’s hopes are up, run up a few more stairs. Make sure to do this in a loud wooden, public stairway of well-meaning human’s new apartment block so that if the neighbours of well-meaning human come out to see what’s causing all the racket, they’ll be greeted by the sight of well-meaning human’s large arse chasing after a small ginger kitten.

We did not think much of this game, so we decided that maybe, yes, the kitten did live in the building and was totally screwing with us. Besides we didn’t want to get into a situation where we’d have to explain what we were doing via interpretive dance, (because remember this was in March and “accidentally let kitten into apartment block in failed display of charity” was not in our vocabulary just yet).

So, somewhat dejected, we opened the door to our apartment. And that’s when the cat expelled all of the energy it had in its body to shoot itself into our hallway and launch The Immediate Exploration of New Stomping Ground.

At first this was ADORABLE, so we cooed and took pictures like this one:

and this one.

But then, increasingly, we began to worry that a) The Mussa’s owner would somehow telepathically know that we had his cat and would do bad things to us and b) that in all of the excitement The Mussa would pee on something that didn’t belong to us. So we wrangled him up – chunky bunny feet and all – and gently placed him on the outside windowsill, thereby teaching him a valuable lesson: New Stomping Ground Has Convenient Access Point.

A few days later we were just sitting around and minding our own business when suddenly The Mussa appeared on Simon’s desk. Like Hello! He had climbed into the apartment through the window. Which, seeing as we live on the ground floor, might not seem like a big deal. But let me tell you, it’s a big deal.

In a feat of design ingenuity which has yet to reach Australia, European windows open in two ways: when the handle is horizontal they open like any other window, but when the handle is vertical and pointing upwards they only partially open from the top.

Here’s a diagram:

The Mussa managed to use his giant bunny feet to climb all the way up a partially-opened window (as per diagram 3) and into Simon’s room. Then, thoroughly impressed with himself, sat in the middle of the desk purring his approval.

And so it went; whenever The Mussa wanted to say hello, he’d stand at the window and if nobody let him in, he’d do it himself. When he wanted to leave, he’d sit on the inside windowsill with an expression of “I want to go outside and play with butterflies” and we’d fall all over ourselves to meet his requests.

Before long, he discovered that our bed was not a bad place to sleep, actually. And he wasn’t even creeped out by the way we’d all hold our breath, and stare and coo because OMG purring Mussa on the bed (!!!). And he’d get patted and loved and when he’d had enough he’d only have to twitch to make every human in the room  flatten themselves against a wall and cease breathing because, OMG the Mussa might leave. And we were happy. Oh so happy.

Did we think about his owners? Sure, we wanted to know who they were, why they let their super cute Mussa run around at all times of the day and night, and what they would think if they knew (really knew) just how much he wanted to be our cat instead of theirs. Did they even know HOW ADORABLE he was being?

But you just have to know that all good things come to an end.

One day all three of us were heading out to do something. Possibly in the morning. Possibly something to do with learning German and going to work. But I can’t back that up.

As we turned the corner we saw the most horrendous sight. There was a giant, beach-ball-esque man in a loud Hawaiian shirt holding OUR MUSSA on his shoulder and spiriting him into the apartment next door.

When he heard us coming he tried to do a quick, desperate scramble to get indoors before we saw his thieving ways, but he wasn’t fast enough, so he just gave us a guilt-ridden look, the kind he would have perfected as an enormous Hawaiian-shirt-wearing child when busted with his hand in the cookie jar (I’m not being mean, he’s a Mussa-napping criminal!).

We wanted to snatch The Mussa away, and explain to the large man that we were the catnappers on this block, thank you very much. But then something stopped us. The Mussa looked happy. Happy! Like, “yeah I’m going to play The Stair Game with this fool and see what happens”. I don’t want to exaggerate but I imagine this is what dying feels like.

Fat man, some shit gonna go down!