Sunday 20 November 2016

# 41 AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT...






 I am known for being cat-aversive; like most stereotypes this is a gross exaggeration. I simply have a preference for dogs, for obvious reasons, a near-phobic aversion to the smell of un-emptied cat litter trays, and a sneaking suspicion that, were cats enfranchised, they would vote Conservative/Brexit, and in any case support the Arsenal. However, if I can call a character witness in my own defence (me, in this case) I did rescue a tiny, rejected kitten from a rubbish bin in Finsbury Park, thus saving its life; true I gave it to the dog to eat, but she shamed me by producing milk and suckling it into life. Where did my slight allergy to cats come from? Certainly not from kittens, which are universally loved, and yet....


When I was twenty I had a girlfriend who was an Older Woman (23) which was quite rare at the time. I used to stay with her in her flat in Dovehouse Street, just off the Kings Road. (She had a Triumph Spitfire which she once drove to Cardiff to see me, at University, and while she had a nap to recover from (then) a long and difficult drive, I was allowed to take the car out. So I did, driving round with the roof off, showing off to Cardiff in general and my friends in particular. Of course, when you are enjoying yourself that much, time flies, and I think I was out for four or five hours while she remained alone in my flat, having only slept for an hour. It didn't end well. I digress: before that she acquired an exceptionally beautiful kitten, with a lot of soft grey hair. She called it Dylan as Bob Dylan was in his white Afro, possibly-permed phase, so there was a resemblance, though the cat's singing voice was noticeably superior.  Then there was the Curious Incident of the Cat in the Night-time. Put your hands over your ears, children: one night we went to bed in her flat and before either sleep or doing that thing intervened, I became disabled by a radical shortness of breath. I had never had asthma; so it was terrifying: I thought I would suffocate. We drove off quickly to Casualty, which you can do quicker than an ambulance, in a sports car, in the middle of the night.  Having given me some meds and restored normal breathing, the doctor concluded that it was probably very fine kitten fur which has transferred itself from Dylan's resting-place on the bedspread to my bronchial tubes and lungs and provoked an allergic reaction which started to close them down.

I have decided that this was definitely the source of the problem: it is an account which is grounded in my physiology/biochemistry which cannot be my fault, so I emerge from my apparent prejudice as entirely blameless. I offer two pieces of evidence that both previous to the Dylan incident and subsequently I have borne no ill-will to Felis catus. (I simply don't believe that yer Latins called their cats by this name: it is transparently a latinisation of Felix the Cat, sponsored and marketed by a well-known cat-food manufacturer.

This is getting a bit Ronnie Corbett (I wish) but I missed the first month of secondary school in 1957 because of Asian Flu, so innocently named because that's where it originated; now it would be an excuse for building a coastal wall from Land's End to the Thames Estuary. I was confined to my bedroom in a kind of quarantine, but allowed the family's new record-player in my room. It was a Dansette, with a new-fangled auto-change system which delivered the record onto the turntable with the sound and fury of the original guillotine. However, only the 45 speed setting worked properly - and we only had 78s.  So my mother, never one for excess, went out and bought A Record for me, an EP: not Elvis or Buddy Holly as I would have chosen, but something for 'all the family': four songs from the musical West Side Story. Over the period the lyrics were burned into my cortex like a branding. I still know all the words to 'Maria'. "Mari-ah, say it loud and there's music playing, say it soft and it's almost like praying, Mari-ah, I'll never stop saying Mari-aaaah". I've never had a girl friend named Maria who I could woo in this way, but I did try it on Maria, the wonderful dog-groomer at Poochies in Mill Hill; but the combination of my cigarette-damaged vocal cords, and her industrial strength electric clipper noise interfered with the message and she thought I was asking to use the toilet. Ah well.

I digress. When I returned to school I was a month behind everyone in every subject which was rather stressful in a new school. As an initiate, woodwork was particularly threatening, so my Father suggested that I come up to his shop, bearing my wooden cross-halving joint (sounds quite Biblical, doesn't it ) where their handyman William, could give me a hand, so to speak. He didn't seem to have a surname, not even taking my father's name, as the slaves were forced to do on the plantations in America. I wondered if the children's classic "Just William" was about a similar unfortunate. But William was very helpful and accelerated my learning curve, and talked all the time about wood, sawdust, shavings, joints, glues and tools. And apart from the woodwork I learned something from him which has served me well: which is that people, however shy, inarticulate, uneducated and unwilling to talk to you, can be fluent and fascinating if you can get them to start talking about their passion, whether it is woodwork, feminism or Liverpool football club. And two of William's passions were cats and puns which he combined in a series of tiny pencil-drawn cartoons on a huge sheet of yellowing lining-paper pinned above his work-bench. Example: Cartoon cat combing hair in front of mirror - caption is 'catacombs'. I did find them ingenious  and quite funny (at age 11); I can't credit (or discredit) William for my later indulgence in word-play, my father bears the greater responsibility. I would point out though that we have to have word-plays or we are just left with mimes.

I've always tolerated cats rather than enjoyed them, possibly mindful (if not consciously) of their ability to strike me down like Dylan did, although this has never recurred. Every now and then I meet one who challenges me and I review and revise my feelings towards the species a little. That's healthy, as with all prejudices and stereotypes. Recently a very close friend has acquired a cat called Freddie. His sole mission in life appears to be divesting me of my residual negativity towards cats. He is seductive, importuning attention, affection and stroking at every opportunity. It's working. I like him, a lot. So here I've charted my progress in sorting out my issues with cats. In the trade we call this catharsis. Oy!














FreyaHumphrey, Larry, Peta, Chief Mousers to the Cabinet Office

Wilberforce, Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office under four British Prime Ministers


Oscar the hospice cat, written up in the New England Journal of Medicine for his uncanny ability to predict which patients will die by curling up to sleep with them hours before their death. To date he has been right 25 times, but is not necessarily a welcome visitor.

Stubbs, a cat who was elected mayor of the town of Talkeetna, Alaska in 1997, as a write-in candidate

Blackie, a cat that inherited 15 million pounds and thus became the richest cat in history

Ketzel, the tuxedo cat who won a prize for his piano composition in 1997

Tama, a calico cat who was the station master at Kinokawa, Wakayama railway station, Japan from 2007 to 2015

Cat Stevens who was not a cat but recorded a song called "I Love my Dog"

Norma Tenega, who more confusingly recorded "Walking my Cat Named Dog"






However, the single most famous cat song is undoubtedly Tom Jones's:





















A bit of a cheat this: I mourn the slow disappearance of 'cats -eyes', those pairs of reflecting prisms which 'light up'  as soon as headlights strike them and define the centre of the road, keeping  both carriageways of vehicles on the straight and narrow. Percy Shaw, a Yorkshire man, invented them in the 1930s and they were a brilliantly simple idea and design which must have saved thousands of lives in 80-odd years they have been in use. Of course they were totally Green 50 or more years before we cared about such things, involving no energy consumption. They are to be replaced by solar-powered LEDs which can be seen from much further away, although that seems to be gilding the lily, as existing cat's eyes can be seen as far as your headlights reach. I'm for revolution and technological development, but 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' comes to mind.  It's important to question such decisions as our elected representatives spend our tax-pounds with equanimity on the assumption that they know best, when they don't or have not researched it enough. It is now becoming clear that the hugely annoying speed-humps that they lavished on our roads are costing more lives than they save, because of ambulance delays. Very clever, but you can bet they won't acknowledge their mistake and rip them up, and the six-figure-salary senior council officers who argued for them will stay in their jobs.































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