by Chris Pascoe
It’s more of an ex-tree really – a long, thin trunk, rising straight up to ten feet in height with no branches whatsoever. The squirrel climbed to the top, but now he was totally trapped. His tree trunk was well out of jump-range to any nearby bushes or proper trees, and all that surrounded him was open lawn and two stalking cats. Or rather, one stalking cat and one who probably had no idea what he was doing there.
The cats sat and watched in that intimidating way of theirs, that mock uninterested coolness (in Brum’s case – genuine blankness). The squirrel weighed up his options. All looked hopeless. But then he did an unexpectedly clever thing. He began climbing down the trunk, straight towards his tormentors.
Both cats, even Brum, closed in on him. As he got lower, they got closer, moving in for the kill. As he descended to just four feet, the cats reached the trunk. At this point he leapt clean over their heads and scampered into the clump of trees. Brilliant! He’d lured them in, pulled them together, got them close enough to jump over, and leapfrogged them.
Dave was so impressed he cheered. Sammy looked livid and Brum looked at Sammy. A livid Sammy isn’t nice. The last Dave saw of them was the rear end of Brum being hotly pursued by Sammy, who no doubt felt he’d be easier quarry than any squirrel.
Had he seen anything else? I pressed him. He seemed perplexed now. His next-door neighbour wanted to talk about cats all day. He was even more perplexed when I whipped out a notebook. Trying to ignore my mad-eyed eagerness, he bravely pressed on.
‘W-w-well,’ he stammered, ‘there’s been quite a few little things really. You don’t want to hear about any more of them . . . do you?’
I almost bit him, but instead nodded violently.
‘Er, OK, OK,’ he said, backing away slightly. ‘Let’s see . . . I know. This is brilliant actually. It was one of those red kites from over the fields.’
‘RED KITES, RED KITES! BRILLIANT, YES!’
He started chortling as he recalled the memory: ‘It was circling over the houses. It must have seen something on the ground, prey or something, because it got lower and lower and ended up circling my garden. I was watching it, as you do, and then I noticed Brum on the top lawn [Dave has two lawn layers, separated by a wall that finishes flush with the top lawn, just like ours]. Brum was staring up at it. He seemed totally fascinated, really concentrating on what it was doing.
‘Then he started mimicking its flight pattern, walking round and round the lawn in great big circles. The kite started climbing back higher, but still circling, and the circles got bigger and bigger. Brum’s circles got bigger too. He looked totally ridiculous, his head was pointing straight up in the air and he kept walking round and round the garden, his circles getting bigger all the time. If you hadn’t seen the kite, you’d have thought he’d gone crazy. The kite kept circling, Brum kept circling, the kite’s circles got bigger still, Brum’s circles got bigger still. I could see it coming. He wasn’t looking where he was going at all, what with staring straight up in the sky. His last circuit was far too big. He just walked clean off the wall. Clean off it. Just waltzed straight over the edge.
He looked completely stunned. He dropped seven feet, legs still trying to walk, hit the ground and went into a defensive crouch – it was like ‘Where am I? How did I get here?’ I was creased up. And then, all sort of befuddled, he tried to jump back on the wall, but he was way off target – he went straight up like a rocket, his head cracked the wall overhang and his whole body scrunched up and flipped over, so his backside shot higher than his head and he collapsed back to the ground in a heap . . . I don’t know where the kite had gone . . . I’ve got to go now . . . OK?’
I let him go. He’d had enough.
A couple of weeks later I asked the milkman why he hated my cat. He looked a little taken aback. It’s not the sort of question you expect someone to ask you. I explained I was writing a book, and he relaxed slightly – but only slightly, because I think something in the mention of Brum annoyed him.
Silently, he rolled up his standard-issue Express Dairies trouser leg. He did it in a way that reminded me of a man pulling up his sleeves for a fight. For a moment I thought he was about to start kicking me. But then he pointed to some seriously nasty scarring around his knee. I stared, aghast. What was he showing me here? Had Brum savaged this man?
He rolled his trouser leg back down and started back towards his float.
‘Did my cat do that?’ I called out, aghast.
He stopped dead.
Turning around, he regarded me, a little reproachfully, and walked back over.
‘No, of course not. He’s only a cat, not a ruddy tiger!’ he said, and then started laughing aloud. We both laughed together, me with a frown of confusion. Suddenly he stopped laughing and added, ‘No, he didn’t do it. It was his bloody fault, though. Little pest runs at me every day, comes bounding down them steps like a ruddy torpedo. Hits my legs hard, he does. Heavy little sod too.’
Why? I asked myself, not wanting to interrupt. He doesn’t bowl himself at other visitors’ legs.
As if answering my silent question, the milkman continued:
‘I reckon it’s the milk that excites him. Anyway, back in the winter he came at me one morning and your steps were icy; he lost his footing, hit me sideways, I slipped, dropped two pints of milk and fell on ’em. I lay there with blood gushing down my legs while that flaming cat purred like a train and lapped up the milk.’
The poor bloke! All this and he never thought to mention it, not even in a solicitor’s letter. What is it with these people? If my cat puts someone in hospital, then I want to know about it.
‘Look, I’m really sorry . . .’ I started to say, but the milkman stopped me with a wave of an arm and a shrug.
He walked back to his float, before turning and adding, ‘I saw your missus in town the other day. You sorted that gazebo out yet?’
With that final shot to my heart, he sped off down the road at 5 mph.
More Cats Like Birmingham
‘Hordes of them; thousands. An army of incompetent fools.’
Captain Tiberius Quelch
T he release of my first book, A Cat Called Birmingham, brought forth a deluge of fan mail. Well . . . not a deluge exactly. I got a few letters. And not all exactly ‘fan’ letters – a letter from Slough opened with the line YOU TOSSER. The same letter went on to say, ‘There’s absolutely nothing wrong with Slough. It’s the people who live here. THEY’RE ALL TOSSERS LIKE YOU.’ By the end of the letter I became confused as to who exactly the sender was annoyed with. The last line was even more confusing: ‘More of the same please!’ More of the same? My first effort was enough to infuriate and induce impassioned hated, and yet she wanted more. If nothing else, the letter made me realise I have more in common with the people of Slough than I’d previously thought – and not because we’re all tossers, more because the Slough sender was a complete lunatic. I couldn’t help but like her.
Quite a few of the letters, however, were very interesting and very funny. Lots of people told me all about their own cats, likening them to Brum. Receiving these was therapeutically rewarding – words of comfort from fellow sufferers.
And most comforting of all was Lisa from Essex. Lisa has three cats, and two of them are normal. Then there’s Alfred, who is mad. Not in the conventional ‘cat’ way either. No, Alfred thinks he’s Napoleon Bonaparte. This cat’s conviction that he’s the former Emperor of France isn’t so much a problem as an oddity. In fact Alfred has become something of a celebrity, even appearing in his local newspaper. For hours a day, he will sit atop his front gatepost, his body raised like that of a gopher so that only his rear end is seated. One front paw hangs limply by his side, while the other rests imperiously across his chest. Lisa sent me a photo of his peculiar posturing, and he really does look remarkably like Napoleon. As Alfred grandly surveys all from his gatepost throne, crowds of children gather in the street to stare back, enthralled. Passing motorists often swerve dangerously upon sighting
this odd feline apparition. One day, for fun, Lisa placed a homemade tricorn hat upon Alfred’s head. He seemed to like it, and it was this picture which made the papers, with the reporter cleverly noting that when Alfred adopts his peculiar stance, he stares longingly towards the nearby sea . . . and in the general direction of France. No doubt in my mind – he’s Napoleon alright.
Debbie from Birmingham wrote to correct me on a particular issue. It would appear that Brum isn’t the only cat capable of being knocked senseless. Her cat Trigger achieved that very feat, and in much the same way a boxer would. Debbie has two young daughters, aged three and five. The pair are a formidable combination. The three-year-old goads, annoys and ultimately starts fights, the five-year-old finishes them.
Poor old Trigger finally snapped one day and, fed up with being poked, prodded and pinched by his three-year-old friend, launched himself full length at her, flying in for the kill. But little Miss Five-year-old Bruiser was too quick for him, protecting her sister with a full-blown left-hook haymaker that caught Trigger mid-flight and sent him crashing to the canvas. One – two – three – OUT! Trigger lay twitching on the ground in cloud-cuckoo-land. Knocked out by a toddler’s blow to the jaw! He came round and was soon as right as rain, but wow, that poor cat. Now while I’d like to make it clear that I disagree in principle with punching your cat, I do think it’s sometimes fun. No, hang on, not fun . . . necessary – I meant to say necessary (in Brum’s case, very much so). The consequences of Trigger’s claws connecting with little Miss Irritating’s face could have been nasty in the extreme, so best to knock Trigger for six before he got there. I doubt Trigger would agree.
If the madness of emperor-cat Alfred is comforting to me, then Trigger’s misfortune must be doubly reassuring for Brum. Not only has Brum never been downed with a punch, but it would appear he’s got it relatively easy with Maya. But then she’s not five yet, is she?
Mark from Birmingham read one particular story from my first book with a deepening frown. It was too close to an experience of his own. The original story concerned a cat who switched off a modem and shut down a hundred courier companies. Mark’s cat Spock (named for his black shiny fur and pointed ears!) didn’t do anything quite so elaborate, but on a personal level it was every bit as terrible.
Mark had been on the end of a serious telephone rollicking from his boss. After much subsequent deliberation he decided that he couldn’t stomach the complaints thrown at him and needed to tell the lady concerned exactly what he thought of her. It was a major, life-changing decision. His job was a well-paid one that he had been very happy in. But his need to retaliate outweighed rational common sense, and he felt he couldn’t carry on in his role in the light of what had been said. With a heavy heart he switched on his computer and wrote an emotive e-mail resignation. Not a pleasant ‘After many happy years it is with great regret’-type resignation, you understand. More an ‘I’ve always hated you, you ****ing vindictive bitch’ affair. When the e-mail was complete he read and re-read it, adding the odd four-letter pleasantry here and there but never changing its tone. Halfway through his fourth reading, the phone rang. He left the room to answer the call, which turned out to be from his boss. She’d been thinking about their conversation too, and felt she’d been rather unfair on Mark and so had called to offer her sincerest apologies. Mark accepted and the pair talked optimistically about a long and happy future together.
Mark punched the air in delight upon replacing the receiver and strode back to his computer to delete his offensive e-mail. What if that phone had rung five minutes later, he thought, what if I’d sent that awful, vile, insulting piece of trash before my boss had called to apologise? Phew, that was a close one. He walked back into his study . . .
Spock had sent the e-mail.
The cat who’d just cost Mark his lucrative job lay sprawled across his desk, purring contentedly, his chin resting on the keyboard. Emblazoned across the glowing screen were the horrific, jaw-dropping words ‘YOUR E-MAIL HAS BEEN SENT’.
Apparently, they were round to collect his company car and mobile phone within the hour. To add insult to injury, Spock brushed happily around the two burly company security men’s legs with loving affection. I wonder whether Spock can ever have needed beaming up more than he did that day.
Very interestingly, a lady from South Africa wrote to say she’d once been in possession of a ‘Feline Evolution Toilet Seat’ (the American-manufactured ‘attach to your WC seat’ for cats). Alas, she never used it . . . well, she wouldn’t use it, of course . . . the cat would normally use it. She left it on a train on her way home from the shops. The funniest thing was her attempt to explain to the lost property department exactly what it was she’d lost:
‘A toilet seat, madam?’
‘Yes. A cat’s toilet seat.’
‘Cats have toilets?’
‘No. Just toilet seats.’
‘But not toilets?’
‘No.’
‘What exactly do they do with these seats, then, madam?’
The seat was never recovered. Some cat, somewhere, would have been sitting smugly on the loo, reading Cat World and whistling happily, while another poor cat (the ‘almost owner’ of an expensive Feline Evolution Toilet Seat) still had to scramble around in urine-soaked clay trying to bury its own faeces. A cat’s life can be very unfair.
On a toilet-related theme, Laura from Dorset wrote to tell me about curiously unfeline goings-on in her native seaside town. As the town is a fishing port, the harbour front tends to attract a large number of cats. Every morning the furry entourage congregates around the incoming boats and feasts on fresh off-cuts and scraps. On the harbourside is a public convenience. During the course of the morning, possibly as a direct result of the subliminal effects of being so close to so much swirling water and breaking waves, one or two cats will be caught short. When they need to go, unbelievably they use the public lavatories. One by one, a tabby or a marmalade, a tortoiseshell or a Siamese, will trudge off to the Gents, relieve themselves at the urinals and head back to resume their quayside vigil!
WHAT! Cats using a public toilet? Nonsense, surely. Cats would never, ever adhere to such institutionalised behaviour. Would they? Laura maintains they do.
Her theory is that the urinals have become contested territory, and the cats are scenting the area. She has video footage of it happening! What a peculiar sight. Imagine standing at a urinal (sorry if you’re not a bloke and quite rightly don’t want to imagine that), when suddenly a couple of cats troop in, stand either side of you, take a leak, sigh, shake their tails and slink back out again.
I think you’d seriously consider the possibility that something in the urinal’s cleaning chemicals had caused a temporary imbalance in your mind!
It’s funny I should have received letters of this nature. Public toilets have become quite a feature of my own life nowadays. That’s quite a disturbing admission, isn’t it? But it’s true. It has a lot to do with Maya. You see, accompanying Maya into a public lavatory can be a bit of a trial. We tend to congratulate her for her ablutions at home – encouragement for using the potty or toilet and not her pants. She now knows the system and feels that it’s a thing worth celebrating. And so, after I’d plonked her on the toilet in a supermarket Gents and applauded her accordingly, she felt the need to return the compliment come my turn.
Consequently, as I stood there in the cubicle, a toddler suddenly danced a jig of undiluted joy behind me, and began screaming at the top of her voice, ‘YOU’RE WEEING, DADDY, YOU’RE WEEING, WELL DONE, WELL DONE, YOU’RE WEEING IN THE TOILET NOW, YOU CLEVER BOY!’
As I washed my hands, two old chaps alongside me looked ready to laugh aloud. I smiled resignedly. As they left the room one of them glanced back at me, nodded sincerely and said, ‘Well done, lad . . . well done.’
All of which, however, is far, far better than not making it to the toilet at all. A friend of mine will attest to that. When he was browsing in the outdoor gardening section
of a local DIY store, his two-year-old son suddenly attacked him with the panic-inducing words, ‘Daddy! Toilet! Now! I doing it now!’
Knowing there to be no in-store public toilets, he went into silly mode. His son was about to wet his pants and so, as a responsible parent, he decided he had the right to take whatever action necessary – however stupid.
He glanced around the deserted arena of bedding plants and patio ornaments, satisfied himself that nobody was near by, grabbed a terracotta plant pot, whipped his boy’s trousers down and plonked him on it.
‘In the pot, Daddy?’
‘In the pot, son.’
A quick wee in a pot, he thought. Nobody would moan about that, surely. Then a horrible, horrible thought struck him.
‘This is a wee you’re doing . . . is it?’
‘Poo, Daddy.’
So . . . there he was, standing in a shop, with his son excreting in a plant pot. He had to do something quick, so he performed a little-known Native American dance that involved hopping from foot to foot, chanting, ‘Ooo, no, ooo, no,’ and circling a toddler on a terracotta planter.
No sooner had his lad happily announced that he was done than he was airborne, being wrenched from his makeshift potty and retrousered in a split second. My friend stared at the pot in dismay. How could a tiny toddler have done a thing like that? It was huge – a gigantic steaming turd, something you’d have expected more from a lumberjack than a two-year-old boy.
No choice but to go and fetch the manager . . . he thought as he grabbed his son and legged it out of the shop without a word. Nightmare flashes of an unsuspecting customer grabbing the pot and checking its price with a quick and terrible flip long assailed his troubled mind.