Bentley in a box

                                Cat in a box.
 

Bentley on the bed

 

This cat changed my life.

Pile o' paws

In a dark room, I can sometimes see these four white paws walking along with no cat attached to them. Or so it seems. When he lies down, Bentley's paws form a neat pile, white with pink toes. Sometimes they look more like gloves. Actually, his paws are FIVE colours: pink, white, grey, brown and black. Talented cat - eh?

And we wub hims so.

Bentley sleeps with his eyes open

Can Bentley talk?

Cat in the box!

                                   Bentley in the box. 

Bentley in the jungle

               The best cat ever, spending some time on my plant stand.

Obsession: the case of the Bentley Embiricos

The 1938 Bentley Embiricos.

Sad-eyed kitty of the lowlands

The unexpected blessing of a cat

What is it about this cat? I think he came along at just the right time, when I was totally disillusioned with the collapse of my dream of being a "real" writer. It just didn't happen. It's not true that you have to "try, try again" and "failure doesn't exist" and all that. Sometimes you have to acknowledge that it didn't work out and try to be gracious about it. I had also just experienced terrible grief over the loss of my beloved baby lovebird Paco, whom I barely had a chance to enjoy before she died. 

Bentley was completely unexpected, and sometimes those are the best things. The things we hammer away at, the things we think we can't do without, turn out to be relatively unimportant. If it REALLY doesn't want to happen, well then, OK. It doesn't. I will try to admit defeat as graciously as I can.

Meanwhile, I have this cat to spend time with, to sprawl on my lap, to very patiently sit beside my bed to wait for treats. He is soft-spoken and loyal and protective of us, and - what? He is Bentley. What a gentleman he is! Most people I know don't have such good manners. 

Bentley beauty shot

Bentley's morning laps

Bentley's fame continues to grow

The other day I sent an email to a well-known cat website based in the UK (Pictures of Cats), asking them about something I've always wanted to know about Bentley. To my surprise, the cat-master, Michael Broad, responded within hours and asked if he could use my email as an article, along with his comments.

So I asked Bentley about it.

Well. . .

He was a little hard to convince - his concern is palpable in the picture below. But once I described the lovely montage they made of his picture, he was won over. Or at least, I think he was won over (he didn't open his eyes).  Below is my original email and Michael's remarks. There have been some comments from readers as well, which you can find here:

http://pictures-of-cats.org/can-a-cat-lose-the-ability-to-purr.html

Can a cat lose the ability to purr?

By Margaret Gunning

Hello! I was delighted to find your cat site, which has more cat lore in it than anything I’ve seen. I look forward to further exploration.

Can a cat lose the ability to purr? I have a lovely cat named Bentley, and though he is affectionate and a lap-sitter, I have never heard him purr. I think I feel a small vibration when I am holding him, but maybe not. He very seldom meows (maybe a few times a week) and it’s very quiet. He does (fairly rarely) make other sounds, chattering when he sees a bird, grunting to get our attention, chirping (though he did more of that when we first got him).

About Bentley (I made an animation of him from a few photos, above): he is a reasonably large, three-year-old neutered male tabby. We adopted him from the SPCA when he was about a year old. I saw his mug shot on the web site and was very attracted to it, even though we had intended to get a kitten. They could not tell us much about him except that someone had found him wandering around injured and brought him in. He was quite thin and had puncture wounds on his shoulders, indicating a dog or coyote attack. It was quite bad, so he may have been picked up and thrashed. By the time we adopted him he was bald on top (shaved), but healed.

A thinner, more juvenile Bentley, soon to "fill out"

 from 10 to 14 1/2 pounds.

When I saw him, the connection was instant. He ran up to me and wanted to be picked up and just melted into my arms. This was our cat. His manners are impeccable (he has since been neutered) and the attachment to us is strong. I get a sense of him protecting us, which I haven’t had with other cats.

Though he is fairly bold and rarely hides, he does NOT want us to go out. He rubs all over our legs and on every wall and object, and squeezes into a box by the door looking adorable. Sometimes he even climbs into his cat carrier. By the time we go out the door he’s walking away to have a nap.

I have always wondered if this attack somehow damaged his vocal cords, or if he’s just naturally quiet. Maybe he never did purr? I do wonder about lingering trauma. Though he’s generally friendly, there are spaces around him (right in front or above him) that he is sensitive about and he will actually back up if you try to touch him. His favourite place to be scratched is between his shoulder blades (where he was attacked!)

He is in good health and gained 4 ½ pounds after we adopted him. (He’s not fat – just big-boned.) The vet has never seen a cat lose its purr, so I wondered if such a thing was possible. He is certainly a loyal, affectionate and grateful kitty.

If you have any thoughts, I’d be interested in hearing them. Thank you!

All the best,

Margaret Gunning

Comment from Michael.

Through building this website my thoughts on this are that individual domestic cats have a wide range of personal characteristics and one relates to their vocalisations. Individual cats make slightly different sounds and unusual sounds sometimes. And some cats are almost silent. They rarely meow and when they do it is a silent meow. There are also breed characteristics – vocal Siamese and silent meow British Shorthair. I believe that Bentley just has a very silent or non-vocal purr. I don’t think this has happened because of a lingering trauma. Domestic cats get over trauma well in my experience. They forget and move on.

That said I would welcome the thoughts of others in a comment. I am certainly not 10 sure that I am correct. Thanks Margaret for sharing your experience and asking. It is an interesting topic.

P. S. This is a fantastic site for cat lovers, full of information and discussion, and updating every few hours. I could not believe how quickly this man got back to me, and by the next day the piece had been published. Bentley is on Cloud 9 - or maybe it's Cloud Tuna Can. He doesn't really know the difference. 

Bentley plays with his pink thing!

Bentley on cat sofa

Best in Cats: my Bentley

   

Bentley the Beautiful

Bentley the space alien

Bentley is in such a state of bliss in this video, cuddled up in the cat bed I knitted for him. There really is a resemblance to a space alien here. A very cute, sweet one. With fur.

Kitty in the cupboard

Oh my goodness! While preparing to shoot a DIY video, I heard a knocking sound in the cupboard. There was Bentley, standing on top of the dishes! Somehow or other - well, I guess I must have left the cupboard open and he slipped in. Getting him to "slip out" again was another matter, as he weighs at least 14 lbs. (we think, closer to 15 now) and didn't want to come out. Bentley loves to be a part of anything I'm doing, so he often shows up in my videos. And he's always the best part.

Bentley animation

 

My first attempt to animate my cat Bentley. After my experiments with Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine at the Oscars, their faces bordering on total hysteria, I thought, well, why not my cat? He is so sweet and photogenic that it was almost easy. Seven frames does limit the range of expression, however. From sleep, to alarm, to sleep.