The Good, the Bad, and the Furry

by Tom Cox

  More surprising was my dad’s instant bonding with Floyd, which, I found out, included carrying him around in the pocket of his fleece, and taking afternoon naps together. ‘I’VE SOLVED THE MYSTERY OF WHY WE HAVE UNDERARM HAIR,’ he told me. ‘IT’S SO KITTENS CAN NEST IN OUR ARMPITS.’

  Having seen that initial photo of Floyd, looking so delicate and tiny, I had worried about how he might deal with the phenomenal racket that would be an immutable feature of his daily life chez my dad. Daisy had been a mixed-up cat with the unusual trait of purring when she was angry and hissing during rare moments of contentment. She’d never really let anyone get close to her, and her list of fears had been long and intricate, including everything from Yorkshire terriers to colanders, but her real nemesis was my dad. Upon hearing his booming voice and heavy footfall, she had made herself scarce behind sofas and under beds, later retaliating during the periods when he was working at his desk by breaking his concentration with a series of high-pitched, neurotic meows. More and more, as Daisy got old, I sensed that the meaning of her yowling was less ‘Give me food!’ and more ‘I don’t belong in this frightening world, and feel fearful and confused, especially by this man who is constantly bellowing enthusiastically about African pop music and his dislike for Grand Designs presenter Kevin McCloud!’ But my dad’s permanently cranked-up volume control did not bother Floyd in the slightest. He was a cat without hang-ups: confident, inquisitive, sociable, boisterous – all qualities that my dad admired.

  ‘LOOK AT THIS,’ my dad said, barely a minute after Gemma and I arrived at my parents’ house on our maiden Floyd visit. He pointed to an Action Man figure suspended from the ceiling over the staircase by a piece of elastic, with a toy mouse wedged between its legs. My dad pulled on the elastic and, seemingly out of nowhere, a tiny kitten – though significantly bigger than he’d looked in the last photograph I’d seen of him, only a week ago – sprang into the air, and wrestled Action Man to the ground. I thought for a moment about asking why, at the age of sixty-two, my dad owned an Action Man, but the answer seemed potentially too long-winded, especially following a three-hour drive, so I decided to leave it. ‘I MADE THAT FOR HIM,’ he said. ‘HE LOVES IT.’ He led us into the living room, where, by my first count, at least 787 different cat toys, ranging from the high end to the truly makeshift, were strewn. ‘STAY THERE. I’VE GOT SOME TEETH TO SHOW YOU THAT I FOUND BURIED IN THE GARDEN. I’VE BEEN UP SINCE FIVE.’

  Over the next couple of days, we watched as Floyd wolfed down the expensive tuna my mum and dad had bought for him, chased ping-pong balls and climbed up our legs, my dad never far from him at any time, watching him with the same kind of pride with which a boxing promoter might watch the new protégé who has reignited his career. Floyd wasn’t old enough to go out in the garden yet, but a few days ago my mum had found my dad out there with Floyd in his fleece pocket, conducting a personal guided tour. ‘THERE’S AN AMAZING WASPS’ NEST IN THIS SHED,’ she’d overheard him telling their kitten. ‘YOU’LL PROBABLY WANT TO AVOID THAT. AND THIS IS COMPOST CORNER. I SOMETIMES SLEEP HERE.’

  I didn’t know what it felt like to have a brother and, while I’d come close to finding out what it might be like in my encounters with a VW Golf my dad had owned a few years ago and been especially fond of, I was now getting a true insight. It wasn’t even as if my dad restricted himself to the fun aspects of raising Floyd. ‘I’VE STARTED LINING HIS LITTER TRAY WITH PHOTOS OF JEREMY CLARKSON,’ he explained. ‘IT’S REALLY SATISFYING. IT’S A SHAME YOU DON’T GET VEGETARIAN CATS, THEN I COULD COMPOST EVERYTHING AFTERWARDS. HAVE YOU NOTICED THAT EVERYONE WHO’S GOING TO BE IN THE OLYMPICS THIS YEAR IS CALLED BEN OR PIPPA?’

  Upon her first couple of encounters with my dad, Gemma had reacted much more nonchalantly than some of my previous girlfriends. Now, though, she was getting the full treatment – not least the following day when the four of us left Floyd at home for the afternoon and went for a walk on the Nottinghamshire–Derbyshire border, taking in the limestone gorge at Creswell Crags, with its recently discovered Paleolithic caves. ‘TOM’S MUM TOOK A PHOTO OF ME ON THE FLOOR, PRETENDING TO WRESTLE THAT LAST YEAR,’ my dad explained to my girlfriend, pointing at the hyena in the visitor centre.

  In some ways, this was how I’d envisaged my next relationship all along: a few good months, then the moment when my new partner realised exactly what she was getting herself into, genetically speaking, and backed out. I accepted that, and if she called it quits now, I couldn’t complain. But, amazingly, Gemma seemed to be holding tough. As my dad scraped a line behind him in the sandy path with a stick he’d found, to illustrate just what a tiny portion of the planet’s history had involved humans, she seemed to be genuinely interested. That, as he explained this, my dad was wearing a comedy Salvador Dali moustache he’d purchased from the Welbeck Abbey visitor shop was further testament to her patience and listening skills.

  On the way back to the car, I nipped into the undergrowth, picked a nettle and ate it. I did this partly because nettle-eating – which, to be done successfully, requires the neutralisation of the nettle’s sting by folding its leaves inwards, then placing them between your molars – was a skill I’d learned not long ago on a weekend foraging trip Gemma and I had taken to the Brecon Beacons, but also because I wanted to prove to my dad that the notion of free will existed. His timeline in the dust had led him on to one of his main topics: predestination. Specifically, his belief – from an atheistic perspective – that all choice is an illusion.

  ‘I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU JUST DID THAT,’ he said. ‘EUGH. YOUR MOUTH IS GOING TO SWELL UP AND YOU’RE NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO EAT EVER AGAIN. AND I SAW A DOG DO A WAZ THERE EARLIER.’

  ‘Maybe so, but that’s beside the point,’ I said. ‘A moment ago, I hadn’t even thought about eating the nettle, then, very suddenly, I decided I would. In a split second, I changed the course of history: not only mine but the history of everyone who comes into contact with me. Nothing can ever be the same again. Also, you’re wrong. It tastes lovely, actually.’ I felt that, if I were to let on that I had got the folding of the nettle wrong, and that the inside of my cheek was now throbbing slightly, it might somehow undermine the strength of my philosophical argument.

  ‘THAT PROVES NOTHING,’ said my dad. His false moustache wobbled precariously as he spoke. ‘YOU JUST THINK YOU CHOSE TO EAT THE NETTLE. HOW CAN YOU BE SURE IT WASN’T ALWAYS GOING TO HAPPEN?’

  I looked across at Gemma. She still seemed surprisingly unfazed.

  ‘I just know.’

  ‘YOU DON’T. ALL THIS WAS ALWAYS GOING TO HAPPEN. ME DRAWING THAT LINE IN THE DIRT, YOU EATING THAT NETTLE WITH THE DOG PISS ON IT. ALL PREDETERMINED.’

  Using some more of my free will, I chose to let the subject go. It’s hard to have a serious debate with a man wearing a plastic Salvador Dali moustache, and I knew that when my dad was discussing predestination, there was little you could do to make him see sense. On holiday in 1984, he had wound his friend Malcolm up so much by discussing predestination that Malcolm pushed him off a small cliff in France. Discussing predestination was one of the main signs my dad was enjoying a country walk, along with rhapsodising about bulls and retelling stories about the O’Dohertys, an abundant neighbouring family on the council estate where he grew up. For all his excitability, though, he seemed a little more anxious than usual on the last stretch of today’s walk, and was keen to get back to check on Floyd.

  ‘KEEP IN!’ he told my mum, Gemma and me as we walked along the grass verge back to the car. ‘I’D LOVE TO GO TO ZAIRE. LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THOSE STABLES. WE NEED TO HURRY UP A BIT NOW. THE O’DOHERTYS ALWAYS HAD ANIMALS IN THEIR HOUSE. ONCE I LIFTED UP THEIR SOFA AND THERE WERE ABOUT TWENTY PINK MICE UNDERNEATH IT.’

  When we arrived back at my parents’ house, Floyd bounded up to my dad, who collected him in his arms. ‘HOW ARE YOU DOING, OUR KID?’ he asked. ‘DID YOU MISS ME?’ Floyd replied in the affirmative with the kind of purr from which you could probably power entire music festivals. It wa
s a comical noise in exactly the opposite way to Brewer’s crying baby meow, which had become comical towards the end of his life: a huge sound transposed to the body of a miniature cat. A few minutes later, my mum discovered that, while we’d been out, Floyd had done a wee in one of her aspidistras. She seemed a little annoyed, but my dad responded very calmly. ‘IT’S OK,’ he said. ‘I’M GOING TO MAKE HIM WATCH WHITE FANG, THE COURAGE OF LASSIE AND BEST IN SHOW LATER AS PUNISHMENT.’

  On various occasions in the last couple of days, my dad had claimed that Floyd was ‘THE BEST CAT EVER’. As someone who lived with The Bear, I took issue with this, but I supposed it was a matter of personal taste. Some were drawn towards displays of physical showboating, when it came to cats, while others preferred subtle intellectual stimulation. I had to admit I’d fallen pretty hard for Floyd. He was an irrepressible presence, a cat seemingly without neuroses – constantly alert, but in an ‘explorer’ way, not an ‘is something about to attack me?’ way. That evening, he took turns on each of our laps, but ultimately settled on my dad, who held forth on his recently rediscovered love of whisky (‘WHEN I’M NINETY-FIVE I’M GOING TO TAKE GLENFIDDICH INTRAVENOUSLY AND WATCH DAD’S ARMY EPISODES BACK TO BACK’), the amphibians in his garden pond (‘NEXT SPRING I’M GOING TO PUT A TOY FROG IN THERE FOR THE LONELY UGLIER FROGS TO MATE WITH; LAST YEAR THEY HAD TO MAKE DO WITH AN APPLE’), the times that he used to bully my uncle Paul by playing him experimental jazz records by Sun Ra and Ornette Coleman (‘I THINK HE WAS MORE OF A ROD STEWART MAN BUT HE WAS TOO POLITE TO SAY SO’) and his new-found appreciation of the feline (‘ONE OF THE GOOD THINGS ABOUT CATS IS THAT, UNLIKE DOGS, THEY DON’T COME UP TO YOU IN THE STREET AND TRY TO HAVE SEX WITH YOUR LEG!’). After half an hour of this, the two of them fell into a deep sleep – Floyd in an unusual pose, with one paw stretched into the air, that brought to mind the phrase ‘death by disco’.

  I wondered what it was about Floyd that had captured my dad’s heart where many other cats and kittens hadn’t. Was it his doglike ability to play ‘fetch’ with his toy mouse? Those Rorschach splotches on his nose and the way they somehow made his facial expression appear even more constantly intrepid than it already was? His baritone purr? ‘I was wondering that too,’ said my mum. ‘And then I realised what it was. Have you noticed something? Floyd is always either completely switched on, or completely switched off. Who else do we know who’s like that too?’

  Humans often find animal companions who resemble them in some way. I’d always imagined that, if my dad found himself reflected back from the animal kingdom, it would be in the form of something untameable, stubborn, excitable. I’d been thinking in terms of a black rhino, perhaps, or an unusually attention-happy elk, not so much of a kitten barely bigger than his own foot. Here, though, was the undeniable evidence. Passed out together there on the sofa, they even looked sort of similar: two soulmates, their batteries run down in perfect accordance after a day of boundless energy, dizzying enthusiasm and full-throttle anecdote.

  * * *

  In theory, I should have been ecstatic. I’d been campaigning for years for an extra, part-time cat that I could visit in the Midlands, and now I’d got him. More than that, Floyd was brilliant in every way I could have reasonably hoped for: entertaining, energetic and cuddly. But there was a ‘be careful what you wish for’ element to all this. Over the last few weeks, I’d been informed that Floyd was the best cat ever at – amongst other things – sleeping, fetching, meowing, eating, jumping, dancing and cuddling. I didn’t begrudge any of this, but it did put Roscoe’s progress into perspective. Every week brought a new, entertaining discovery about her talents, but she was growing into a much more independent, aloof cat than Floyd. This independence and aloofness only increased a few weeks later when she was spayed and began to go out, unaccompanied, for the first time. If you saw Roscoe – whether inside the house or, especially, outside – there was always a sense that she was on the way to a meeting, or some other important cat business. She might stop and give you a quick high five, but she had places to be, people to see.

  ‘Can you remember when we had a kitten?’ Gemma would ask, as our first summer with Roscoe went on.

  ‘Yes, that was nice, wasn’t it?’ I’d reply. ‘We should get another one some time.’

  Roscoe had warmed to Gemma far more quickly than she’d warmed to me. I’d hoped that would be the case, but she had made it clear that she was not a cat who would brook the neediness of any human who happened to be in a vertical position. She received affection in a much more fleeting, casual way than Ralph, Shipley or The Bear did. She was, like Floyd, a little doglike, at least in the sense of her reactions to a stroke or a scritch: she enjoyed them in a happy and carefree manner, but there was no sense that she was experiencing any great, intense pleasure from it. She always made it clear that there would soon be other matters to take care of elsewhere. I’m not sure what these matters were, but I tended to picture an evening job in social media, or putting her cartoonish looks to good use by modelling for a cat food company.

  A continuing exception to the ‘no strings attached’ rules of Roscoe’s affection were the occasions when Gemma and I were wrapped in a towel. Roscoe loved towels so much that, were you merely holding one, she would follow you around the house in the hope that you might pause and let her attach herself to it in some way. This made for some very rewarding moments of bonding, but would have been inconvenient on a full-time basis. Because I kept rather odd working hours, I already answered the door to my local postmen and women in a variety of garments; were they to see me clad only in a large John Lewis bath sheet, I sensed they would view it as the final evidence confirming their suspicions that I was not a hardworking writer at all but a layabout who smoked weed all day in his underclothes whilst playing Mortal Kombat.

  Like people, some cats just seem to feel stuff on a deeper level than others: it’s a predicament with its pros and cons. On the plus side, as a free and easy kind of kitten who didn’t seem to let much bother her, Roscoe was completely accepting of Ralph, Shipley and The Bear. Those first few antagonistic, constipated days were thankfully an anomaly. Like many cats, and humans, Roscoe seemed a little in awe of Ralph’s magnificent physical presence, often following him around and sliding up against him – mostly to his beaming approval, only occasionally to his faint irritation. Her relationship with The Bear was more distant, but mutually tolerant – as if the two of them knew that they came from such different worlds that they couldn’t possibly clash. The only hint of aggro came between her and Shipley, since she continued to delight in getting right up into his face. Shipley’s petulance – his curses now sounding like a protest along the lines of ‘It’s my role to be annoying – this isn’t allowed!’ – only encouraged her. His attempts to subjugate her with violence were always restrained, and she remained completely fearless of him.

  Her true nemesis remained her doppelgänger in the bedroom mirror. For periods of up to an hour, the two of them would stare each other out, wondering who was going to make the first move. Finally, Roscoe would decide to put an end to all this by going behind the mirror to find the impostor and punish her, only to discover that she had scarpered. Ralph occasionally checked out his reflection – which was entirely understandable, to anyone who had seen what Ralph looked like – but on the whole, my other cats appeared fairly oblivious to mirrors and televisions. Roscoe’s sharp, clear button eyes, however, seemed to pick out the action in them. She would frequently spend lengthy periods gazing up at whatever film or TV show Gemma and I were watching, every so often moving forward to attack the screen with a paw. I’m not sure how much of the action she could follow, but her taste seemed to be impressively discerning. She particularly loved golf coverage, and I was proud when she reached up to casually assault the American journeyman pro Brandt Snedeker, whose businesslike style of play never really excited me. Similarly, while she seemed to appreciate Mark Wahlberg’s excellent performance alongside Christian Bale in The Fighter, she und
erstandably snapped after watching him for three-quarters of an hour in the severely substandard Contraband, giving his two-dimensional face what can only be described as a ‘paw smackdown’.

  With Roscoe now infertile, there were no worries about what one of the occasional male feral visitors to the house could do to her future, and ours. That said, Alan had taken a bit of a shine to her recently, and his forays into the house were greeted in a less serene manner by Ralph, Shipley and The Bear than they once had been. Deborah had told me that he’d pissed in one of her favourite boots a few weeks ago, so I should probably not have been surprised at his habit of urinating on my records in the exact same spot as Graham. Still, there was something a bit disheartening about it. It just wasn’t the kind of thing you expected an Alan to do. More troubling still, The Bear was once again following suit, with Bill Withers taking a hammering that even he might have considered harsh. The 1976 album Naked and Warm had come off particularly badly, and probably wished it wasn’t quite so naked, or so warm.

  Maybe this was just The Bear’s and Alan’s way of telling me that nobody really needed to own eight Bill Withers albums, but I decided it was time to take action. I’d signed a mental contract with myself when I decided to live with multiple cats. This contract included the condition that, if I was going to be so indulgent as to let several furry urine machines share my house, I would not, on any account, ever become The Person Whose House Smells of Wee and Who Doesn’t Know It. For that reason I’d always been scrupulously clean, but there comes a point – if you have ferals, or ex-ferals, in the neighbourhood – where kitchen roll, cloths and disinfectant are no longer enough.