...of Cats

For all of those who know me, I am the son of a teacher from a family of teachers. Please if you notice anything wrong about my grammar or punctuation, let me know before mummy sees it.

LETTING CATS RAIN REIGN

I recently heard an interview on Radio 4 by Paul McCartney of how he and Linda finally became vegetarians. The way he tells it, there was roast lamb for dinner on the dining table and they both looked outside the window and watched the lambkins jump about happily. Straight away, they made that decision to go vegetarian. They only farmed for sheep shearing and their flock die of old age, instead of being dinner. I am not going into the ins and outs of vegetarianism here (I will not change, though I have cut down on my meat intake recently). It is with this interesting take of when a pet takes over your life and influences life choices that I am going to talk about my relationship with cats.

I do not have a relationship with cats.I don't like them very much and they do not care for me either, the very fact that the feeling is mutual absolves me of any accusations of my being evil towards cats. It is said that dogs are man's best fiend. I presently do not own a dog but from what I can see from my neighbours and their relationships with their dogs, that is quite true. I myself have had dogs and as I remember Duke, Honey, Sugar, Terror, Pogo and others, I have pleasant memories of walks, being licked, feeding, fleas and de-worming. There was companionship as well but relationships are not just fun and games - its hard work. In all of this though, the dogs remained faithful, until they died.

Cats on the other hand are firstly, women's best friend. Then men come in a distant second. Actually, I lie. A cat's best friend is itself. Women tend to be their second best friend. And then  ... erm, there's me. I always get snarled at when I try to gently stroke these supposedly genteel creatures, and on more than one occasion  I have been undeservedly scratched and/or spat at. I have clothing that bear talon marks which I can no longer wear. A dog will hump you. A cat will shred your clothing to bits. Cats take great delight in proving that I have no redeeming characteristics and always show me up in public.

I visited a friend once who had a black feline called Kat. My friend is a university lecturer as well as a consultant in medicine, so when she explained the rationale behind her pet's name I started to question the wisdom of my choice of friends. Apparently, she had to choose between calling the mangy clawy, furrball "Cat" or "Kat", but then decided on the latter because the animal responded better to that name. Go figure.

My neighbours were going away for 3 weeks and left their keys so that I could feed their cat in their absence.  Everyday, twice a day for 3 weeks  I would go and change the feeding bowl of uneaten cat food and replace it with fresh, but I never saw a sign of the animal. That is, of course, until the day that my neighbours returned. As fate would have it, it was a cold wet, windy day. I told my neighbour how I had not seen the cat for a while, and they said, "Don't worry, she does that quite often." So the idiot cat crawled in wet and bedraggled that evening with scratches and briers in its fur and and had to be taken to the vet because it had an infection. My relationship with my neighbours was never the same after that and when the family moved to Brighton the following spring, the man said it was because West Ham had been relegated. Ok.

My other neighbour caught me chasing his cat out of our garden into his. I was holding a rake at the time. I was NOT going to use the rake, it was purely coincidental that I was chasing the cat. (Because the resourceful predator, instead of hunting mice and rats in the neighbouring allotment had entered my kitchen and helped himself to some freshly fried fish that did not belong to him). Anyway, that winter, after very heavy snow, I woke up one white morning and opened my front door to find the pesky thief stretched out, frozen on my door mat. I panicked (as you do) but just as I bent over to examine the unsightly carcass,  my neighbour came out and saw me with his dead cat. On my door mat. Without a word, I picked up the hardened criminal (he was a thief!!! he stole my fish and my reputation!!!) and handed him back to his owner and returned indoors, waiting for the police and the ensuing investigation. Which did not happen.

So you see, I do not like cats.

I usually have a biblical slant to my musings, but not today because cats are not mentioned in the Bible, apart from Jesus being the Lion of Judah in most prophecies. All the other lions (cats) mentioned were killed by David or Samson. Enough said.