A Cat Called Birmingham

by Chris Pascoe

  We couldn't see any steps. Looking over it, we gazed down into a black abyss:

  Lad i: What d'yer reckonishh down there?

  Lad 2: The beach yoush darsht shod!

  Lad 3: But how far down ish it? Hie, it could be a really high

  wall.

  Me: Thersh only one way to find out! Geronishmo!

  I vaulted the wall and felt like I was falling for ever. Down and down I fell, finally coming roughly to rest in a clump of tearing, brambly plants on a sand dune.

  Lad 3: Chrishh?

  Me: -

  Lad 4: Ish he dead?

  Lad 1: Oi! Are you dead?

  Me: No.

  Lad 2: No?

  Me: No, ish absholutely fine. Ish jush a few feet drop. C'mon

  down here.

  CRASH CRASH CRASH CRASH CRASH.

  I listened in drunken glee as my mates came crashing down all around.

  Until one landed on me, knocking his tooth out and cutting my head open. No matter. We hardly noticed and raced down to the dark sea, anaesthetised, torn, battered, bleeding shark bait.

  I often wonder how most men of twenty-five ever get to be that age, I really do.

  Anyway, the big fall, Brum's fall, spectacular and death-defying. I mentioned I might have distracted him. There was no might about it. I distracted him.

  Stamping on an empty Ribena carton two yards away from him, causing a huge report that echoed across the rooftops, would have been distracting, I admit. I just wasn't thinking beyond that carton. Ribena carton - Foot RIGHT SQUARE BRACKET Foot RIGHT SQUARE BRACKET Ribena carton. Hah! BANG!

  Brum shot up, hair in the air, lost his footing, stumbled and, shooting me a horrified glance, fell backwards off the highest point of the wall.

  As he did so, I heard my neighbour's car start to move down the drive. Oh my God, I thought, this is finally it for him. He's going to hit that concrete at breakneck speed and then be run over by my neighbour's car just to make sure. That would be about right.

  My neighbour shot out into the road without stopping, I guessed he must have hit him and not realised. And then I saw it.

  My neighbour was driving off down the road with Brum riding his car like some Bondi Beach surfer. My jaw dropped open. The sight was truly unbelievable. You just don't often see a Vauxhall Astra motoring away with a tabby standing on its roof, ears back, eyes fixed straight ahead, the wind sweeping back its long fur.

  I thought about shouting but it was too late, he was out of range with his car radio booming. I watched as my neighbour pulled to a sudden halt to let another car by. A flying tabby

  catapulted from his roof and into the bushes on the opposite side of the road.

  My neighbour pulled over. He must have seen him go. He got out very slowly, his arms slightly bowed from his side in a gesture of 'What the . . . ?' He stared into the thicket for a few moments and finally saw an extremely pissed off Brum emerge and run back across the road. My neighbour looked around in bemuse-ment and spotted me, looking down the road at him from the wall. I waved. He tentatively waved back.

  We stared at one another for a few moments and finally he shouted up, 'Where did he come from? He flew over my car . . , I think I must have hit him or something . . .'

  'No, no!' I called back, 'It's okay, he was on your roof.'

  He looked at his roof, we both noticed the dent for the first time. His radio had obviously been loud enough to mask the sound of sixteen pounds of tabby landing on him.

  This, I believe, was 'falling with style' in its purest form. No fall could have been more comical and perfectly timed had it been choreographed.

  And just for a moment, as the car braked and he was hurled into the bushes, it went beyond that.

  For a moment, he actually flew.

  Where Sparrows Dare

  'Expect problems and eat them for breakfast.' Alfred A. Montapert

  I have spoken often about Brum's total failure to be a proper cat. From a distance you would doubt your eyesight. You'd swear that you were looking at the general outline of a cat, but surely cats move with slinky finesse. They wouldn't just fall over like that, and was that an optical illusion or did it just walk straight into a tree.

  A cat wouldn't do these things. But Brum would, and usually does.

  With his unfortunate farm days well behind him and an optimistic future stretching ahead, his next trick was to become embroiled in a long drawn-out war . . . with a sparrow. Any real cat would have dispatched that sparrow on the day hostilities began. If cat-sparrow wars were to make the newspapers, the Times would probably have reported: 'SPARROW SURRENDERS -after almost five seconds of ferocious paw to wing fighting yesterday the sparrow has unconditionally surrendered. No quarter was given however, and after much cuffing around, a bloodbath is feared to have ensued.'

  The tabloids would no doubt have said: 'SPARROW'S MUM IS SEX CRAZED OPIUM FIEND - Mrs Sparrow has eaten poppy seeds and continues to have relationships with OTHER SPARROWS, your on-the-spot Daily Stuff can reveal today. Sparrow Junior declined to comment, however, having just been eaten by a cat.'

  Not so for Brum. Not only was the war not over in a day, not only did he allow it to drag on for over a month, he eventually, somehow, managed to lose it. From the first tentative exchanges until the last bitter days of fighting a month later, Brum did not, as far as I know, ever win a battle.

  True, the sparrow always had total air superiority, but on the

  ground, where it mattered, you would have expected Brum to at least have held his own. But by the end of the war he'd surrendered all but his indoor territory to the sparrow.

  Exactly how the war began is uncertain, but what is known is that Brum has a penchant for climbing trees. Out of compassion you'd hope that a creature with his track record for bumps and bruises would keep well away from so obvious a danger as the high branches of a tree, but sadly not. I believe that during one of his climbing expeditions that year he may well have stumbled upon his would-be adversary's nest. I doubt he'd have done any damage deliberately but in his case damage would have been likely nonetheless, if not inevitable.

  I have a mental picture of him tripping over it and then ripping it to pieces while trying frantically to regain his hold on the branch. But that's just conjecture. Whatever the reason (probably the sparrow protecting its eggs or young initially), this sparrow very suddenly took a violent dislike to Brum.

  Our kitchen window looks down onto a flat roof, a sunny spot where Brum often sits when Sammy's occupying his favoured front wall. I first became aware that Brum was having bird problems when he scrambled over the lip of this roof and into my view from the window. His face was a mask of abject wide-eyed terror. He stopped and swiped at the air.

  It took me a few moments to realise that he was being dive bombed by a sparrow. The sparrow's attacks got more and more daring as it realised that its feline foe's reactions were not those which would normally be expected of a swift-moving predator. More those of a sedated sheep or house brick. In fact, the sparrow was able to get close enough to peck at the back of Brum's head on two occasions before he even turned to face the direction of its attacks.

  Getting close to a wall to protect himself was a smart move by Brum. Sitting staring at it while attacks came in from behind was not.

  The sparrow's bombardment continued and Brum's air defence systems (consisting chiefly of swipes at the airspace previously

  occupied by the sparrow) proved ineffective. Brum was eventually forced from the roof and through his cat door. He'd lost treasured territory to his enemy, and he'd lose very much more ground, and face, in the weeks to come.

  The sparrow's campaign was relentless during the following month until one memorable afternoon in early June. A battle-weary Brum was caught on top of a fence dividing our garden from next door's. Our neighbour (our 'other' neighbour. A neighbour with an undamaged car but lacking Brum awareness training), a nice chap and keen gardener, had recently constructed a stretchy-type-plastic system
of low level coverings supported by short wooden uprights to protect his plants from pests exactly like the two combatants of our story.

  He was working in his garden at the time of this latest altercation and oblivious to the rapidly unfolding drama taking place above his head. His first indication that something was amiss -the sudden screeching of the sparrow overhead.

  Looking up, he spotted Brum crouched low on top of the fence, and assumed that the cat was bothering the bird. Well, you would wouldn't you?

  Seconds later Brum hurtled sideways from the sky. Sideways. Cats always land on all fours, but Brum dropped sideways.

  He landed with a heavy thud, slap bang in the middle of the so recently and painstakingly constructed greenhouse system. The sudden combination of impact and weight pulled the wooden supports inwards and immediately trapped Brum in a plastic cocoon. He thrashed madly, wildly, totally destroying both plastic and plants in a frenzied bid for freedom.

  My neighbour stood motionless and observed all of this in what he later described as a kind of grim resignation.

  At this point the sparrow resumed its attack, much to my neighbour's astonishment, who hadn't known Brum long enough to know that these things were possible. And then came the coup de grace. The sparrow actually alighted onto Brum's back to casually peck at his ear. The battle was halted by our neighbour who found himself in the unprecedented position of rescuing a cat from a small bird.

  Brum didn't go out for a while after that. We wondered briefly if we should buy him a tin helmet for future excursions, but I doubt if he would have worn it.

  Months later, we spotted Brum lying out on his suntrap roof. About five feet from him sat the sparrow.

  The war was over.

  Incompetence

  'When can their glory fade? O' the wild charge they made!'

  From 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  Lorraine is Queen of the Comic Put-Down. She will often leave me speechless in an exchange, knowing full well that my next line had better be damn good or it's going to sound pretty silly straight after her masterpiece.

  This morning she did it again. I had managed to turn a winning situation for us into absolute defeat, with just a few deft and daft manoeuvres. I could tell that Lorraine was impressed.

  As I tried, falteringly, to explain my mistake, she put her hand on my shoulder, shushed me, smiled, and told me, 'Darling, I love you for your sheer blundering incompetence.'

  And with that the matter was closed. A stinging rebuke delivered as one would pay a supreme compliment. I pointed a finger but couldn't think of anything to add. She'd done it again.

  Sheer blundering incompetence.

  Yes. I'd admit that summed it up well. At a stroke I'd wasted money and thrown in the promise of more wasted money at a later date. Absolute sheer blundering incompetence. Not of the kind my tabby friend could ever have aspired to. He has cost us money. He's broken a fair few valuable items and damaged cars, but never just given it away to anyone who asked for it.

  He doesn't have the scope for incompetence that we humans have. The more intelligent and capable the life form, the greater levels of stupidity and incapability it may rise to. What immediately springs to mind when I ponder incompetence is an incident that occurred in Scotland during the run in to a General Election. One of the major parties had assembled the press and a small crowd for the unveiling of their new national billboard campaign. The huge billboard in question was draped in ceremonial curtains behind a makeshift podium. Speeches were made and the cord was pulled.

  The curtains swung open to reveal not the planned propaganda poster but ... a gigantic Tesco's ad, complete with special offers and directions to a local store. As the audience gawped in bewildered silence and press cameras flashed away, getting far better pictures than they could ever have hoped for, the politician attempted to make light of it all. But he must have been absolutely livid.

  The most awe-inspiring thing about this mistake is how it could have ever happened in the first place. How did highly paid advertising executives manage to centre all of this national attention on a poster so obviously not the one they themselves had designed? Didn't they notice it? Wasn't it big enough?

  A team of craftsmen then spend hours constructing a stage around the thirty-foot Tesco's ad and still nobody notices the error. How did they continue not to see it when their faces were virtually pressed against the thing as they hung curtains on it?

  I doubt very much that the politician ended up placing his hand on the culprit's shoulder and telling him that he loved him for his sheer blundering incompetence. But then again . . .

  Now, had Brum been human I'm sure he could have run to something as elaborate as all of that, but sadly he just won't get the opportunity. Major political parties are unlikely to come to him for help and advice with image enhancement issues.

  There are many things in the human world that if available to Brum, would greatly broaden his range for possible disaster. One thing that would certainly do it would be an automobile. If he can damage a car without even being behind the wheel, imagine what he could do driving one. Brum in control of a great heavy fast moving lump of metal is a terrifying thought.

  And yet, we let other incompetents drive them. An ex-colleague of mine, who it would be a little unfair to describe as incompetent, would have to hold his hands up and admit he shouldn't have been behind the wheel on his first day at the courier company I managed.

  He eventually went on to run a successful transport business, but his debut for us could only have been marginally more embarrassing had he turned up to work without his trousers on.

  Having collected his first ever consignment, he set off on a short trip from High Wycombe in Bucks to Staines in Middlesex, a thirty-five minute journey of around twenty miles. Four and a half hours later and having covered 132. traffic clogged miles, he arrived at his destination.

  On a route that should have taken him via just two junctions of the Mi5 motorway, he had managed to see twenty-nine of its thirty junctions, travel first over and then under the River Thames and pass through six counties.

  All of this had been achieved through a combination of good advice (that a good route would be down the M4 and onto the M2.5) and a confident and unshakable, but utterly stupid belief that the M25 was only navigable in a clockwise direction. Hence having arrived at the motorway, with Staines ten miles to the south, he headed north, then east, then south, then west and finally north again, covering almost the entire circuit of the motorway.

  The thing that has always bothered me about this was what on earth he thought the cars on the opposite carriageway were doing?

  Apart from the cars in front of him, he could have seen nothing else but oncoming traffic to his right all morning. Did it not cross his mind, even once, that they were all going anti-clockwise} Did their presence over there not offer him just a tiny clue that his preconception of the motorway may have been absolute nonsense? Maybe he thought it had all been done with mirrors. The disturbing thing is that such a powerful mind was in charge of a three and a half ton vehicle.

  Nevertheless, I am grateful to him for the entertainment.

  Another advantage to humans in incompetence scope is access to alcohol. Brum's never been interested in the stuff, and that's a very good thing. In his very early days, I saw him befuddled by the after-effects of an anaesthetic and so fully realise the implications of a drunken Brum.

  Having been under the knife in the morning, he came back from the vet's mid-afternoon. Within minutes of arriving home,

  he'd twice missed an armchair, hitting a standard lamp on his first approach and toppling a vase on his second. Having been carefully placed on his desired armchair, he then rolled off and knocked a cup of tea over.

  A little later he jumped into a bath of hot water, much to my then lodger's surprise, who was occupying the bath at the time and almost had his chance of fatherhood horrifically removed in the ensuing struggle. It would have bee
n a timely revenge on the human race if that had happened. It was precisely that sort of thing that'd seen Brum anaesthetised in the first place.

  You would have to say that jumping into the bath may not have totally been down to his state of chemical confusion. He has often jumped into full baths and it is normally down to a condition he suffers from that we call 'solid universe theory'. You see, Brum believes that nothing changes from one hour to the next, that the universe is a constant. He'd been sitting in the bath in the morning, and it was dry, therefore so would it be in the evening.

  The bath is a constant, so must be its contents. His faith in this theory seems resolute, despite huge bodies of evidence (and small bodies of water) to the contrary. He therefore feels no need to glance into a bath to check if it is empty or full. Logic tells him the bath must be empty, so he simply jumps straight over the side and damn near drowns.

  The anaesthetic-related shenanigans drew to a close after the bathroom brawl. Weaving out of the door like a drowned and drunken rat, he collapsed to the floor in a wet heap, almost being trampled as my swearing lodger stumbled out behind him, bleeding from leg and stomach scratches and mumbling about sharks.

  It makes you realise that Brum would be listed as a dangerous species if he ever got his hands on a bottle or two, but human-wise I have never seen the services of alcohol to comedy more adequately demonstrated than by a friend of mine during the World Cup 1998.

  If there could ever be a parallel of Brum in the human world, it is quite definitely you, Andrew Bond.

  We'd all gone down to the coast to watch the early afternoon England opener against Tunisia in a huge football orientated pub. There were flags and large screens everywhere, and incredibly tight security. We'd all been damn near strip-searched on the way in and warned in no uncertain terms, by the huge and unsmiling doorman, of the consequences of swearing, aggressive behaviour, breathing and most especially narcotic abuse. He seemed pretty angry about even mentioning the word 'narcotic', as if he'd had enough problems with that issue already and he would take not one more bit of it.