You Can Take the Cat Out of Slough

by Chris Pascoe

  And these were only incidents relating to his trousers. His shirts fared no better. At breakfast I shook a bottle of tomato ketchup without realising the lid was loose, splattering his shirt so suddenly and so thoroughly that Lorraine thought he’d been shot.

  And if he thought things could get no worse, it was all as nothing compared to his last evening with us. He’d packed his holdall and left it in the spare bedroom, and settled down with Lorraine to watch TV. Maya was in bed and I thought I’d catch up with things in the office. Office is a bit grand, because the office is just a desk and computer in the spare bedroom – Gandalf’s bedroom.

  As is his habit, Brum jumped on to the desk and settled down beside my arm. We’d been there no more than a minute when Brum suddenly gave a huge groaning belch and vomited over the side of the desk. With Sod’s law in full operation, the whole lot splurged down into Gandalf’s open holdall like a great lumpy waterfall.

  I stared in disbelief for a second. I thought about zipping up the holdall and saying nothing – just letting Gandalf find the stinking mess when he got home. How could I tell him that, after a week of regularly soaking and staining his clothes, we’d now gone the whole hog and soiled the whole ruddy lot at once?

  I couldn’t. I called Lorraine into the room and silently pointed at Gandalf’s holdall. She stared for some time, as if trying to take in exactly what it was she was looking at. Eventually, Lorraine strode off back to the lounge and I heard the words ‘Got some bad news, I’m afraid’, as Brum and I quietly slipped out the back door.

  When he got back to the safety and comfort of his own home, he must finally have achieved the sense of ‘getting away from it all’ that we’d promised all along. I think that, all in all, had he actually been shot, he’d have had a much better week.

  The Most Peculiar Case of the Seaside Village and Its Missing Cats

  ‘Strange to you,

  Stranger to me,

  Those barbaric folk who

  Live by the sea’

  Stuart Graham

  There comes a time in every stay-at-home man’s life, or summer, when he must get away from his cat.

  That time had come. It was time to go on holiday. We set off for Wells-next-the-Sea in Norfolk, not only hoping that the resort would be significantly better than its daft name, but also that Dave next door would be able to handle Brum. It was his brief, for one week only, to feed and ‘keep an eye on’ our one and a half cats. Dave is a brave man.

  There was no way Brum was coming with us. Wells-next-the-Sea is only next-the-sea for part of each day. At high tide it’s a pretty seaside village, at low tide it’s a pretty village next to a salt marsh. Wells actually looks great whether the view is marshland or sea, but the fact that marsh becomes sea so bloody rapidly means that, had we brought him, one minute Brum could have been happily skipping on sand dunes and hiding from seagulls (Brum-next-the sea), the next desperately paddling for Holland (Brum-in-the-sea).

  As we approached Wells after a ‘lovely’ five-hour journey, a roadside sign convinced us beyond doubt that we’d made the right decision in leaving the cats at home:

  CATS’ EYES REMOVED

  read the shocking inscription. What?! What sort of company offers a service like that?! While totally appreciating that the people of Norfolk may well find it necessary to remove their cats’ eyes now and then, you’d hardly expect somebody to make an industry of the barbaric practice. I could see we were going to have trouble in Wells-next-the-Sea.

  But the week passed pleasantly enough. There were no desperate text messages from Dave, nothing about him on the news and no reports of any huge explosions in the Wycombe area. He was evidently coping.

  Neither was there any local evidence of a cat mutilation culture. Indeed, we were awoken by the terrible screeching miaows of a cat having its eyes removed not once. After five days we realised why. It was Maya who first noticed. ‘Where’s Brum?’ she asked over breakfast.

  ‘At home,’ Lorraine told her. ‘With Sammy.’

  ‘Why there no other Brums?’

  I flinched involuntarily. Other Brums. What a horrible thought. Then it hit me. I hadn’t seen another Brum in five days. In fact, I hadn’t seen any cats at all. During almost a week in Wells, I hadn’t seen one single cat, not even in the quayside toilets when the fishing boats were in.

  No cats? Was the cats’-eyes sign for real? Where were they all? A village without cats? A fishing village without cats? Impossible.

  During the next two days I made it my business to find one. I looked down every garden path, glanced at every window, gazed up at every rooftop. Nothing. Not a single feline face stared back at me. Just a few disturbed locals.

  On our last day in Wells I asked a café owner about the lack of local cat life. She seemed not to understand.

  ‘Are there no cats in Wells?’

  ‘Sorry, love. How do you mean?’

  ‘Cats? I’ve seen no cats here.’

  ‘I haven’t got a cat, love.’

  ‘Has anyone in Wells got a cat? I haven’t seen a cat in a week.’

  She seemed perplexed that I’d want to.

  ‘Oh . . . well, never mind,’ she said. ‘Are you off home today?’

  What was this? Why hadn’t she answered my question? What sinister thing was afoot?

  I tried again.

  ‘Are there any cats in Wells? Any at all?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, her face setting into something between a scowl and a grimace, ‘they’re here alright.’

  And that was it. She went off to serve another customer, leaving me absolutely certain she wasn’t a cat lover, but otherwise totally bewildered.

  I’d given up on seeing a Wells cat or discovering the truth about their absence as we pulled down the drive of our rented cottage and headed for home. Then I saw something unexpected. The man in the cottage next door was emptying a cat-litter tray into his dustbin. I screeched to a halt and wound down my window.

  ‘HAVE YOU GOT A CAT?’ I called.

  The man looked at me, looked pointedly at the litter tray in his hand, smirked and nodded. Duh . . . yeah . . . that’s why I’m holding a litter tray, you idiot, was the unspoken inference. I couldn’t think what to say next.

  The man retreated through his door, probably realising for the first time the calibre of the people who’d been living at number two for a week. I stared fixedly at my steering wheel, red in the cheeks and trying to ignore Lorraine, who was shaking her head beside me. Worse still was the realisation that I’d spent an entire week looking for signs of cat life while living next door to a cat.

  As I pulled away I glanced over my shoulder. The cat in question stared back at me from the man’s window. And it stared at me with two big, shiny green eyes.

  Skater Frog

  ‘Nobly wild, not mad.’

  Robert Herrick

  Ithink I’ve discovered Brum’s intellectual double.

  A frog hopped into the garden the other day, just as Brum emerged from under a bush. The frog stopped dead and stared at Brum. Brum stopped in mid-stride and stared at the frog. Neither moved for at least a minute. A profound psychological battle was under way.

  Suddenly, the frog hopped a foot in the air, landing exactly where he’d taken off. Brum’s hackles rose, his back arched. And then he too jumped a foot in the air, all four legs leaving the ground at once, and landed back on the same spot.

  An edgy frog regarded a scruffy tabby. The frog jumped a foot in the air. The moment he landed, Brum shot into the air. Brum landed, the frog jumped. The frog landed, Brum jumped. The frog jumped again, Brum jumped again. It was if the pair were on an invisible seesaw. It was one of the most ridiculous sights I’ve ever seen, and thanks to Brum I’ve seen a few.

  If mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery, then Brum was in awe of his amphibian foe. The encounter ended when a bored frog hopped away and left a shaken Brum standing alone on the lawn. I was left crying with laughter, as I so often am in Brum’s company.<
br />
  Something about that ‘jump-off’ reminded me of two lads I’d once seen, doing more or less the same thing on skateboards. From a standing position, first one would launch into the air on his board, then the other. Each would land on the board, teeter for a moment and then wait his turn to jump again. This procedure continued until one of them broke his ankle.

  The comparison is no surprise. Brum loves skateboarding. Brum skateboards with craft and elegance, and differs from other skateboarders in only one respect. He doesn’t use a board.

  Brum is extremely inventive when it comes to his ‘boarding’. He will use any highly polished or wet surface he can find, and then hurtle across it on all fours until he comes to a natural stop. Like a wall.

  Not surprisingly, his skateboarding career has provided us with one of his silliest accidents. He jumped from the floor one day, hitting a kitchen worktop absolutely covered in surface water and so very, very slippery.

  Assuming classic skateboarder’s pose, he skidded straight along the worktop like a saloon-bar delivery, never even looking like stopping as he plunged backside first into a sink full of steaming-hot water and crockery. His mouth opened wide in sheer heat shock as he thrashed his way out, all the time miaowing and shrieking like a banshee.

  The carnage was admirable. He broke three out of six dinner plates, drenched the kitchen floor and broke a glass. He then ran full pelt, head down into the living room, spinning the advancing Maya off her feet and putting her flat on her back. Maya howled with delight and, finding her feet, chased Brum three times round the living room before the pair of them decided there were probably enough Fairy Liquid bubbles in the air.

  And his skater-dude, couldn’t-care-less attitude to life and worktops doesn’t stop there. Absolutely not. Barely a month into my self-imposed summer of strife, Brum demonstrated this fact perfectly by attempting to nonchalantly commit hara-kiri on those very surfaces.

  It may simply have been because I’d been home all summer that he felt the sudden urge to carry out a ‘most honourable suicide’. It may even have been in reaction to growing gazebo tension. But I doubt it. In fact, I think it was me he originally intended to sort out. At least he gave that impression when, for some reason, he decided to stalk me.

  I was at one end of the worktop, he at the other. I caught his aggressive stance from the corner of my eye. Head down, eyes wide, ears back, tail wagging, back low to the worktop. He edged towards me, slowly, steadily, menacingly.

  If it were possible to advertise a stalked approach more thoroughly, I really don’t know how.

  Within two stealthy steps, he flipped a plate by treading heavily on its raised edge, instantly covering himself in gravy and triggering a series of loud clatters and clunks. By this time, you’d think he’d have had an inkling that I was aware of his advance. But no. He kept coming, gravy dripping off his nose, still stalking, still seeming to believe I had no idea he was poised to strike. A spoon fell to the floor, followed by a knife. The kitchen-roll holder fell sideways against the window. Another plate was skilfully non-avoided, only this one had a sharp kitchen knife hanging over its edge. Brum trod on the very tip of the knife’s handle, upending it through 180 degrees and causing the blade to point briefly upwards . . . just long enough for Brum to take one last lethal step forward and pin it in place with his throat.

  At this point he stopped dead.

  He stood there, absolutely still, his head tilting up and backwards in horror, eyes moving slowly down to the sharp point pressed under his chin. I tried to move slowly, tried to edge forward without startling him, in order to remove this extremely dangerous item before he impaled himself on it. He, of course, thought I’d turned the tables and was now stalking him.

  As I carefully grasped the knife’s handle, he took an angry swipe at me. I instinctively jerked my hand, narrowly missing Brum’s face with a swift blade-slash. Brum swiped at me again. The whole thing suddenly took on the appearance of a knife fight. I flipped the knife from one hand to the other, very much in the tradition of West Side Story. Brum edged warily sideways, ready to spring forward. I could almost hear the music and feel the tension.

  At this point I realised we had an audience. It was Maria . . . no, Maya – sorry. I carefully pointed the knife away from Brum. Maya looked at me quizzically. I smiled at her.

  ‘Why are you hitting Brummy with a knife?’ she enquired.

  ‘I’m not. I wasn’t. We were just . . .’ I spluttered, fervently hoping that she wouldn’t remember this scene in years to come. An image of her lying on a psychiatrist’s couch flashed through my mind. ‘My earliest memories of my father were of him knife-fighting cats in our kitchen.’

  Or worse, what if she mentioned the incident to Lorraine, who was already having serious misgivings about my ability to look after Maya? Tales of sharp-bladed nursery horseplay with the pets wouldn’t help.

  Brum saw my distraction and seized his opportunity with four sharp sets of claws. He lunged forward, grabbed my arm extremely painfully and sunk his teeth in.

  I knifed him.

  Or at least, I sort of did. How I didn’t kill him I’ll never know (I’ll get him next time). It was an automatic reaction. I just tried to grab him but stabbed forward with the knife. It came so close to spearing him that it ended up coated in a huge clump of tabby fur.

  Maya watched in awe as the tussle ended, the only blood shed being mine, as usual. I dragged my scratched hand from Brum’s wicked grip and ushered him to the floor. He marched to the cat-flap in a huff and forgot how to do the next bit. I examined my raked hand. If you’re beginning to get the impression that Brum and I fight quite a lot of the time, then you’re wrong. We fight all the time. But Brum generally only attacks me, thankfully. Not Maya, not Lorraine, not other cats, not even . . . frogs.

  Just me. I think it stems from our play fights when we were kittens, or rather when he was. He thinks it’s fine to fight my hands – not my face, just my hands. He seems to see the two things as entirely different entities, not in any way connected to the same brain. Which is probably a fairly astute assumption for a cat.

  Maya watched me thoughtfully for a few seconds and then walked back to the living room.

  Five hours later she told Lorraine I’d hit Brum with a knife.

  The Missing Link

  ‘Cats and monkeys – monkeys and cats – all human life is there!’

  James Henry

  Although it would explain a lot, there is no hereditary link between my father and my cat. Which is surprising.

  You see, although I blame Brum (often correctly) for the constant round of mishaps and disasters that befall our family, I’m well aware, as I think you probably are by now, that I’m as much to blame as he is. And I’m as much to blame as he is for one reason – Dad. Dad passed all that he is straight down to me like a bucket of cold porridge. Meet Brian Pascoe, aged seventy – humanity’s answer to Brum. Dad and Brum would appear to have been cut from the same cloth. They have an almost frightening amount in common. Knockouts, fires, humiliations – Dad’s life mirrors Brum’s uncannily. Although I will say Dad has so far avoided fur-balls, fleas and an urge to claim property by urinating over it. I think.

  Dad is just as bad as Brum, probably even worse. He grew up during the war, the son of a Portsmouth fire-fighter who was blown thirty feet in the air by a German bomb but still managed to amuse startled onlookers by continuing to pedal his rickety old pushbike in mid-air, right down to a very unpleasant landing that he somehow survived. I’d like to have known my grandfather better; he sounds . . . familiar. The fact that Dad was born in what was to be one of the most heavily bombed cities in the world makes his luck only marginally better than poor Brum’s with Slough.

  And at least one poet thought Slough deserved the same sort of treatment – to quote John Betjeman:

  Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough!

  It isn’t fit for humans now,

  There isn’t grass to graze a cow.

&nb
sp; Swarm over, Death!

  That’s nice, isn’t it? He didn’t mention whether it was fit for felines, of course. Depends on his view on cats, I suppose.

  Truthfully, Brum was born in much better times. OK, so Slough and ‘good times’ aren’t often found in the same sentence, but anything had to be better than the prospect of Messerschmitts landing in your spare bedroom.

  It was in later years that Brum’s likenesses to Dad became brutally apparent. Their most noticeable similarity (apart from the ears) is a refusal to accept the existence of glass.

  Once upon a time, in a crowded pub named the Ferry at Cookham, Dad ushered his family to an outdoor riverside table and purchased a tray full of drinks and crisps at the bar. Carefully striding through the pub like an out-of-control juggernaut, loaded tray in hand, he walked straight into a plate-glass window.

  With a huge bang and the crash of broken glasses, he rebounded backwards into a wall and slumped to the floor. I have never been so embarrassed in all my life.

  The whole pub saw it happen and everybody looked at us when Mum rushed inside to assist the bar staff in consoling him. At twelve years old, whether he felt OK or not didn’t bother me half as much as the fact that I was in some way associated with this lunatic.

  Around a decade later, Brum was at it too.

  From the word go, Brum has had major issues with glass. He simply can’t see it. Brum will walk into windows that have been in place for ten years.

  And it’s not only windows. Brum has the same problem with all glass, including mirrors, which is incredible. How can you fail to see a mirror? To be unable to spot a mirror until you’ve walked face first into it is very odd indeed. This begs the question – is it the mirror he can’t see . . . or himself? The very fact that he can walk into a wall-hanging mirror without even breaking stride proves that he is at least perceiving a reflected room, and attempting to walk into it. What he can’t be seeing is the furry-faced arrangement of pointy ears and whiskers coming in the opposite direction. Brum is therefore one of the few people I know who is constantly surprised to ‘bump into’ himself. Neither can he see people in mirrors. If I stand in a position out of Brum’s direct vision, and wave at his reflection in a mirror he’s facing, he should by all rights see me and respond in some way. He doesn’t flinch.