My next door neighbour, Elsie, had a very small 100% black cat named "Pusskin". The cat was about 18, but had the size of a young adolescent cat. She must of weighed no more than 2kg. This was a small cat.

Elsie didn't like cats much, but had a special bond with Pusskin and would never get rid of her, because Pusskin had saved Elsie's life.

Elsie lived on a cattle station ("ranch" for you USAnianas). The station had cats to keep down the vermin, they were in no way considered pets. Pusskin's mother had a litter of 4, Pusskin was by far the runt. As much as cats were more of a service than a pet, Elsie for some reason felt sorry for the runt, who was picked on by all the other cats, and pushed out of the way of suckling by her older, larger siblings. Elsie helped the kitten to survive, and Pusskin repaid the favour by following Elsie absolutely everywhere.

This wasn't Elsie's idea of a cat, however, and desperately wanted Pusskin to go out and do a cat's day's work catching rats & mice, rather than being a pet. On the outback station, there isn't a lot of room in a cattle woman's life for pampering animals that would otherwise perform useful tasks. Also, since the Bush is a rough sort of place to live, Elsie knew that many cats (and dogs and other farm creatures) would die as a result of injury, starvation, or taken as food by dingoes etc, because, realistically, that's how a station is. Don't get fond of animals, as they say.

But the black cat continued to follow her around like the proverbial duckling. While inconvenient for Elsie, she didn't stop doing her work. One day as she was walking toward a sheep pen, Pusskin in tow, Pusskin jumped out ahead, hissed and carried on a treat. Pusskin was in full motion around the biggest Red-Bellied Black Snake Elsie had ever seen. If Pusskin hadn't suddenly started to go off her bean, Elsie said that she'd probably had stepped right onto the snake. Pusskin kept teasing the snake, as the snake kept trying to strike at the little back furrball.

Elsie only had two choices - to rescue the cat from the snake and get the bite of the second-most deadly snake in the world for herself, or leave cat and snake in the deadly fight and save herself whilst the snake was distracted (there Bush stories of these snakes chasing people). She chose to save her own life, and in her heart, said thank you for the brave little cat that sacrificed its own life for hers.

Three days later, a very sick, scruffy looking Pusskin staggered into her homestead. Elsie has no idea how the cat had survived, or found her way home, let alone how it got away from the snake. Pusskin in arms, she took the 4 wheel drive out to where the savage fight had been. And there lay the biggest, meanest, deadest, red-bellied-black-snake that Elsie had ever seen. Somehow, the smallest cat had killed the biggest snake.

Pusskin was then considered a pet only, she would have to do no work, would not have to live outside as the other cats did, would not have to find her own food. Elsie's own children were grown and had moved on, and so Pusskin became Elsie's constant companion, her pampered "little tiger". When she retired and moved into the city, Pusskin went with her. Once the Real Estate agents had heard how Pusskin had saved Elsie's life, they bent the "no pets" rule, because if Pusskin couldn't stay, then nor would Elsie.

When I knew Elsie as my next-door neighbour, she still wasn't much of a cat lover. "Silly things to have in a city" she used to say. But she didn't think of Pusskin in that way, because I think in her mind, Pusskin wasn't really so much of a cat as a mighty hero, just a very, very small one in a cunning cat-like disguise.

Who said black cats were unlucky?

Copyright © Vicky Chapman
September 15, 1998