Talk to the Tail

by Tom Cox

  My parents and I have shared interests over the years, but very rarely have we shared them at the time. When they listened to Neil Young, I was busy playing golf. Now, at a time I would be rather pleased to have parents who listened to Neil Young, they give me a headache by playing loud French rap music and cacophonous African pop. Similarly, now it is too late, I would love little more than to return to a family home where Shetland ponies wandered in and ate the food of one of seven semi-feral cats, while an ocelot looked on superciliously from the top of the fridge. ‘Why can’t your mum and dad have a friend with an eagle owl when you want one?’ I wonder, meditating on the cruel paradox that is my life.

  My mum and dad do have some rather plump, colourful fish in the pond outside their back door. Their garden, they boast to me, has also recently been part-time home to a goldcrest, a yellowhammer, a redwing and several coal tits. In the living room, in the summer, my mum holds a weekly life-drawing class, and opens up the French windows, enabling chaffinches and blue tits to add to the civilised late-middle-aged atmosphere by hopping about and feeding on a variety of overpriced seeds and nuts in the background. She tells of the time one of the models jerked up out of her lounging pose, and shouted, ‘Bloomin’ heck! Is that a puffin?’ after spotting a greater spotted woodpecker on the birdfeeder.

  ‘I don’t know how she thought a puffin would have made its way to Kalterton!’ my mum said.

  It’s a funny story, but when I heard it, my sympathies with the life model were stronger than I let on. I have nothing against birds, but to me they only become interesting when they get above a certain weight range. No doubt there will be a point in the future, probably when my parents have replaced their birdwatching with another hobby, when my latent ornithological gene will emerge, but until then, I view them as specks in the sky, preoccupied with their own thing. I have no desire to be up in their business, nor they to be down in mine.

  ‘So isn’t it time you got another pet?’ I ask my mum now, frequently. She admits that she often considers it, but in the end, decides she quite likes living without the mess.

  I suggest a dog.

  ‘Oh, no. Too much hassle.’

  ‘What about a goat?’

  ‘Ooh, I don’t think so. I think your dad and it might end up clashing.’

  ‘Pigs can be very friendly.’

  ‘But when would we ever get away?’

  In the end, it’s my suggestion of a new cat that’s greeted with the most enthusiasm, and we make tentative plans to go to a rescue centre, but she always changes her mind. ‘ I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem quite right just now. And I do like living in a clean house,’ she says. My mum has somehow got the bizarre idea into her head that the small smattering of hair and occasional vomit deposited by a single feline constitutes ‘dirt’.

  She has seen the state of my carpet when I haven’t vacuumed for three or four days, so it surprises me when she adds, ‘I could maybe take one of yours off your hands if you want. At least I know that they’re affectionate. It’s different when you get one from the RSPCA.’ I decline, and shake my head, amazed at how naive she is not to realise that this ‘affection’ she talks about is nothing genetic, merely the result of years of me catering to my cats’ every whim, and that it might easily fade with the withholding of smoked salmon and the intimidating clatter of my dad’s footsteps.

  ‘WHAT’S THAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT?’ says my dad, arriving in the kitchen. He’s wearing chunky, baggy cords, has no top on, and is holding an electric tooth-flosser in one hand. In the other he holds a bag of mosquito larvae, which he has bought for his fish from the local Sunday market. Scrawled across his hands in Biro, I can see a list of the day’s jobs, including ‘MAKE PORRIDGE FOR BIRDS’, ‘CALL COUNCIL’ and ‘MANURE?’. He’s about to offer his input to the pet conversation, but then he sees that two ducks have got into the pond. ‘BLOOMIN’ FOOKPIGS. MAKING THE WATER MUDDY AGAIN. I’LL BLOODY WRING THEIR NECKS!’ he says, making his way quickly outside, dropping the tooth-flosser, which is still whirring, onto the kitchen table.

  A couple of minutes later, I join him beside the pond. He’s found an old shirt that he left in the garden yesterday and put it on, which pleases me. He’s not wrung the ducks’ necks, and never would, because deep down he loves them, but he has scared them off, and tranquillity has returned to the garden.

  This tranquillity is broken almost immediately by the frantic whistle that my dad uses to tell the fish that it’s mealtime. My ultimate feeling is that this whistle is plagiarism, a sped-up, inferior version of the one I use to get the attention of my cats, and that there isn’t much point whistling at fish in the first place. Nonetheless, I let it go and do my best to look interested as he points out the Koi that’s really fat, and eats nearly all the food, and the other Koi that’s not quite as fat, but is still quite fat, and eats a lot of the food that the really fat one doesn’t eat. He’s lying flat on his stomach now, looking over the rim of the pond and studying the action, and I can tell he wants me to join him, just like I did when I was seven and we built a pond together and filled it with water beetles we’d collected from the lake up the road.

  There’s a commotion up above and my dad flips over onto his back. ‘FOOKIN’ HELL!’ he shouts, looking up at the sky. ‘LOOK AT THAT. BUZZARD! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?’

  I look up just in time to see a big black shape passing over the house. It’s quite a startling sight, something I can properly get to grips with, not like the smaller shapes in the sky, which all blend into one, and I look for the right words to convey my surprise. ‘That’s . . . pretty impressive,’ I say, and I mean it, but I know as soon as the words are out that they have a hollow, sarcastic ring to them, and I’ve got it very badly wrong. Even though I am genuinely impressed, I’m now back in a role that I’ve been playing so long, I don’t know how to slip out of it.

  My dad stands up and brushes the grass of his trousers. ‘“PRETTY IMPRESSIVE”. IS THAT ALL YOU CAN SAY?’ he says, heading back inside to finish flossing his teeth. ‘YOU DON’T KNOW YOU’RE SODDING BORN.’

  Excerpts from a Cat

  Owner’s Diary

  11 December 2007

  Cat with extremely messed-up meow was meowing outside the back door today. Felt glad for not having cat with meow like that. Went outside. Was one of my cats, meowing like that.

  1 March 2008

  The Bear ate the last tin of his special Applaws cat food today. He meeooped all the way through it, as if to confirm just how mandatory it is that I reorder some of it at the earliest opportunity. I have known cats to meow for food before, but he is the first I’ve known to meow during it.

  12 March 2008

  When I see my cats smelling one another’s noses, I can’t help wondering: ‘What exactly is it you think might have changed, since last time?’

  4 September 2008

  Lots of bands ‘work on a new sound’ late in their career. What is more surprising is when your cat starts doing the same thing.

  14 September 2008

  In her column in the Mail On Sunday’s You magazine, the infamously divorced, infamously childless, infamously cat-loving Liz Jones observes that her Old English sheepdog has begun to misbehave. ‘He jumps at me all the time,’ she complains, ‘even when I am wearing my Dries van Noten jacket, which I have just had dry-cleaned.’ This is an intriguing sentence on a couple of levels, but in the end it’s the use of the word ‘even’ that really does it for me. One would have thought dogs would know a top designer jacket from normal daywear, but no. Cultural cretins! It’s a bit bitchy to say it, but between you and me I wouldn’t be surprised if that sheepdog hadn’t even read the September issue of Vogue.

  18 September 2008

  I’m still not sure I can believe it myself, but I really did just use the term ‘flailing paws’ in a warning note to my cleaner.

  19 September 2008

  Signs that another market town summer is ending: 1) the air is suddenly fresh; 2) apples are
falling; 3) The Bear is not wandering so far from home; 4) Summer Pablo is beginning to bulk up; 5) nobody kicked my car in last night.

  13 October 2008

  Two cats now ‘working on new sound’. House starting to resemble Iggy Pop and David Bowie’s 1970s Berlin, but with less clawing.

  15 October 2008

  I note with some interest that The Bear is now cultivating his own special ‘piss meow’. I’m not necessarily looking on it as a bad thing, as it serves as more of a warning system than anything. I suppose it’s a bit like a smoke alarm – except with piss, instead of smoke, obviously.

  21 October 2008

  Given the reputed commonness of the activity, it is surprising more celebrities don’t reference their Daily Cat Puke Cleaning Session in the Sunday Times magazine’s ‘A Life In The Day’ column.

  24 October 2008

  I love my cats, and I guess they think I’m okay. But I do sometimes get a very strong sense that they are purring at me, not with me.

  5 November 2008

  Received missing parakeet missive through letterbox. Immediately went to check cats’ muzzles for feathers. Seemed clean. Parakeet in question answers to the name Charlie, talks and is ‘very tame’. Religious flyers sticking out of my letterbox I can cope with of a morning. This level of emotional turmoil I cannot.

  13 December 2008

  Starting to regret jeering at Janet for falling off the banister earlier. Just spotted him walking towards golf bag, with distinct ‘wee face’.

  16 December 2008

  You know your cat’s got a lot of Facebook friends when he knows four cats called Chairman Meow.

  4 March 2009

  Have been smelling the downstairs of my house and checking for dead things for last few days. Has been a bit of a mystery. Ended up thinking ‘only explanation is that there’s a dead fish, being eaten by maggots, in the cat flap tunnel’. Turned out there was a dead fish, being eaten by maggots, in the cat flap tunnel.

  14 May 2009

  Favourite cat name of the month: F Cat Fitzgerald (from Garrison Keillor’s novel, Pontoon).

  15 May 2009

  Walked across kitchen. Accidentally knocked pillowcase off radiator. Pillowcase fell onto most dignified cat, giving appearance of superheroesque ‘bumcape’. Most dignified cat walked across kitchen, visibly less dignified. Confession: did not rush to retrieve pillowcase.

  24 June 2009

  Earlier today, I stroked my beard. Not the most riveting anecdote, I grant you. What does make it marginally more interesting is that the beard in question was false, sitting on my bedroom floor, where I’d discarded it after the previous night’s fancy dress party, and at the time I had mistaken it for one of my cats.

  28 June 2009

  They say that some days you eat The Bear, and some days The Bear eats you. What they fail to add is that some days all that happens is that The Bear eats a tray of Sheba Rabbit and Chicken Tender Terrine, while you sit nearby, attempting to eat a jam sandwich without choking on mechanically recovered meat fumes.

  17 July 2009

  Friend of a friend at the Latitude music festival, in Suffolk, today: ‘Oh you’re the cat bloke!’

  Me (hurt): ‘Well, not JUST that.’

  Logo on umbrella above my head at the time: ‘PURINA ONE – FOR FELINE NUTRITION!’

  20 July 2009

  Have bought job lot of Felix As Good as it Looks – aka As Bad as it Smells – cat food by mistake. In bulk. Cats looking like they might call the RSPCA.

  25 July 2009

  To manufacturers of Felix As Good as it Looks – aka As Bad as it Smells – cat food: I sense you tell no word of a lie (and not in a good way).

  4 August 2009

  Think I have just invented new foodstuff: the scromelette. Like most culinary revelations, it’s hard to think why it hasn’t been invented before. NB: I will not accept ‘because it’s just like rubbish burned scrambled eggs with one single cat hair in them’ as valid reason.

  6 August 2009

  Odd: could swear I set a Google alert for ‘cat’ but it seems I must have actually set one for ‘all the bad news about cats imaginable’.

  8 August 2009

  Ralph bit me quite hard today, when I made the unforgivable error of only using the pet mitt on him for seven minutes, instead of the twenty presumably stated as ‘required’ in The Big Book of Spoilt Oversensitive Feline Idiot Therapy. More effective than a brush, the pet mitt elicits very different responses from all my cats, but each has the common factor of being extreme. Janet mewls helplessly at its merest touch, before lying on his back and trying to bite it. The Bear runs away from it in a manner that, even for him, is notable for its campness. Bootsy and Pablo seem to simultaneously like and hate it, scarpering from it but also returning to ask for more of its sweet embrace. Ralph and Shipley just want to be mauled by it on a round-the-clock basis. I haven’t tried it on myself, since I’m a bit worried about the results. In every way aside from the fact that it cost more, this current pet mitt is a cheap imitation of my original one, which was two-sided (one side tough and dimpled, the other soft and felty) and which Dee made me throw away because it had got ‘too skanky’. I can see that it’s effective, but I could live without the puncture wounds. When I looked down at the two small but surprisingly deep holes in my finger, I pictured a couple of furry ears and a small twitching nose above them, and was able to feel new empathy with the wretched hand that the south Norfolk vole is so often dealt in life.

  17 August 2009

  Many people might think it impossible for a grown feline to burst into tears. None of these people, uncoincidentally, have met my cats.

  1 September 2009

  Have received message from my Uncle Paul and Auntie Jayne, who woke up yesterday to find their bath-loving, black demon cat Eddie sitting upright in the bed between them, his head on the pillow and the duvet pulled up to his shoulders, ‘like a little bloke’. This is perhaps as impressive as the time Paul was gardening and got a face full of next door’s hose spray, only to realise the liquid in question came from Eddie, who was on the other side of the bush Paul was weeding around, marking his territory. It is, however, arguably not as impressive as the time Paul woke up to find the family hamster had escaped from its cage, crawled into bed with him and gone to sleep in his armpit.

  11 September 2009

  Tomorrow’s Times newspaper includes a piece by me on corrupt ex-Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian. Actually, that’s not true. It’s about cats.

  14 September 2009

  Watched Whistle Down The Wind. Saw scene with kittens in a box. Missed next three scenes as was pondering fact that kitten actors now dead.

  18 September 2009

  I remember those heady, footloose times, thirteen to fourteen minutes ago, when my kitchen floor wasn’t completely caked in cat puke.

  20 September 2009

  Received letter from Italy, where my book Under the Paw has just been published. ‘I buy your book The Man with 24 Paws . . . come soon in Italy . . . Thank you to love all cats like us’. I think I would like to move to Italy.

  22 September 2009

  The Bear just got absolutely battered by a dog in his dream. Hard to tell, but I’m sensing Yorkshire Terrier.

  7 October 2009

  Woke up to find a damp, half-heartedly chewed dead mouse outside my bedroom door this morning. From this, I can deduce that today is a day of the week.

  1 November 2009

  Bought cats wholesome, ‘natural-looking’ catnip mouse. Cats rejected wholesome, ‘natural-looking’ catnip mouse. Echoes of mum trying to convince me halva ‘as nice as chocolate’ but with tables turned.

  17 November 2009

  Think there has been a significant household misunderstanding in my house today. When I said ‘cats can be gits sometimes’ I wasn’t granting official permission.

  30 November 2009

  Cats have been leaving perfectly severed vole faces and entrails outside the sp
are room again. Have warned my forthcoming houseguests to wear slippers.

  Houseguests: ‘Why’s that then?’

  Me: ‘It’s just very cold and I worry about you.’

  4 January 2010

  Noting the scenes inside and directly outside my house today, I cannot help but be reminded of that well-known Nordic proverb, ‘Show me a dusting of snow, and I will show you a bunch of cats acting like complete and utter tools.’

  15 January 2010

  Saw ornamental egg on living room carpet. Thought, ‘Those bloody cats have knocked that ornamental egg off the shelf again.’ Picked egg up. Was real egg. Washed egg off hands.

  2 February 2010

  Found a note in my cat notebook which says, ‘Mouse. Local Conservative Club. Second wang!’ Have absolutely no idea what it means.

  7 March 2010

  Just rescued a duckling. I say ‘rescued’. I actually lifted it off the carpet away from four bored, hot cats. It then fly-waddled into a bush.

  Heavyosity

  Everything had been going well for Poppy until she went to Crufts – at least, that was the way her owner, Sandra, saw it. Poppy had been following her diet and exercise programme for six months and, while there had been a few minor transgressions, the odd small piece of ham here and there at dinnertime, the improvement had been noticeable and Poppy’s weight had dropped from 58 kilograms to 53.5. What better way to reward her, Sandra thought, than to show her off in the Pedigree Awareness category of the world’s biggest canine gathering?

  So maybe passers-by did sometimes stop and say that Poppy’s back was so big a person could eat their dinner off it; what of it? No one at the world’s biggest dog show could deny she was a fine specimen, despite those few extra pounds. It had been a terrific day – right up until the moment when Sandra returned to Poppy’s pen to be told that some children had dropped a chocolate muffin into it, which five-year-old Poppy had summarily gobbled up. As Sandra pointed out, a Japanese pinto akita was never going to be a ‘high-energy’ dog, but it was such a shame, since Poppy had seemed happier, more alert before then.