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Furball 21 May 2002 There's a grey furball sitting on the crooked wall that separates my miniscule garden from my neighbour's. Her ears are pricked at the sound of a neighbour's dog, two upturned Vs on a round head squatting on a oval body. It's late evening and the colours are fading - the greens of the garden, the dark yellows of the brickwork, the muted reds of the rooftiles. The furball, Josephine, looks round less curious than content. This is my world, her body language says. I don't need to explore it. Through that catflap there's a warm house and a self-centred servant who often forgets to fill my bowl, but I like his smell and he has a broad lap to rest in. When I moved to this part of London in the mid-1980s - a Victorian terraced house in Bow - I had two cats. Columbus was all black, apart from white socks and a white muzzle, a present from the sister of the man I was living with. Scott was a tabby, a foundling. They tolerated rather than liked each other, but as time went by they would commonly sleep together on the same chair, Scott making himself comfortable until Columbus joined him and gradually stretched out until he, Scott, was either pushed into the corner or hanging off the edge. Although both were neutered, at times Columbus would stand behind Scott and reach forward to bite the back of his neck. Scott would miaow once then remain motionless, as Columbus arched his pelvis and from his groin emerged a tiny pink upright prick (believe me, that is the most appropriate word). But instead of the shock of a pelvic thrust, he would stop and for ten or twenty seconds they would be frozen in that position, Columbus as if waking from an amnesiac sleep, wondering what he was doing and why, Scott, with the one brain cell that helped him to float through life, not even wondering. In those early years it seemed that half the neighbours had cats. Certainly one household had a rooster and presumably some chickens and an outdoor toilet, remnants of a working-class past being crowded out by yuppies like myself. When washing dishes, I would look out of the kitchen window to see on the wall that separated me from the house opposite Columbus or Scott facing down a stranger. Columbus usually won. It never occurred to Scott that he might have right of way. Now, despite national trends that have seen cat ownership thrive, it seems that Josephine and the shy black female that occasionally peers out of the upper window opposite my spare room are the only cats around. Scott lasted thirteen years, until my flatmate noticed that no matter how much he ate, he was permanently thin, and the vet discovered a massive tumour that was constricting his stomach. I was away when Scott was put down, but I had never grown as fond of him as of Columbus, who three years later, long past his seventeenth birthday, suddenly experienced the kidney failure that blinded him, so that I came home late one evening to find he had blundered about the kitchen for what must have been hours, walking into walls and knocking things over, until finding a quiet corner in which he could cower. I called a cab and he sat quietly in my lap as we drove to the all-night vet, where I stroked him and tried not to cry. Josephine had arrived three years before, a two year old who was born in Azusa, brought up in West Hollywood, temporarily resident in Canoga Park, and then a denizen of Brooklyn before she made the drugged journey to Heathrow and Epping quarantine. In the six months that my partner and I made the weekly journey to see her, she bloated into a fatter version of the furball that she now is. When she was eventually released, she cowered in our bedroom for days, less afraid of than hostile to the two cats already in residence. In time she could be persuaded to feed next to Columbus (Scott having soon departed), but she never got out of the habit of swiping him with a paw if he got too near, if he appeared to threaten her, or if she felt like it. J is much more domesticated than her predecessors. She does not stay out half the night. I suspect she does not wander far when she does go out. She has never honoured me with a dead mouse or the entrails of a bird, more, I suspect, because hunting is not in her blood, than because there is a dearth of prey. No, she's at her happiest asleep, on me, on the cushion on my desk, or on the chair in the corner of my study, where she can dream cat dreams, whatever they maybe. My flatmate moved on, as did my partner. I have a temporary lodger who spends less and less time at home. Which means that the household is now me and Josephine. And although I am willing to welcome guests, Josephine is less hospitable. She prefers to wait until dinner or drinks have been served and the conversation has moved on from the polite welcome to the relaxed sharing of mood and opinion. Then she will come down, approach the one who likes cats least (and is always ashamed to admit it, blaming their reaction on allergy rather than unfashionable felinophobia), ignore the cat-fan beckoning her and finally jump onto the lap of the guest who presumably smells the most attractive that evening. Dark has fallen and Josephine has come in and is sitting on my lap. If I were watching television with my feet up, her rear legs and feet would be perched on my midriff while her claws massaged my shoulder and her head snuggled under my chin. At night, she'll leap onto the bed and curl up near enough to feel my warmth, but far enough to let me breathe. And in the morning she is considerate enough to sit and watch and wait until I open my eyes before miaowing continuously that it is time I fed her - a miaow that was silent until Columbus died. Yes, this has been nothing more than another short essay written by a writer about his / her cat, no different from the hundreds that had been written before. But we all have to pay homage at least once to our companions, and I did not do so for Schopenhauer or Danbury or Peter who preceded them. So, Josephine, this one's for you. March 2008 Update: In the intervening years I have moved to Thailand and back to the UK. Josephine has been (lovingly) passed from home to home. She now lives with the ex and his other half not far from her first London home, but in the next six months they are all likely to move again. Does she care? I hope not. She's an elderly cat who likes to eat and sleep and watch the world go by and she can do that anywhere there is a cushion and a window. Back to Opinion |
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