Tiger, the cat
This is the family Cat. Tiger. He has found the font of eternal youth (but not revealed its location) and is still going strong despite his sixteen odd years. He shows early signs of immortality.
When we are at home, ours is the gentle life of the semi-retired. GS may get up early to row, I used to get up early to play tennis but then my partner discovered love’s young dream and so I just get fatter instead. But normally one of us makes the bleary eyed descent down the stairs to the kettle.
The second the door opens the angry yowling starts.
If Tiger was not left double portions over night he’s going to read the Riot Act, and he doesn’t care if you pitch head first down the stairs. And no, it can’t wait until the kettle is on.
Tea made with filtered water (We live by the Thames. The water is neat chlorine), the savage cat placated by a couple of sachets and GS can return to bed for the ping of Duolingo, and The Telegraph. Provided of course the Sainsburys stocks of Felix Senior haven’t run out. In which case the food so enthusiastically scoffed down is soon going to be arched over the carpets along with foaming damp blades of grass.
Tea in in Emma Bridgewater, later coffee is in Sophie Allport.
When GS and I were first dating I wanted to buy him a little lover’s present, something I don’t know, a little classy, a little cheeky, something that reflected me and my loves. GS like me, likes birds. So I bought him two Emma Bridgewater mug- Tits and Swallows. .
Bed tea is followed by Lavazza Rosso coffee made on the stove with a mocha pot. We might not be in Italy full time (yet), but there are some rituals that are with us every day.
GS is then generally escorted to his coffee chair by the cat for coffee consumption.
This cat sheds scabby fur and sprays drool, tic-tacking across the floor. He sharpens his claws ripping up GS’s favourite chair. No one is brave enough to attempt to get him in the cat basket let alone take him to the vet.
This old cat is reasonably mellow these days. It’s hard to believe he was ever such a sod.
When we first met he sat on the kitchen surfaces, gazing out of the window, reading the feline news outside, tail draped over the edge, naked arse hole smearing the surface where the food was prepared. Jumping up onto the table, weaving in between loaded plates in a fluff shower.
‘He’s a cat, you can’t stop him, you can’t teach him new tricks’. GS said.
But Tiger learnt. He learnt it was a waste of energy to jump up if it were just me, but if GS and Mac were at home, up he’d jump, look smugly at me, turn his back and jerk his tail in that most expressive of feline salutes.
He’s a very sociable cat- he stars at all the BBQs and parties, just hanging out with the lads. He didn’t mind the Covid chickens as long as they kept to their place.
He doesn’t always make good decision. Spraying the plug sockets shorting the house on a regular basis could have gone against him.
He’s never allowed in the bedroom, but that doesn’t stop the bastard. He’ll slink in, paw open the cupboards and line the shelves with excess fur, worse if he’s accidentally locked in. He views the kids bath as his ensuite. Many a time one if his visitations is behind an ungodly shriek from the kids. Our bathroom is more for violence. Tiger knows that GS is defenceless and distracted when wet shaving. A perfect opportunity to sink fangs into GS’s ankles and hang on. Now we barricade the room.
In the evening he awaits for GS on his evening sofa, purring to induce GS to share his warm lap. Tiger has first dibs and glares at me if I so much as lean a head onto GS’s shoulder. Taught by sixteen years of being savaged at random GS welcomes Tiger to his lap with a hint of wariness. ‘Look how much he loves me’ he says as the cat settles down. Purring becomes snores from both of them. A bang on the telly, GS snuffles awake, and the cat goes vertical but not before his fangs have sunk into GS.
The cat jumps to the middle of the room and glares at GS. GS shouts at the cat. The cat flicks its tail and stomps off. GS dabs away blood.
I made him a comfy cat bed from an old drawer. I got him a heated pad and a fluffy interior. He loved it. During Covid our three hens broke in through his catflap. Never before had I seen a cat so shocked and appalled. But it got worse. Whilst two headed for the kitchen, the third took up residence, trying to lay an egg in his toasty basket. I’ve never seen a cat lost for words.
There was light at the end of the tunnel recently when blood tests showed I couldn’t breath because I was allergic to cats (and male dog urine, who’d have thought). For a week, we tried to re home him. We lied and said he liked people. GS and the kids, were heartbroken, me stoically resigned to the loss of a much loved family member. Kind candidates came to take him away, but, smelling a rat, Tiger repulsed them, growling from behind the sofa, spraying drool like a Newfoundland, flicking scabs of mangy fur like a feral fox. Never before have you seen a more rabid looking diseased and mentally unstable creature unfit for human habitation.
I leant how deeply loved I was. That when push came to shove, that when my life, or at least my supply of oxygen hung in the balance, then Tiger wasn’t going anywhere. But Tiger got a new cat bed, GS brushes him outside from time to time, and the Dyson laps the carpets with more frequency.
After his near relocation experience Tiger decided unilaterally decided that his days of going to the toilet outside were done. Unambiguous messages were left in the kids bath once again. So we bought him a space capsule for his ablutions. After some reluctance Tiger finally conceeded to give it a try
GS loves to sail and to row. This week he went on his annual boys sailing holiday in Turkey. BB is in Sicilly and Rome, Archie studying in Newcastle, leaving me and Mac holding the fort in charge of the cat and the house. GS needed a holiday- he recently put the house on the market and instantly morphed into Kristie Allsop. Half the house is now in boxes in storage. The cupboards are rammed. His racing bike now has to live in my study rather than in the sitting room. We have been placed on the no-smell food diet, bacon sandwiches and Archie’s favourite Slow cooked belly of pork banned. We have to levitate in the house and can’t leave clothes around to dry.
We waved him away. Of course we’ll take care of everything. Have fun! We’ll miss him.
Seconds later the bike was wheeled out of my study and Mac was off to buy us steaks.
I love the sea but to be fair I’m not mad keen on boats. But GS loves to row and to sail and I love water be it lakes, rivers or the sea that that’s all good.
This holiday has however leant more towards marine adventure by all accounts. Two days before they were due to fly out to Turkey the hostie messaged from Thailand to say she wouldn’t make it. She recommended her friend. Given no alternative her bar making their own meals they took her. Turns out she was a bit nervous having been blow four meters into the air when her last yacht exploded. I’m no cook but crikey.
‘We’re at Turtle Bay. At least I think we are at Turtle Bay’ he said calling home with a weary voice.
‘What sort of turtles?’ Our holiday on a luxurious wooden Gulet in Turkey a few years ago hadn’t gone entirely to plan. I picked up a bug in port and spent the first half of the week either draped over the toilet bowl or laying on the bathroom floor. You could have drawn a chalk outline around my body. I recovered and one day we saw little brown lumps on the horizon. It was turtles coming to the surface to gulp for air. We had swum with them, an unforgettable moment.
A few days later I had seen more brown lumps bobbing in the water had slipped off into a canoe to investigate. It was only when I was flicking effluent onto the canoe that I realised the brown lumps were not turtles but I was canoeing in a iridescent slick of raw sewage. You have never seen a bay of yachts and luxury gules exit a bay so fast, hotly pursued by a slick of poo
‘Don’t’ GS said ‘The anchor slipped at 2.30am. But that’s not the worse. The heads were faulty and pumped poo into the dingy’
‘ But surely the staff have to take care of that if there’s a technical problem? He groaned.’
‘We worked out the winds and the tides. We worked out it could only have come from my head. I had to clear it out. There are some things that once you have said goodbye to them you never want to see them again. And to cap it all, my toothbrush had fallen over and was on the bathroom floor’ I was on the floor laughing.
But the cat got me back today.
Bleary eyed, I got past the yowling terrorist. But outside his cat box was something ghastly. To be graphic it looked like a tampon, obvious a grass ingestion issue. It had followed him out of the box, gravity presumably severing the static line leaving a turd that could have come out of a kids joke shop.
So that was how my Sunday morning started – me doing an impression of a cat with fur balls.