Abscess Cat and other cats in the neighbourhood

there are 3 other cats that share the block with me. we don't see tibby, an orange stray cat, around anymore. uncle leaves food for it at the stairs landing between the 2nd and 3rd floor so it often wanders past our front door to get to it. it had the audacity to walk into our flat through the grills once. i let it know how i felt about that. but i don't see uncle leaving food at that particular spot anymore, which is a shame because i like to go lick it sometimes when i am darn sick of the prescription dry food. the woman always tries to stop me.

Now, an old Tomcat keeps coming around and rubbing itself on our corridor and the junk the man and woman leave outside the flat. it has a red collar so i presume it belongs to somebody. i detest it to the core and chase it on sight. the devastating snarl i make wakes up my next-door neighbour and on cue, she pours water and sprays insecticide all over her section of the corridor.

abscess cat is a butt ugly brown stray cat that stakes out the letter boxes. its not bad enough that it has a tragically unlovable face, it has to contract a bad case of abscess too. hence the name. there is no sign of growth as in the case of maneki 2 but the excessive drooling is a dead giveaway. the drool is so thick that when it reaches the ground and comes in contact with someone's discarded junk mail, it drags it along. of course, there is that smell.

the woman feels sorry for it and lets it run around her legs and rub itself against them. that's about the only human/cat contact it's ever going to get because most people have the good sense to run. the woman even goes so far as to pet it sometimes. until one day, she stooped down too far, abscess cat got curious about her glasses, jumped up and snatched them off her, leaving a deep scar on her face where one of its claws stuck.

after one of these abscess cat encounters, the woman would soak her clothes in dettol. on that particular day, her face too.