The Cat Who Came In From The Cold

by Deric Longden

  ‘That’s true.’

  The shopkeeper came over to help. I couldn’t see the one I really wanted.

  ‘Maureen Lipman has one with a roof.’

  ‘Does she now?’

  ‘Her cat does.’

  ‘Well she won’t have bought it here then.’

  ‘No – she lives in London.’

  ‘Ah well, she’ll have bought it down there then.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose she will have.’

  As conversations go, it sort of went all limp and not where I wanted it to go at all.

  ‘Which one would you suggest?’

  ‘That one.’

  That one was the Kitty Corner Cat Pan complete with its own Litter Enclosure and priced at £8.61. It was finished in a pleasing brown and cream and looked just the thing for today’s modern cat.

  For £1.99 we bought a large bag of Thomas Cat Litter with added Super Blue Deodorant Granules and then lashed out on a dozen tins of Whiskas Supermeat and a box of Brekkies – prepared with real pilchard. I had no idea there was so much to owning a cat – if Patrick wanted it back now he was going to have to take out a mortgage.

  I hoped Thermal would be pleased – the litter-tray wasn’t as spacious as some of those we had seen, but at least there was sufficient room in there for a cosy candle-lit dinner for two and drinks afterwards in the alcove. I thought that was much more romantic.

  He loved it, and spent the whole afternoon curled up in one corner, fast asleep.

  ‘He likes it, doesn’t he?’

  ‘He’s not supposed to sleep in it,’ Aileen pointed out. ‘It’s for crapping in.’

  ‘I can’t seem to get that through to him.’

  ‘Show him.’

  ‘Perhaps later.’

  It became the focal point in Thermal’s life – his leisure centre and his health farm. One day, when he was grownup, he would establish this haven as a meeting place for great minds.

  He entertained his little friend the sultana in there one morning and then panicked when he lost him amongst the granules. I had to sift and shake until the wizened little grape finally burst spluttering to the surface.

  The kitten sat to attention in the far corner of his tray and watched me cook for the three of us – a Marks & Spencer’s prawn and cod pie for Aileen and myself, a succulent coley steak for Thermal.

  ‘There you are. Be careful, it’s still hot.’

  ‘I’ll have it in here.’

  ‘Oh no you won’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You’ll have it out here – that’s for peeing in.’

  His look was incredulous.

  ‘You’re joking?’

  ‘I’m not.’

  He looked around him at the gleaming plastic and gently stroked the sparkling blue and grey granules with his paw – the granules he had raked smooth until they had taken on the aesthetic simplicity of a Japanese garden.

  He looked up at me once more, examining my face. And then the worried frown softened with relief into a sunny smile.

  That Deric – he’s always pulling my leg.

  I couldn’t understand how he was holding it all in. His little stomach couldn’t be any bigger than a tennis ball and yet he was a trencherman of the highest order. Maybe he was constipated – they had pills in the pet shop, I would have a word with them.

  After dinner I went back to work. I can’t think sitting at a desk, I do my best work lying on my back on the floor, and so I went into the drawing-room and lay down on the carpet by the radiator.

  Thermal came with me. If he was going to be a writer himself he’d better see how it was done. He lay down beside me and thought hard for thirty seconds or so until he fell fast asleep – this being a writer seemed a very pleasant occupation.

  I turned over a radio piece in my head. It was to be about the spiders who drift into the house during late autumn when the weather turns nasty. I don’t think it has anything to do with it being cold outside – it’s simply that the television programmes improve around that time and then of course there’s the bonus of live football on a Sunday.

  Thoughts flew across my mind – passing the one travelling in the opposite direction, the thought that is always there: that this was no way for a grown man to earn a living.

  I stared up at the leaves of an enormous Swiss Cheese plant. Aileen had polished the leaves that very morning and I was just thinking that she had missed the underneath bit when a small white kitten walked across my chest on its way to the plant pot.

  I examined his undercarriage very closely as he padded over my face and then the leaves shook as he landed on the soft earth. He swung round slowly like a polar bear on a glacier mint and then, lowering his rear end down to a workmanlike height, he threw his head back, closed his eyes and began to thrutch.

  ‘No!’

  He didn’t seem to hear me.

  ‘Don’t you dare.’

  I was scrambling to my feet and waving my arms. The kitten’s eyes were wide open now and his body froze in mid-thrutch.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t you dare.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  I plucked him off the plant pot and, holding him out to dry in front of me, rushed him into the kitchen.

  ‘What are you doing? Put me down.’

  I put him down in his litter-tray and then, sinking back on my haunches, I waited. He was horrified. His little face darted through a dozen different patterns as he fought to regain control of his bowels. Finally his expression came to rest at smug and he relaxed a little.

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do it.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Right.’

  I picked him up again and, racing out through the back door, carried him down the steps and into the courtyard. A thin drizzle danced halfheartedly on the rhubarb leaves as I planted his bottom firmly on the wet soil. He shuddered in disgust but he could see that he was now dealing with a hard man who wasn’t prepared to discuss the matter any further.

  ‘Don’t look then.’

  That seemed reasonable enough. I turned away and walked back up the steps. From the balcony I had a birds-eye view of a small kitten who had held on far too long and was now having a hell of a job persuading his bowels that he hadn’t meant it and for God’s sake stop sulking.

  His little body flexed itself like that of a weight-lifter going for the big one. The shoulders swooped, the neck braced itself, the brain locked into neutral and the back protested violently. The head looked towards the heavens for help and then he saw me watching him – I turned away.

  When I looked down again he was covering up the evidence – shifting great lumps of sodden soil that rolled on and then immediately rolled off again. It would have been a damn sight easier than this in the comfort of his own plant pot.

  The huge wooden gate to next door’s courtyard swung open and Patrick appeared.

  ‘Hello there.’

  ‘Hi Patrick.’ Oh God – he’ll see Thermal.

  He came over to his side of the hedge for a few words while here on my side the little kitten heard the footsteps approaching and peeked at our neighbour’s feet through the roots. From up on the balcony I felt like an umpire at some weird sort of tennis match.

  ‘You look as though you’ve had a hard day, Patrick?’

  ‘I recognize those boots.’

  ‘They’re all hard, Deric …’

  ‘That voice rings a bell.’

  ‘… wish I was a writer – sitting in the warm all day.’

  ‘From a long time ago – back in my past.’ The kitten rearranged his head to get a better-angled view.

  ‘There’s my bucket – it’s all coming back to me now.’

  He tried to work his way through the roots – his childhood had been spent on that bucket – but the roots were too thick for him and he got his shoulders stuck.

  ‘That kitten hasn’
t come back.’

  ‘It hasn’t?’ It was doing its level best right at that very moment. In no time at all it would have the hedge over.

  ‘There’s something I ought to tell you, Patrick,’ I started, but mercifully the wind blew my words away and he didn’t hear me.

  ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘it’s probably for the best. I’ll bet it’s found a good home, and it was no life for it here – not with us out all of the day.’

  The kitten who had found a good home was now backing out of the leafy cul-de-sac and making his way down to the gap in the hedge when he disturbed a moth who should have been dead weeks ago.

  God had kept it alive just for this very moment. As moths go it was knackered, but it had just enough staying power to keep it inches ahead of Thermal as it led him a dance across the courtyard and well away from the hedge.

  ‘Anyway – must get some work done before the light goes.’

  Patrick began to haul stones across to the small wall he was building and over on my side of the hedge the kitten was putting on a ballet worthy of an Arts Council grant.

  It had been a long hard summer for the moth and, try as it might, it couldn’t raise itself up over a foot above the ground, but since the kitten had a high jump record of only nine and a half inches there wasn’t going to be an awful lot of blood spilt on the courtyard.

  Then the moth made a bad mistake. It dropped dead in mid-air and Thermal caught it. He had never counted on this happening and he panicked. He stirred its inert body once with his paw and told the moth that he was only joking, but then, when it didn’t move, he turned straight round and made for the gap in the hedge.

  Then I panicked. I couldn’t shout at him or Patrick would hear me and we weren’t ready for that yet – and so I coughed. The kitten stopped and I coughed again. He looked up.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Humph!’

  ‘Now – this minute?’

  ‘Humph!’

  ‘Oh – all right then.’

  He took a slight detour to avoid the corpse and padded back up the steps.

  ‘That’s a bad cough you’ve got there,’ shouted Patrick.

  ‘Pleurisy,’ I shouted back.

  ‘What is?’ asked the kitten as it reached the balcony.

  ‘Humph!’ I told him as I helped him in through the door with my foot.

  ‘All right,’ he grumbled as he pitched headfirst across the hall carpet, ‘keep your hair on.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  From that moment on Thermal developed a deep love of the great outdoors. At eight o’clock the following morning he was sitting on the doormat waiting to be let loose once more.

  ‘Not on your own. You’re not old enough yet.’

  ‘I’m not on my own.’

  He had his sultana with him but that wasn’t going to sway me – we cat owners have to be firm at times.

  ‘You can sit there all day if you like, but it won’t make any difference.’

  As it happens he didn’t sit there all day – the postman almost killed him.

  He shoved a couple of bills and a selection of catalogues from Hartington House, Scotcade and Kaleidoscope through the letterbox. These puny items merely bruised Thermal’s ego.

  It was the Yellow Pages that did the real damage.

  One minute I was being firm with a healthy young cat, the next I was sweeping up into my arms the victim of a vicious hit-and-run attack and also giving the kiss of life to his friend – a sultana with brain damage.

  I carried the pair of them into the drawing-room and laid them down by the radiator. Of the two, the sultana made the less fuss – Thermal never stopped whinging.

  First it was his leg and then it was his back. From what I could make out, he wasn’t long for this world – he was sure of that.

  He wanted me to have his litter-tray when he was gone. He knew I would treasure it and it was mine on the understanding that I would look after his unmarried sister in Brighouse.

  Aileen was to have custody of the sultana for as long as it lived at home.

  RADA would have snapped him up after a performance like that. I left him to it and went to help Aileen work her way through the catalogues. She sucked delicately on a small round mint.

  ‘What’s that?’

  I read the small print.

  ‘It’s a vacuum-cleaner organizer.’

  ‘What’s it say about it?’

  ‘It costs £6.99 and it’s a plastic thing you stick on the wall to hold all your vacuum-cleaner attachments.’

  ‘We’ve got one, haven’t we?’

  ‘Yes – ours is called a cup-hook.’

  The selection was astonishing. There was the handbag that grows on you.

  ‘That would frighten the life out of me.’

  And a set of cast-iron kitchen scales. The scales that weighed in Mrs Beeton’s time will weigh as accurately today.

  ‘And take as much lugging about – what else is there?’

  ‘How about The handy, hungry fluff remover for well-groomed sweaters?’

  ‘What is it?’

  It was an electric shaver, that’s what it was. It’s come to something when we go around shaving our sweaters.

  The weirdest item of all was the ceiling display clock. It was advertised as the cleverest clock in the business. You can tell the time – even in the dark.

  I could do that already – my bedside clock has a luminous display – but the single aim of these catalogues is to prevent you from having to do anything that looks like work, such as moving your head slightly to the right. All you had to do was to clap your hands and the sound-activated light display would beam the time up on to your bedroom ceiling.

  I could tell the time without the ceiling clock. All I would have to do is clap my hands and there would be Aileen shouting, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing at six o’clock in the morning?’

  But she wasn’t shouting now – she was choking. The mint had gone down the wrong hole and I patted her on the back.

  ‘Humph! Humph!’

  Her eyes filled with tears and I thumped a little harder.

  ‘Humph! Humph!’

  A small white flash arrived in the study doorway.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Humph!’

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Humph!’

  Aileen collapsed across her desk, arms flailing, lungs screaming. I thumped again and a sticky white mint flew straight out and into her in-tray.

  ‘Humph! Humph!’

  ‘Don’t cry.’

  ‘Humph!’

  ‘I’m here – tell her.’

  He raced over and began to massage her ankles. She wiped her eyes and then picked him up.

  ‘I’m all right now – he was worried wasn’t he?’

  ‘He thinks it’s his name.’

  ‘He thinks what is his name?’

  ‘Humph.’

  He waved my humph away in disdain.

  ‘Do you mind – I’m talking to this lady.’

  *

  He told her all about his leg and all about his back and then, having got it out of his system, went and sat on the window-sill. I explained to Aileen all about Patrick and the coughing.

  ‘So he’ll come to me – every time I cough?’

  ‘Try him.’

  We went out to the hall and she coughed, gently into her hand.

  ‘Louder.’

  She raised the volume a little – nothing.

  ‘He can’t hear you.’

  She coughed like a navvy on Capstan Full-Strength but it had no effect whatsoever. We waited for a minute or two and then poked our heads around the study door. He was squatting on the large plant pot in the corner, his eyes bulging, his nerve-ends straining, his back bent almost double like a bow.

  ‘I’ll be with you in a moment.’

  We checked every plant pot in the house that night, some thirty in total, and he had been very thorough. He was liberal with his favours – he had distributed
a series of small torpedoes which were now in varying states of decay. He even pointed out a small bush I had missed in the bathroom.

  ‘And here’s one I prepared earlier.’

  From then on I followed him everywhere he went. I had seen how it was done on the television and I was sure he had no idea he was being followed.

  Just before midnight my heart leapt as he strolled into the kitchen and I watched through the crack in the door as he jumped into his tray and began to rake his granules. Was this the breakthrough I had hoped for?

  No it wasn’t. He wiggled his bottom a couple of times and then, sighing contentedly, he curled up into a ball and trained one eye on the crack in the door.

  ‘Good night.’

  I was going to have to be tough with this kitten – show him who was the boss. If he insisted on sleeping in his litter-tray then I was going to have to be ruthless.

  I would start with a forced route-march down to the rhubarb patch – it was midnight, he could stay there until I was satisfied. That would show him.

  I stormed into the kitchen and he smiled at me. He looked so comfortable. I smiled back.

  ‘Lights – if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right – we all make mistakes.’

  I could always start being ruthless in the morning.

  That night in bed I mapped out a kitten-crushing routine of bread and water, cold showers and early rising – but I overslept and then had to abandon the idea altogether when Nick flew in from Dubai and the day was declared a public holiday in our house.

  Thermal gave my son a somewhat subdued welcome. At first I thought this might be because his presence only served to highlight the fact that Thermal himself was adopted and not my natural heir, but it soon became clear that the kitten was wary of those enormous feet and was waiting to see if this one was blind as well.

  Nick was amused by my relationship with Thermal and he spelt it out in the kitchen as we made a pot of tea.

  ‘You know – you spoil that cat.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘You do.’

  Nothing could have been further from the truth and I would have argued with him there and then but Thermal was about to jump off the kitchen table and it can hurt your paws can’t it – jumping off the kitchen table?

  So I picked him up and placed him gently on the lino tiles before smearing a thumb-full of Marmite on his saucer.