Feline Groovy

From the day I was born until four years ago, I had always had cats.  As a child that was plural, as a teenager onwards, singular.

You'll naturally be surprised to hear that all my cats were quite odd chaps and chapettes.

There was Puzzle, who purred like a buzzsaw, liked to perch on your head, had a definite look of the "fuck off" to her which she liked to direct at all and sundry, and acted as an efficient (if extremely violent) guard cat. 

There was Puss, who had an unfeasibly long "show name", liked to drape himself around your neck like a furry scarf, enjoyed being dressed up in clothing whilst being pushed round by a demonic toddler in a pram (*coughs* clearly, I have no idea where Lid gets that sort of behaviour from), would sleep cuddling you and spent his twilight years stealing meat from various inaccessible places which he carried away clenched between both his teeth.

Then there was Burra, or Bod as she became affectionately known (due to her disproportionately large cranium, which no doubt housed her plans to take over the planet).  She was a tabby, rescued from a pet shop along with her brother and sisters, a pet shop that we went on to get closed down due to the appalling conditions they kept their animals in. 

After Puss I did not want another cat, and these kittens that were residing at my house were only doing so until I could find them homes.  I had no desire to have another, especially one that wouldn't sit near anyone, disliked being cuddled, distrusted humans, and took no nonsense from anyone that came across her path, be that human, canine, or toddler. She was the smallest, the youngest, the weakest and the most temperamental.

It would be ludicrous for me to pretend that it was anything other than love at first sight on my part.

The Furry Boo was a much adored part of my life.  She came with me when I went to University, when I moved out of home, when I changed address.  She wasn't a family cat that I pretended I had ownership of.  She was very much "my" cat (or rather I was very much her human), for whom considerations had to be made before any plan was crystalised.

She was mean. She hated people. She sometimes crept up and slept on my stomach, purring steadily as she did so, and the first day she let me tickle her ears and cuddle her was when she was two years old.

We travelled around the country together, visiting friends, with her carry box accumulating stickers of the places we visited.  When I went home from college, or visited overnight from a different home, she came with me.

She was glorious.  She was bonkers.  She was clearly Aspergers.

When I had The Boy, it was the first time she had been left alone overnight, and she was utterly disgusted with me for leaving her.  As I climbed up the stairs to the flat, she came to the door and her mews chastised me; "and where do you think you've been? I've been up all night worrying you know.  Well, okay, let's have a sit down and a cuddle and you can tell me how wonderful I am."

We walked through to the living room, whilst my mum carried The Boy in his car seat.  I sat on the sofa, Bod jumped on my lap.  I started to tickle her ears as she spotted The Boy.

She swished her tail in my face, jumped up from my lap and went to look at him.  The face she presented me with quite clearly expressed her annoyance, and in the angry meow she yowled in my direction, I could clearly hear her accusation; "What. The fuck. Is that? I said I wanted a dog."

For the next six weeks, whenever The Boy was brought into a room, she left it.  Bod was displeased with this new fur-less thing that made strange noises and took up my attention.  She would look sniffily down on us from on top of the wardrobe every night.  In short, had she been larger, she would have eaten us.

Then, I had a very long day.  New babies can be tiring.  When you are flying solo and literally have no clue what you are doing, when you are operating on sheer terror and caffeine, when no one appears to be offering you kindness, just critical opinion after critical opinion, you are worn down.

The Boy had taken to that wailing, brain melting screech throughout the day.  His biological father was due to visit him that evening, and would either be very late or not turn up at all as was his wont.  I could not foresee a way that I could get through this day, or the days like this that I knew would follow, and I suppose I didn't want to. 

I walked to the bathroom and sat on the toilet and sobbed.  Not just for the lousy living conditions, and the lousy ex partner situation, but also for myself.  I perched out the window, having a fag, trying to calm down.  Bod entered, and fixed me with one of her hard stares.  She glared at me, and walked out again.  In the other room, The Boy had stopped crying.

I remembered hearing stories of cats sitting on babies' faces, and had dismissed it as nonsense.  His silence made me query if I had been correct. I went into the living room, and found The Boy blithely trying to hold on to Bod's tail in that blind, unseeing way of the small baby, whilst she purred and moved around him.  When she saw me, she admonished me with a filthy look of "well, he was crying you know."  Bod elicited his first high pitched squeal of delight, and he afforded her that, as she afforded him a fondness that she bestowed on very few humans, every time he saw her.  Hers was the first name he learnt to say, despite my constant "Where's Mummy? What's Mummy doing?".  She would sit near him at night when he was afraid, we would all sleep in the same bed together (just don't tell the NCT), and she would run to him when he came into a room.

When Bod stopped being there, he refused to go into the house, and cried outside for thirty minutes. He knew she wasn't there anymore, and as a result he told me, quite firmly, that there would not be another cat for us.

Time has passed, and we are moving through a period where The Boy was terrified of animals.  He is open to the idea of a cat, and his sister desperately wants one, possibly so that she can team up with it and create a super breed of furry humans that will do her evil bidding, steal sausages for her, look disdainfully at others etc.

I suspect we shall find one for us, one with a leg missing, or its ear torn, or one with chronic flatulence which would fit smoothly and fluidly into Wiltshire Towers.  Four years on, although she is still missed and remains irreplaceable the rancid, fetid, purring mad wee furry tart, it is time to start feline groovy again.