Quicunque

Meet the real star of Cannes: Midge the one-eyed cat from Yorkshire with a passion for sprinting

Amidst all the daily news of fraudulent and corrupt politicians, recession and redundancies, the collapse of the global economy and a swine flu pandemic, it's so warming to come across a story like that above. A Yorkshire parish councillor named Martin Humphreys who races his one-eyed rescue cat Midge back from the shop each day, has made a short children's film featuring himself and Midge competing in one of their races. Made on a budget of just £1,000, The Great Race will be debuting before judges in the Short Film Corner at the Cannes Film Festival.

Mr Humphreys is reported to be hoping The Great Race will be taken up by a movie company: "I truly believe this could be one of the greatest children's films of all time," he says.

Well, as one ex-runner to another, I for one have no intention of even trying to resist Midge's charm! Go cat!

There's another video here too from the BBC

The collective noun for hares is a husk. A husk of hares. Though I've also heard of a drove, a down, a leash, a mute, a trace, and a trip of hares. This morning, I've been sitting at my computer gazing over the field the other side of the road, entranced by the antics of a pair of hares.

After being blanketed with snow for several weeks, the temperatures have risen and the days been relatively warm and mild. With the rise in temperature, Nature suddenly started to Think Spring. Snowdrops are blooming, daffodils are peeking through, catkins are in the trees, and the hares have started their boxing matches a few weeks before they normally start their breeding season.

Hares are wonderful little creatures. They're chasing and leaping about the field, then racing up to each and rearing on their hind legs to box at each other rapidly with their front paws. This is the behaviour that gives Mad March Hares their name. It used to be thought the boxing was a aggressive/competitive thing between males. Turns out many of the 'matches' are between unreceptive females and persistent males - you go, girl!

It's hard to imagine our fields and moorlands without them, but brown hares aren't native to Britain. It's thought that they were introduced in Roman times, probably from Asia. Our true native is the mountain or white hare, but I've never seen one in the wild. They headed north with the retreat of the Ice Age and nowdays are really confined to the Scottish Highlands where they're still more common than brown hares at higher altitudes. There's just one colony of mountain hares in England, that was reintroduced to the Peak District in the 1860s. But even though they're foreign interlopers and not as glamorous as their white cousins, I still love my brown hares.

That reminds me, I once wrote a series of little pieces about hare lore for another project; I should find them and post them in The Cock, the Scythe, and the Cat mythology and folklore lounge at the Panerotica community site.

When I was about 11 or 12, Mr O, who owned the stables and trekking centre I haunted at weekends and school holidays, sensing a potential lucrative market for experienced adult horse-riders, brought home two ex-racehorses from the auctions. Sleek, attenuated English Thoroughbreds with legs and necks that went on forever, finely-veined faces and large intelligent eyes. A pair of glamorous, highly-strung supermodels introduced to the common herd of solid, stolid unpedigree'd ponies.

Whether he was deluding himself they might turn out to be handy on the hill trails, or whether Mr O just secretly wanted an excuse to have a couple of fine horses, inevitably they were a total failure as trekking horses. They abhored the mud, missed their footing while tip-toeing over rough ground, hated being held to a steady pace. Baby, they were born to run.

Robineau was the one that I befriended. He was a handsome bay gelding, retired after a life of only very modest success as a hurdler. I was a small skinny kid, and at 17 hands tall my heels only came half-way down his sides. He was bossy and domineering, prone to bullying the other horses, fiercely intolerant of chickens and goats, and devoted to the stable cat, Miss Fluff. Miss Fluff not only slept on Robby's back, but even safely delivered a litter of kittens in his stall and he never stepped on a single one of them.

Unsurprisingly, Robby was fast. He launched from a standing start like a rocket and viewed any area of open grass as an invitation to stretch his neck and run. The best thing to do was just hang on for the ride and trust him. I only had one fall from him, and that was when he took a corner at full gallop and I carried straight on. No harm done, except to the pride. Then one day I went to the stables and he was gone. Sold to someone who had fallen in love with his cranky personality just as much as I had. Well, he deserved a happy retirement, he was a beautiful horse with a big heart. But I often wondered if he missed Miss Fluff in his new home.

The other ex-racehorse Mr O had brought home that day was very different. A bright chestnut mare, at only 15.2 hands and with a petite build, she had proved neither temperamentally nor physically fit for the track, and more than justified the Thoroughbred reputation for being "a bit difficult". Her name was Psyche, but within days her stable-name was Psycho. She was headstrong and unruly, she kicked and bit anyone she could reach, she fought her rider and spooked at her own shadow. We kids weren't allowed in her stall, and she was ridden only by Mr O and one or two of the most experienced regular riders.

One day, one of these trusted riders, a very competant lady I will call Mrs Gee, rode out with Psycho. Barely an hour later, we heard the news we'd all been subconsciously waiting for since the day Psycho arrived. She had spooked at something in the roadside verge and leapt into oncoming traffic. Mrs Gee escaped with a broken collar bone from falling onto the tarmac. Psyche was hit by a car, and brought home with a thick triangular flap of flesh and skin hanging from her forearm. She was sedated, but I had never seen such pain in a horse's eyes, and I never want to again.

Psyche recovered, but she was never quite the same as she had been before the accident. She carried a hideous scar of course, and favoured her right foreleg when tired, but it was her personality that seemed to have undergone a sea-change. Unlike the traumatized horse Pilgrim in The Horse Whisperer, who became wild and violent after his accident, Psyche became - well, not quite docile, but manageable. She was still nervy but no longer deliberately mean. Mr O kept her, I think partly because he felt somehow responsible for her injury, and partly because he was genuinely fond of her by then. When I left home some six years or so later, he still had her.

So both horses had a happy end to their story. That's not the case for many retired racehorses. Because of their experiences and temperament they can be difficult to retrain as pleasure riding horses or for a second career. A few very lucky ones might find a place in a rest home when their competitive days are over, but the vast majority quietly disappear into silence - slaughtered for pet food. And that's why I wanted to write about Robby and Psyche, to give you something to think about the next time you cheer on the big-hearted horse winning a few pounds for you in the 3.30 at Ascot.

Every yokel knows that if cows are lying down, rain is on its way. If they're standing with their backs to the wind, expect a storm. If they're racing round and round with their tails up, batten down for an earthquake. But when they're all lying down at the far end of the field under the trees, dreamily chewing the cud and staring at nothing, that means -- what? That they're not going to chase Jerry down and trample him, right?

Nope. It just means they're biding their time.

Lulled into a false sense of security, their intended victim cautiously hops over the gate and keeping a wary eye open for stray calves (you do NOT want a 600kg horned bulldozer thinking you're molesting its baby, trust me on that) nonchalantly heads off towards the opposite side of the field, manfully avoiding eye contact with the one or two cows that have stopped chewing and have started to look vaguely interested at this break in their routine.

"Don't run," my partner always tells me. "Longhorns are docile, but they'll follow you if you run. Just ignore them and keep walking."

Me, I thought it was supposed to be predators that have chase responses, not herbivorous bovines. However. I'm not arguing with him because in my experience he's right. Run and they run with you. Just call me Runs with Cows.

People who know me and my secret fear know where I'm going with this. I get half way across the bloody field and my bootlace mysteriously unties itself and I have the dilemma off keeping going and tripping face-down in a fresh cow-pat or stopping to re-tie and letting the cows that are now lumbering to their feet get me. Honestly, do I LOOK like a threat to their babies? Maybe they smell my fear. They break into a trot. My nerve holds until I feel the first hot, wet snuff on the back on my neck, but fortunately by then safety is within reach --- I nimbly vault the gate into the next field --- to find another two dozen or more English Longhorns all staring at me in round-eyed wonder.....

Incidentally, calves are kinda cute, with those long, long eyelashes like drag queens. It's just their bad-ass mamas that put the wind up me.

Most amused reading everyone's descriptions of their felines' sleeping habits too *grins* I share my bed with not only another human but no less than 6 cats, all of whom consider the bed itself to be their personal space, and the human occupants as their hot-water bottles. Each cat has its favoured sleeping place, either under or on top of the quilt, but there's often a lot of jostling for position as each wants to lie (or at least lean) on a human, and the occasional hissing fight will break out. Fortunately, I can sleep through just about anything, but getting up in the night usually involves a major upheaval, and an escort of several curious cats. The preference for sleeping ON humans isn't restricted to the bed but the sofa too, so if I watch a film or settle down to read, most of the cats will pack down around and on me.

The cats also enjoy the occasions when I practise a bit of bellydancing at home, and though I wouldn't go so far as to claim they 'danced' with me, they do consider it a wonderful opportunity to twine round my ankles and see if they can tip me over for fun. They also like my doumbek and have been known to try and nestle inside it while I'm playing... (the drum is hollow).

The only thing I will bless my cats for, is that they understand the concept of weekend lie-ins! So no wet paws/nose in the face at breakfast time - they like a sleep-in too *grin*