Merlin used to follow us around when we went for walks in the garden. We had a picnic once, just Jane and me and the kids and Merlin. He looked so splendid lying in the sun that I took some pics of him, and we all talked about how lucky we were to have him. I told the children that the nice thing about cats is that they are quite sensible and can live for ten or fifteen years easily, so he would still be part of the family when they were grown up. You can probably guess where this is heading. About two weeks later he was run over by some twat in a Porsche speeding past our house, who just drove off callously. I’ve never much cared for Porsche drivers anyway – Porsches seem to be the cars most beloved by flash types with absolutely no taste – and this confirmed my low opinion of them. Merlin was in such a bad state that I was in tears as I rushed him to the vet, and I was amazed that he pulled through. They’re a strong breed, Bengals, and although we were delighted to have him still with us, in some ways we all wished that he had just died quickly and painlessly. The damage done to him made the last two years of his life pretty uncomfortable. He’d lost an eye, his palate had been split in half and wouldn’t heal, which meant he couldn’t chew solid food – we had to mix up some sort of liquid stuff for him, and a lot of what he tried to eat just got stuck in the hole in the roof of his mouth – and gradually most of his fur fell out. Towards the end he looked like a small, partially furred version of the Elephant Man. We still all gave him loads of attention, and allowed him to limp up on to our laps while we watched TV. I hope he didn’t notice that we were no longer quite as thrilled to have him there as we used to be. The once proud and glossy cat that we used to practically fight to grab and stroke had been replaced by a mangy, one-eyed, drooling thing that occasionally would look up to you with his one good eye and sneeze, showering cat snot and watered-down meat paste over your face. He’s gone now, but I knew I’d never feel quite as fond of another cat.
We persevered, though. Our second Bengal cat was Ophelia, who begat Suji – Japanese for ‘stripy’ – who begat Electro Girl. Ophelia is long gone, and we never found out what happened to her. Maybe when our dogs started to arrive she went off in a huff and moved in with somebody else, or maybe she suffered the same fate as Merlin. Suji and Electro Girl are still around. Both are very pretty cats, although Electro Girl has a tiny black smudge on her nose, which makes her look like a very half-hearted Hitler impersonator.
What is it with cats wanting to look like Hitler? On paper it seems like an unlikely mix, but there are loads of them out there. There’s even a website that parades a whole gallery of Kitlers – cats and kittens who bear a passing resemblance to old Adolf. Some of them have clearly been worked on by their owners to enhance the look, which, when you think about it, is a pretty odd thing to do to a pet.
I’d recommend owning a few animals to anyone with a family. They are a great practical help when it comes to teaching children some of life’s valuable lessons. One of the first things kids learn from them is how to be kind to smaller, weaker beings than themselves, which, with luck, will nip any bullying tendencies in the bud. It’s a terrible thing, bullying: it upsets me if I see it going on or read about some poor kid who’s been horribly picked on at school. Having a sweet little puppy or kitten or hamster to take care of at a young age, and learning not to be rough with it, sows the seeds of consideration for others. Having said that, we did have a hamster once, which, while never deliberately manhandled, was the victim of an accidental act of violence that changed the course of its life, unfortunately not for the better.
We purchased Fluffy for our eldest daughter, Betty, when she was about two, thinking it would be nice if she had a little pet to stroke. This was before the cats and the dogs and the iguana, which wouldn’t really have been a great pet for a small girl anyway. Betty loved Fluffy but, being a toddler, she was a bit too young to understand the difference between a pet and a toy. One day we had Fluffy out on the dining table and were giving him some little hamster treats when Betty suddenly made a grab for him and pulled him towards her with such force that he went flying off the table and landed in a small heap on the floor. Of course we were panic-stricken and overcome with guilt, blaming ourselves for not having anticipated Betty’s lunge – what were we thinking of ? But Fluffy, miraculously, seemed fine so we put him back in his cage, calmed down and forgot about it.
Fast forward six months, and we noticed that Fluffy had taken to doing an unusual and very impressive trick. So impressive we used to say to people, ‘Come over and see our hamster. You won’t believe what he can do.’
He’d come out of his little sleeping area, ready for a spot of exercise, and rather than run around in his wheel, he’d pull himself up on to the bars of the cage by his arms – or front legs, I suppose they are on a hamster – climb up the side and swing from the roof of the cage like a miniature monkey. It was brilliant, and we were delighted and proud to have what was probably the most talented hamster in the world. It was quite some while before we found out (we’d taken him to the vet because he was looking a bit peaky) that at some stage in the past both his back legs had been rather badly broken and had never healed properly. So he had been dragging himself around on his front legs all this time because they were the only fully working limbs he had. We were horrified, but the vet assured us he was in no pain – well, he probably had been at the time, but he wasn’t any longer – and that in compensating for his disability he had developed quite extraordinary upper-body strength, like a lady weightlifter.
We now have two pet pigs in the garden called Piggy-Pie and Sugar-Pie. They are Pennywell Miniatures, and when we bought them – suckered in by a picture we saw in the paper of a baby pig sniffing a buttercup – we were told they would grow no larger than a small dog. Piggy-Pie now weighs about three hundred pounds, so either the man who sold them to us was being a little casual with the truth or he’s seen some bloody enormous corgis. Morrissey came round for dinner one night – you know, the pop star – which was lovely, and he seemed very pleased that they were never going to be eaten. ‘Two were saved,’ he said, rather gloomily, no doubt thinking about all the others who weren’t. I didn’t eat pork for nearly a week to show my solidarity. I have also secretly been hoping he will write a song called ‘Two Were Saved’ and dedicate it to me.
Pigs are fine, if smelly, and cats are lovely, and snakes are beautiful, but it’s our dogs we love the most, and boy do they love us back. Someone told me they once saw a sign in a pet shop – PUPPIES FOR SALE. THE ONLY LOVE MONEY CAN BUY – and it’s sort of true. Of course you have to be nice to them, but they are a cheap date – stroke them a few times and feed them and don’t be mean and they’ll roll right over and show you their privates. They’re so eager to please, so desperate for your company and so delightfully reliant on you. You only have to go out for half an hour, and the minute you walk back in, they go nuts. Many’s the occasion somebody in our family has been head-butted by Yoda, our young Boston terrier, always so hysterical with joy when we return after having been away for all of fifteen minutes that he tries to knock us out to show his love. It’s as if dogs just can’t believe their luck. We should learn from them, of course. They live in the moment, they don’t get bogged down with the minutiae of day-to-day existence; while they’re awake they just want to eat, sleep or fuck. Rather like the French.
We had a dog when I was a kid, a kind of half-breed mongrel called Trog. She was called Trog because I was given the job of naming her as a puppy when I was about six, and I christened her after my favourite character from Pogles’ Wood , one of those sweet black-and-white TV puppet programmes that were popular in the 1960s, owing to the fact that they were just about the only thing there was to watch if you were a child. I can’t imagine how modern kids would deal with the kind of suffering we had to put up with: just two TV channels, neither of which ever showed anything except well-meaning stuff made by elderly people in business suits. But anyway, one of the characters in Pogles’ Wood was Tog, which – rather ironically, be
aring in mind that I would later earn a certain degree of notoriety for my inability to pronounce the letter R – for some reason I interpreted as Trog.
So we had a dog called Trog, which was actually a pretty cool name when you think about it – sounds like a slightly wild yet still friendly caveman. She was black and white and fat and a little on the plain side. But she was always popular with male dogs in the neighbourhood because she was so easy. She would have it away with anyone. I don’t know what my parents could have been thinking, but they never had her spayed, so every so often she would go crazy and we’d suddenly find loads of randy mutts hanging around outside the house. They were a bedraggled crew, too. Leytonstone, not being a particularly well-heeled part of London, was the kind of place where people ended up with scabby old dogs they’d just sort of acquired, partly as status symbols, partly as guard dogs, I guess. And then there were the strays. But what they all had in common was that they were ferociously horny.
It was terribly embarrassing when you were bringing friends back from school, walking home to find a pack of slavering mongrels sitting outside your house with their lipsticks out. I’d have to run the gauntlet with my mates, muttering apologetically, ‘Don’t mind the dogs. Trog’s on heat.’
One got inside once, but we managed to chase him straight out into the garden and hoicked him over the wall. Trog did not take kindly to being kept indoors while her fan club sat outside barking, and she would try to escape on a regular basis. So you had to be very diligent about shutting the door after you. Which is probably why one of my enduring childhood memories is of my father shouting, ‘Shut the bloody door !’
It wasn’t just because of Trog. It was also because he was a money-conscious, working-class dad with six kids who were always leaving doors open and letting out the heat, so even inside the house, ‘Shut the door !’ was a familiar refrain, occasionally accompanied by a slipper flying towards your head if you were the one who’d forgotten. A soft slipper, as he was a very kind father. But with excellent aim.
Inevitably Trog would sometimes escape, and as a result we grew up with a lot of puppies, as well as a lot of stress brought on by trying to keep the dog indoors. If there is such a thing as an exhibitionist dog, then Trog was one.
I’m no expert on the mechanics of mating dogs, but as you probably know, once they are in the throes of passion, they get physically locked together and it’s very hard to separate them. The only way you can do it is to give them a shock to the system. And it’s no good just shouting something about mortgage rates going up or pouncing on them and yelling ‘BOO!’, you have to give them a real jolt. The traditional method is to throw a bucket of cold water over them, and we found this to be the most effective solution. In fact, it became quite a sport for us and we’d take it in turns to do the honours, because in a weird kind of way we quite enjoyed it. True, it was embarrassing, but at the same time it was fun being the centre of attention.
I remember being given the job one Sunday when Trog had chosen to entertain one of her many gentlemen callers in the middle of a football field where a local amateur-league match was in progress. The players were obviously quite amused, as well as a little irate, to find two dogs fornicating on their pitch and the game had more or less come to a standstill. I’d probably been picked because it was me who’d let Trog out in the first place. Anyway, after assessing the situation, I ran back home, filled a bucket with cold water and returned to the scene. I walked slowly across the pitch and, to a cheer from the admittedly small crowd of football supporters, upended it over the dogs, who separated, shook themselves and ran off, as did I to a round of applause. Ah, show business.
Yet given those emotional scars, it’s probably not surprising that I’ve made sure that all the dogs we have now get neutered – well, all but one, at the moment. Two of them are most peculiar, it has to be said. Mr Pickle, my beautiful but slightly fat and very, very greedy pug – he looks a little bit like a retarded seal when he sits down – really is the stupidest dog I’ve ever known. I love him tremendously but there’s no getting away from his brainlessness. He’s always getting stuck in things, and he’ll nod off, still sitting upright, on the edge of the couch and just keel over on to the floor. You hear a snore and then a loud bang and there he is, lying down on the floor wondering what’s happened.
‘You fell asleep sitting up on the corner of the couch, you idiot,’ I admonish him. ‘Not even lying down. Lie down! There are cushions here, too.’ But no, he carries on sitting up straight and dozing off where he is. He’s just too lazy and too stupid to move.
Mr Pickle gets on very well with Sweeney, my wife’s tiny-weeny Brussels Griffon. He’s a sweet little rusty-coloured dog, with an underbite that makes his chin jut out. He reminds me of how George Michael looked in those paparazzi snaps when he fell asleep in his car after smoking too much skunk or whatever it was he owned up to, only slightly prettier. And like George Michael, he seems to prefer same-sex relationships. Sometimes you’ll see him playing with Mr Pickle, and they’ll start off in a joshing manner, tussling and shoving each other, but then everything goes a bit quiet and if you glance over at them you’ll catch them casually licking each other’s crown jewels, trying to make it look like an accident when you know full well it was always on the agenda. I don’t want to be the mean grown-up who tells Sweeney and Mr Pickle they have to stop, but frankly it’s not nice if you’re trying to eat a sandwich or something. So you have to go, ‘Come on, boys!’ and try to distract them with their slipper.
Sometimes I feel I spend more of my life looking at dogs’ privates than I care to, especially those of the small and short-haired varieties of dog, whose arses are on permanent display. Often a dog’s arse is the first thing I see in the morning and the last thing I see at night. But you learn to live with it.
It would be easier if they wore clothes, and I must admit I have once or twice dressed mine up. I have a strange and inexplicable desire to put my pug in lederhosen. There’s something about his little round face and his little floppy chops that gives him a slightly Germanic or Austrian air. One summer, I did tell the children I was planning on shaving him and taking him round Europe with us in a baby-carrier, claiming he was a little Deutsche boy I’d adopted. They were very taken with the idea – but then we found out we’d have to get a dog passport for him to leave Britain, which would involve six months of tests and what have you, and it all seemed too problematic, thankfully, to justify a moment of racist whimsy. So we left him at home and let him keep his hair.
Being the greediest dog (I think pugs are just naturally prone to greediness), Mr Pickle loves his breakfast and he loves his tea. He doesn’t get a meal in the middle of the day, and you just know he bears a grudge about that. He sits there while we’re having lunch and you can see how furious and perplexed he is that we’re allowed another meal and he isn’t. I can almost imagine him cursing the fact that he’s a dog and we’re people. Cursing the fact that he doesn’t know how to open the fridge on his own. Cursing the fact that even though he jumps up at the table repeatedly, we make him get down. ‘What is it with them? Sometimes they love me; sometimes they have me on their lap and stroke me, sometimes they even let me on their bed to sleep next to them. They cuddle me, they kiss me, they seem to adore me, and yet if I try to get on to the table it’s “Get down! No food for you! Bad boy!” All I want is a little bit of steak, or chicken, or pie, or …’
Very occasionally we might give him a scrap, but we try not to do it too often because it encourages him, and because he’s fat. Fat, as they used to say, as butter. He’s like a little black shiny bowling ball, or a fur-covered Space Hopper. We have to keep him on a diet or he’ll have a heart attack, but still he sits there stubbornly. Recently, when we were enjoying a proper lunch, he came up with a good tactic, which was to put me off my food. To disgust me to the point where I either had to banish him from the room and remove him from his torment or give him something to make him stop what he was doing. He was sitting r
ight in my line of vision as I ate my lunch – scallops, as I recall, which is not a dish you’d think a dog would particularly fancy, but I suppose it was the spicy aroma that enticed him – anyway, he was sitting right in my line of vision, and he produced a little erection and just sat there rocking backwards and forwards, rubbing himself against the slightly rough texture of the couch. The glint in his eye told me, ‘OK, if I can’t have any food, I’ll have to take my pleasure elsewhere, and if, in doing so, I ruin your enjoyment of whatever those round, meaty white things are on your plate, so be it.’ So Mr P scored a major point there. I gave him a scallop and sent him on his way. Which was probably not a good idea, because all I was doing was rewarding his bad behaviour. I only hope the kids don’t ever resort to that kind of blackmail, or my father-in-law.
Although we could do without the kind of sex education offered by the likes of Sweeney, Mr Pickle and Trog, there is another important fact of life children learn from pets: mortality. I say this, but to be honest I haven’t quite come to terms with it yet myself and I’ve seen loads of things die. I’m still banking on scientists developing a way of prolonging people’s lives. Or some people’s, at any rate: hopefully multiple BAFTA winners like me will be first in the queue with their families, but others will be there, too, I’m sure, if they’ve got enough cash or have friends in the government. We might end up being around for two or three hundred years, you never know.
I’m quite convinced that somewhere in the world there’s an island or remote region we don’t know about that is full of really, really old people. Somewhere with lots of comfy chairs and opiates where everyone just lies around all day doing drugs and watching the sunset. But theoretically at least, the death of pets can help children come to terms with that big inevitable full stop waiting at the end of the sentence for us all. Hamsters and gerbils and mice die – very sad. Goldfish and terrapins die – very sad. You bury them in the garden or flush them away and call it a burial at sea. They’re not difficult to dispose of, which is just as well, as neither hamsters nor goldfish have a very long life expectancy. But bigger creatures can be more of a problem.
Why Do I Say These Things? Page 3