The Cat Who Came In From The Cold

by Deric Longden

  Although Thermal’s Dayglo days were over his fur still had a pinkish cast about it, and now it stood rigidly to attention, in punkish tufts, to mark where the rasping tongue had been at work.

  Tigger had slotted in and around the kitten’s routine so neatly that it seemed she had always been with us. Thermal’s well-regulated lifestyle had simply rolled along as smoothly as it always had. More so in fact – his back-up team had now increased from two to three.

  Thermal’s love of ritual was getting a bit much. Every time I fed him I had go through a spiel, extolling the virtues of the dish he was about to receive. When I took a tin of beef and kidney from the cupboard I had to show him the label like a wine waiter. Sometimes I draped a tea-towel over my arm, but he hadn’t eaten out all that often and the sarcasm was lost on him. Then I had to launch into my sales pitch.

  ‘This is very highly recommended, Thermal. A recent survey taken amongst doctors at the Royal Free Hospital in London has shown that of all the cats they have treated there for appendicitis the ones to have recovered most quickly from the operation have been those fed on this very same diet of Whiskas beef and kidney. That just shows you.’

  He wasn’t always easy to please.

  ‘Free hospital did you say?’

  ‘It’s just an expression – it’s very well thought of. They swear by it at Great Portland Street as well.’

  ‘Oh – all right then.’

  Eventually I came up with a line that was a winner each and every time.

  ‘At Buckingham Palace the Queen insists that the corgis be served nothing but this particular recipe of liver and chicken.’

  ‘What’s a corgi?’

  ‘It’s a sort of Royal cat. Look – there’s a picture of one on the tin.’

  ‘Go on then – I’ll have it.’

  By the time his dish hit the floor he would be drooling. If I just banged it in front of him without a word he wouldn’t touch it.

  In a round-about way it was Thermal’s obsession with routine that caused the accident, and perhaps the worst moment of all was having to explain to Doctor Helen exactly how it had happened.

  She’s a good friend and she’s very easy to talk to, she makes me feel better the moment I walk in the surgery – but even so …

  ‘Were you doing any heavy lifting work?’

  ‘Not exactly – no.’

  ‘What were you doing?’

  She would have to know – never mind what she thought of me afterwards.

  ‘I was lifting the cat up, so that it could play with the bathroom light switch, when it went.’

  Surely she would understand. She had cats herself, and the last time I saw them they were doing disgusting things to one another – and in the kitchen at that.

  ‘How do you mean – the cat went?’

  ‘No, the cat didn’t go – my elbow went. When I lifted him up to play with the light switch.’

  ‘Tell me exactly what happened.’

  ‘I dropped the cat.’

  ‘Did it hurt?’

  ‘Do you mean me or the cat?’

  Eventually we sorted out exactly what I did mean and she asked me if the pain persisted or whether it ebbed and flowed.

  ‘The pain disappeared after a few minutes, but then it came back the next day.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When I lifted the cat up to play with the light switch again.’

  She considered the matter for a few moments.

  ‘Is it a particularly heavy cat?’

  ‘No – I’ve got him in the car if you would like to have a look at him.’

  She decided against it and gave me a prescription.

  ‘And I suggest you don’t lift the cat up to play with the light switch for a few days.’

  That was easier said than done. Thermal and I have established another ritual at bedtime. Aileen and I work until the early hours, anywhere between half past one and four o’clock. The phone doesn’t ring and the television doesn’t tempt – it’s perfect, but Thermal is much younger than we are and he needs his sleep.

  So at midnight he tucks into a plate of something tasty and then goes and stands behind the kitchen door. I push a feather through the crack and wiggle it up and down and he chews it and bites it and thumps it with his paws until it’s dead.

  Then we go and bank up the fire and he goes through his coke-sniffing routine until he feels I can manage on my own – and then he goes and sits in the bath.

  I chuck the rest of the coke on the fire and go and join him. Not in the bath – I sit at the side and turn the taps on. He has a good drink and when he’s had his fill he goes and sits under the light switch. It’s a long cord that dangles halfway down the wall and I lift him up so that he has both front paws free and he knocks the living daylights out of it for about five minutes.

  It takes it out of him – burns up his surplus energy, which is what it’s all about – and then he lies back on my shoulder and we have a bit of a cuddle. Not too much, you understand – after all, we are both blokes.

  Then I put him down and he walks over to his rug by the radiator. The fur igloo has long since been relegated to the cellar – it’s now a sort of guest bedroom if you like, for when he or Tigger have any of their mates round to stay the night.

  He curls up tight and I tell him a bedtime story – nothing too complicated, we don’t want his brain racing at this time of night – and then he settles down and I tell him what a good boy he’s been.

  You know – more or less what everyone does with their cat at night.

  So you can imagine what a shock it was to his system when my elbow went and I dropped him. He lay where he landed and looked up at me.

  ‘No – you’ve got it all wrong. That’s not supposed to happen.’

  It seemed to throw him completely, and he nipped back into the kitchen and hid behind the door.

  ‘No – we’ve had that.’

  So he went back and sat in the bath and it was ages before I got him to sleep. In the morning he’d taken it out on the toilet roll again – it was all over the place. I was a bit annoyed about that because I didn’t sleep much either, but I didn’t take it out on the toilet roll.

  *

  I took it out on Thermal instead. I ignored him completely and he doesn’t like that. It seemed to work because he immediately moved into his ‘cute kitten mode’, which involves lying on his back a lot looking up adoringly, and a certain amount of ankle butting.

  He made a good job of it and it wasn’t too long before I melted, and then he was able to move on to stage two, which basically boils down to the fine art of walking away just as your owner bends down to stroke you.

  Timing is everything here, and if a kitten gets it spot on, then the owner should be left with his knees bent, his arm outstretched and his fingers brushing thin air as a disdainful tail, just out of reach, runs up the flagpole and semaphores ‘up yours’ to the world in general.

  Thermal got it spot on, but I didn’t rise to the bait. It was a time to make allowances, a time to be kind and understanding – because I knew that I was taking him to see the vet later that morning and he didn’t.

  It was that time in a kitten’s life when we humans decide that it would be better in the long run. My mother once put it beautifully. Her cat Whisky sat on the hearth rug looking as though life were just not worth the living any more.

  ‘What’s the matter with him?’

  ‘He’s been to the vet.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I’ve had him orchestrated.’

  So Thermal was to be orchestrated, and I felt lousy about it. He was so excited when I opened the car door. He jumped in and started off by savaging the AA sticker, a job he hadn’t been able to finish on his first trip. But then he soon settled down and sat between the two front seats, studiously watching my feet on the pedals and making mental notes for when he started his driving lessons.

  I had a cardboard box ready on the back seat. It had ‘Fruit Salad ×
12’ written on the lid, but that was only to lull him into a false sense of security. There was a fluffy towel secreted in the bottom and the box was actually a cat transporter in disguise.

  But that was for later and in the meantime he could play at Nigel Mansells while I popped in to see Doctor Helen.

  When I came out he was fast asleep in the box. Why do they do this to us? If I’d had to catch him, wrestle with him and then force him into the box I could have justified my actions.

  ‘Don’t be so stupid – it’s for your own good.’

  But this way he was making me feel as though I was about to shoot a prisoner who had come from out of the bushes with his arms above his head and given himself up. I pushed down the four flaps and tried to live with it.

  At the vet’s I sat between a woman nursing a stuck-up Siamese in a custom-built cat basket and a man with a tortoise in a British Home Stores carrier bag. The cat was extremely well bred and about as interesting as the tortoise.

  Across by the fish tank a young man sat with a very small box on his knee. On the side of the box was written, ‘6 chocolate éclairs’.

  What had he got in it? Stick insects? A miniature gerbil? I was fascinated and couldn’t help myself.

  ‘Excuse me. I couldn’t help wondering – what have you got in your box?’

  He looked across at me and then he looked down at his box.

  ‘Half a dozen chocolate éclairs.’

  ‘Right – thank you.’

  Why do I make such a fool of myself? Why do I never learn? But at least I could re-deem myself.

  ‘Brought them in for their injections have you?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘It was just a joke.’

  ‘Oh – I see.’

  I was saved by a lady in a white coat leading a rather tense little terrier out from the back. It shared an owner with the chocolate éclairs.

  ‘We’d like to see Harold again in a week’s time, Mr Wolfenden, just to make sure.’

  Harold – what a stupid name for a dog. I wondered what he called the éclairs?

  The lady in the white coat released an index card from her clipboard.

  ‘Thermal Longden?’

  ‘That’s me – or rather, it’s him.’

  ‘This way please.’

  It was the first time I had admitted to Thermal in public, and as I paraded my cardboard box through the crowded waiting-room I rather wished I’d called him Harold instead.

  The vet peeled back the cardboard flaps and revealed his potential victim having a great big stretch and a yawn.

  He stood him on a table and the kitten looked much smaller than I remembered.

  ‘You’re a fine little fellow, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Has somebody been painting him?’

  ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘It was damson wine – he got in the way. It’s nearly faded now.’

  ‘He must have looked quite spectacular.’

  ‘He’s a nice man, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes he did.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to introduce us?’

  I felt wretched as I drove away. My trouble is – I take things too much to heart. I know it doesn’t make sense. In a couple of days he would be as right as rain and have forgotten all about it and it was certainly for the best.

  Even so. He was such a trusting little devil. He had made an instant friend of the man who was about to cut off his bits and pieces, and as I crept out of the surgery his purr was rattling the instruments on the trolley.

  I felt as though I had just introduced the Marathon Man to Laurence Olivier.

  When I picked him up that evening he was still out like a light. The vet assured me that all was well.

  ‘He’ll be back to his old self in a day or so.’

  It was about midnight before he came round. I sat on the arm of the easy chair and stroked his head.

  ‘It’s all right – you’re home now.’

  His eyes were rolling as he tried to focus on my face and I rubbed the back of my hand against his ear. Aileen was kneeling down on the hearth rug in front of him and Tigger was sitting anxiously on the other arm. He needed his friends around him at a time like this.

  He ignored the other two and turned the dizzy eyes on me. I suppose it was only natural – we had a special bond between us. After all, I was the one who had rescued him – the one who had brought him in from the cold.

  He was too weak to purr but the eyes steadied themselves and held me in their gaze. There was such a warmth in those eyes and such a depth of feeling.

  ‘You bastard,’ they said, ‘you bastard.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  He was back on his feet in no time, but it was a little longer before the news of my reprieve came through.

  Then a couple of days later, sitting in my office, I heard the sound that brings a knowing smile to the face of any cat owner – the unmistakable click of a table-tennis ball as it rattles against a skirting-board.

  It wasn’t Tigger. She was here with me, riding on top of the photocopier as I printed out my manuscript. And yet every time I went off to investigate, Thermal would be lying on his blanket by the fire, reliving the hell that I had put him through – the rolling eyes thick with delirium, the low moan escaping from between parched lips.

  ‘No, not the knife – anything but that.’

  Eventually I caught him out. He was trying to bend a free-kick round the leg of the sideboard. He’d seen Paul Gascoigne do it on Match of the Day and he wasn’t going to let a Geordie get the better of him.

  He took it quickly and left the three-pin plug completely wrong-footed as the ball took a slight deflection off the base of the standard lamp.

  He had already set off on his lap of honour when he heard my roar of approval from the doorway. To his credit he didn’t even look up – he just collapsed in a heap by the coffee table, clutching his paw to his side.

  ‘Aaaghh.’

  One has to be fair, and I would wait to see the televised replay before making a final decision. All the same, I reckoned I could force a draw out of this one.

  It was Tigger who brought the sweetness and light back into the house. She was on her morning rounds and she couldn’t understand how she’d missed it before, it must have been there for ages.

  I was flushing the toilet for Thermal when she came in. We had done a lot of toilet flushing in the good old days before light switch bashing had taken over. Now light switch bashing had been relegated to the bloodsports section and toilets were back in vogue again.

  Thermal had taken to it like a duck to water, right from the beginning, and although he still wore his disdain like a suit of armour, he couldn’t hide the knot of anticipation that began to unwind in his stomach as his front paws hooked over the pan and I took a grip on the handle.

  I thought he would have been put off for life a long time ago when the toilet seat fell on the back of his neck – but no. He seemed to accept that this was one of the risks you had to take if you were going to be a dedicated flushing fanatic.

  As I pressed the handle down, he tensed with excitement – he loves the split second of silence when nothing happens – and then he shifted position slightly as the water roared and swirled. He waited with breath bated and paws trembling as first the water disappeared and then, with mounting excitement, he leapt on the seat and stuck his head inside to watch as the pan filled up again.

  The calm that followed brought exasperation with it.

  ‘Pull it again, kid.’

  He knew very well that you can’t do that – not straightaway, but the lull in the proceedings reminded him that he wasn’t supposed to be friends with me any more, and he jumped down in disgust.

  He almost landed on Tigger, who had discovered an intruder lurking between the Harpic and the lavatory brush.

  ‘What have you found?’

  Tigger ignored him. It wasn’t moving and it could be dead, but she wasn’t taking a
ny chances. She could have a battle on her hands here.

  ‘What is it?’

  Tigger brought her head round and gave him one of her looks – one of those she keeps in the freezer.

  ‘Sorry – I’ll keep quiet, shall I?’

  She set herself. Weight perfectly distributed, head still, rear-end swaying, slowly, at first and then winding itself up as the moment of truth came closer.

  ‘I won’t say another word.’

  She sat down again and closed her eyes in exasperation.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What is it, Tigger?’

  Thermal gave me one of his looks – one of those he keeps especially for me.

  ‘Shush – be quiet.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  He slipped in behind Tigger – just to let her know that he was there if she needed him. Then he looked back over his shoulder at me.

  ‘Amateurs.’

  She went for it when we least expected it – least of all the sultana.

  The Harpic went flying, the lavatory brush did a somersault and the sultana came out between her back legs like a rocket. It hit Thermal in the chest and he was up on the toilet seat before he could say …

  ‘Ralph!’

  He couldn’t believe it. Tigger turned the sultana over on to its back with her paw and gave a sigh of disappointment. Still, you had to take these things seriously. You never knew whether these little devils were going to be armed or not – better to be safe than sorry.

  ‘It’s Ralph.’

  Thermal leapt down and crouched beside the sultana. There was love in his eyes and adoration in his paws as he gently pushed it this way and that.

  Tigger didn’t know what to make of it and I was going to find it hard to explain the situation to her. We had combed Mrs Crampton’s hoover fluff until our lungs were full of the stuff and all the time the sultana had been trapped behind the lavatory.

  Thermal banged his head against Tigger’s thigh and then came over and gave my ankle a polish.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It was nothing – really.’

  ‘I was talking to Tigger.’

  He went back to the sultana and lay down beside it.

  ‘Now – if you don’t mind – we would like to be alone for a few moments.’