Bear break

I've got an unusually huge amount of writing to do at the moment, so I'm going to take a break from doing @MYSADCAT tweets for the time being. The Bear also tells me that he'd like time to work on his latest volume of goth poetry under conditions appropriate to an artist of his seriousness (i.e. without me poking a camera into his face). Thanks for all your lovely messages over the last couple of years and we hope to see you again before long.

P.S. To those who've asked if there is a new book about The Bear on the horizon: there will indeed be a follow-up to The Good, The Bad & The Furry, which will be published by Little Brown in October this year. Also, The Good, The Bad & The Furry will finally be published in America in April.

@MYSADCAT goodies for people who'd like to get to know The Bear better

Here are a few links to @MYSADCAT stuff for people who've started following The Bear recently and would like to get to know him better. I've included amazon.co.uk links below purely because I know that a lot of people find that the most convenient place to buy from, but, if I'm honest, my ideal choice would be that you buy from hive.co.uk, who support independent bookshops and represent a fairer, less soulless future for the publishing industry. If you're outside the UK, wordery is an independent site which does free worldwide delivery (and, unlike fellow free international deliverer The Book Depository, is not owned by amazon).

Under The Paw is the first book about The Bear and friends.

Talk To The Tail is the second book about The Bear and friends.

The Good, The Bad And The Furry is the third - and most recent - book about The Bear and friends.

There is also a 2015 @MYSADCAT calendar and some @MYSADCAT Christmas cards available. Both are best purchased direct from the publishers, Graffeg, who will deliver anywhere worldwide.

If you're outside the UK, wordery is an independent site which does free worldwide delivery. That said, it has sold out of The Good, The Bad And The Furry right now, unlike The Book Depository, who also do free worldwide delivery.

(NB: For those who have asked recently, there will be a fourth book about The Bear next autumn, published by Little Brown.)

FINALLY!

It's been a long old road, but the new versions of Under The Paw and Talk To The Tail, with The Bear and Ralph as cover stars, are now available to purchase, casting the vastly inappropriate "cutesy" covers featuring anonymous posh actor kittens into the past forever. Getting to these covers has taken a lot of determination and time, as I wrote in this Guardian article.

Here are a few online retailers you can purchase the books from:

Under The Paw at amazon

Under The Paw at The Book Depository (with free worldwide delivery)

Under The Paw at Waterstones

Under The Paw at Guardian Bookshop


Talk To The Tail at amazon

Talk To The Tail at The Book Depository (with free worldwide delivery)

Talk To The Tail at Waterstones

Talk To The Tail at Guardian Bookshop

And some places to purchase the sequel to both books, The Good, The Bad And The Furry:

The Good, The Bad And The Furry at amazon

The Good, The Bad And The Furry at The Book Depository (with free worldwide delivery)

The Good, The Bad And The Furry at Waterstones

The Good, The Bad And The Furry Guardian Bookshop

The Good, The Bad And The Furry is published today!

Order The Good, The Bad And The Furry  from Waterstones.

Order The Good, The Bad And The Furry from amazon.

Order The Good, The Bad And The Furry from Kobo.  

The Bear Gives A Rare Interview

Me: "Good morning, The Bear."

The Bear: "Technically speaking, we're thirty seven minutes into the afternoon, but hello."

Me: "Well, a lot of people these days seem to still say 'Good morning' if it's still any time before lunchtime. Most folk just accept that."

The Bear: "If 'most folk' told you to lick clean the bonnet of Jeremy Clarkson's sports car after he'd driven recklessly through a muddy ford near his Cotswolds hate palace, would you? I'm just saying: accuracy never hurt anyone, and can alleviate a lot of very harmful confusion in the world."

Me: "Ok. I'll remember that. So, The Bear. Readers of Under The Paw and Talk To The Tail know your story now: your humble beginnings, being found in a carrier bag on the side of the motorway, then being rescued, moving to Norfolk with me and my ex, constantly having to put up with Shipley whacking the top of that cardboard box used to sleep in... right up until now, living with me, Shipley, Ralph, Roscoe, my girlfriend Gemma, and that muntjac deer who sometimes hangs around in the garden."

The Bear: "Hold on. So you're saying that I was struggling a bit, and you came along, and made everything better, by putting me in a couple of books and posting photos of me on the Internet for thousands of people to see?"

Me: "No. I wasn't saying that at all. I'm sure if you'd been rescued by someone else, who didn't go on to live with someone who had a career as a writer, you'd also have had a very nice life. I'm just stating the facts: you were once heartlessly abandoned. Now you live in quite a nice warm house. Constant supply of biscuits on tap. Several Peter Ackroyd books within easy reach. Lots of comfy surfaces. That sort of thing."

The Bear: "I would like to point out at this juncture that they were the wrong kind of biscuits until recently. The cheaper brand with the weird green ones in that I hate. I mean, who ever heard of a green cat biscuit? What's in it? Spinach?"

Me: "I'm sorry. These are austere times to be a writer. My house had needed lots of maintenance recently. I admit, however, that trying to save money on biscuits was a mistake. I have now rectified it. Moving on... How do you feel about the way I've portrayed you in the books? Is it accurate?"

The Bear: "I think the best I can say about it is that it is an accurate portrayal of a few aspects of my character: the aspects, perhaps, that face you, or at least those that you choose to see. I have many other aspects, but I can appreciate that you have an agenda, and may choose to ignore them. I'm used to being misrepresented, though. I mean - look at me. I was named The Bear, yet it would be patently obvious even to a myopic person in their eighties who'd neglected to get checked out at Vision Express for several years that the animal I am most reminiscent of aside from a cat is an owl.

Me: "I noticed that on the day that I finished writing Talk To The Tail, I'd only left the manuscript unattended for about four minutes, but came back to find you on top of it. You had very muddy paws at the time. Was that some sort of comment on the content?"

The Bear: "I felt, at first, a little disappointed that I didn't have a bigger role in the book, that you gave a little bit too much time to Shipley's swearing, Janet's thyroid condition, and Ralph's habit of meowing his own name at the top of his voice at 4am in the morning. And those horses? What was all that about? I calmed down afterwards, and saw that I'd perhaps overreacted. Later on, though, I was disappointed with the paperback cover. You've never even met that kitten on it. It was just some actor kitten. Let's face it: the book doesn't even have a kitten in it."

Me: "I've come to kind of think of it as a Trojan kitten whose job it is to sneak all the animals in the book into readers' houses."

The Bear: "We both know that's nonsense. Your publishers chose the cover, and you had more or less zero say in it. You and I both know I should have been on the cover, cleaning my arse, or looking dolefully into the readers eyes and winning their hearts with my torn ear, and that that would have been a truer reflection of the book's content."

Me: "I notice that you caught your first mouse not all that long ago. You're seventeen now. That took you a while, didn't it? At least, I think you caught it. I can't be sure, as I only saw you with it when it was dead. You could have just claimed it, after Shipley or Ralph got bored of kicking it around the front room."

The Bear: "I caught it. It was pissing about by the compost heap, and I happy-pawed the little gobshite senseless. Nextdoor's cat Biscuit will back me up."

Me: "Speaking of Biscuit: How's that working out for you?"

The Bear: "Good, actually. I'm making progress. I pressed my nose against the kitchen window and stared at her the other day and she didn't even do a projectile grass vomit on the tiles. We've had a couple of scraps recently, but it's that kind of play-fighting that you do when you fancy each other."

Me: "Sure. How are your legs today? You seem to be doing that slightly camp walk quite a lot recently."

The Bear: "It's not "camp". It's just arthritis. We all get it. I'm actually in fantastic health, for my years."

Me: "It is true: You've never looked better. Those scabs on your ears have cleared up, and the many expensive tests the vet recommended earlier this year that I shelled out for turned out to be for nothing."

The Bear: "You've not had much luck at the vet's recently, have you? Y'know, what with that, and the feral you took to have his balls cut off and get tested for FIV, who then ran off?"



Me (coughing): "Changing the subject. You're my cat now, b..."

The Bear: "No, I am my cat."

Me: "Ok, I'll rephrase that. You live with me and my girlfriend now, but before that you lived with me and my ex, and before that you lived with my ex's ex. Do you feel there's any kind of stigma attached to that?"

The Bear: "Not really. You're the one who keeps going on about it."

Me: "You get on well with Gemma, though. We sometimes joke that if the two of us ever split up, she'll have to take you, to keep the trend going.

The Bear: I guess that could happen. I like her very much. Plus, she doesn't listen to those terrible 1970s folk albums that you do, or voice what she presumes to be my thoughts in a fake posh accent that makes me sounds like I'm some ageing homosexual ex-presenter of Jackanory who's never done a hard day's work in his life."

Me: "I wouldn't feel too singled out on that front, if I were you. I talk to a lot of animals in a fake posh voice. I'm always saying a braying pretend upper-class "Hellooo!" to that horse who lives down the road.

The Bear: "The one who looks like Todd Rundgren? I know. He told me, and he thinks it's WEIRD."

Me: "Really? I didn't realise you wandered that far any more, what with the arthritis and everything."

The Bear: "There are a lot of things you don't know."



Me: "I'm currently working on my third cat-themed book, to follow Under The Paw and Talk To The Tail, and there is a pilot for a prospective sitcom inspired by the books being written in America. Do you have any hopes for the content of these?"

The Bear: "I would hope that you might not go into too much detail about my irrational dislike of rain, or my more experimental bowel movements, particularly the incident earlier this year with your original vinyl copies of Neil Young's Doom Trilogy. I'd hope that, if such a sitcom happens, the cats in it still have their claws - both metaphorically and physically speaking. More generally, I would also hope that that small novelty Santa Claus hat you bought from Pets At Home the other week will not be coming out of the kitchen drawer at any point in the near future."

Me: "Thank you for your time, The Bear. I'll let you get back to sleep now."

The Bear: "That's ok. I see it's raining out. Before you go out to get me that turkey you mentioned earlier, could you just move that piece of protective cardboard you've had covering the "Y" section of your record collection? No big reason. I just feel it makes the room look a bit shabby."

Read more about The Bear in Under The Paw and Talk To The Tail

The World's Most Famous Busker's Cat (An Interview I Did Earlier This Year)

It’s early afternoon on a sunny spring Saturday in London, and Covent Garden’s Neal Street is bustling with the usual mixture of tourists and hipsters. Amidst a crowd of fifty or sixty of them, a busker sings Molly’s Lips, a song written by the Scottish band The Vaselines and made famous by his favourite band, Nirvana. His look is pretty archetypal for his trade: long black coat, jeans, beard, floppy, collar-brushing hair. What makes him unusual is that in front of him sits a medium-sized ginger cat, in a scarf. As people mill around him, taking photographs, the cat sits perfectly still, like a small ginger Buddha, barely flinching even when a huge four by four passes along the street within a few feet of his nose. 

“As far as I know, I’m the only person who does this in the UK,” James Bowen tells me, leaning down to stroke the head of Bob, the ginger moggy who accompanies him everywhere he goes. “I heard about a guy in New York who walks around with a cat on his head, but not here. Lots of dogs and some ferrets, but no cats. I wouldn’t actually recommend it. I think Bob’s a one off.”

It was almost five years ago that James, a former heroin addict, met Bob, a poorly stray who hung around the assisted housing where he lived in Tottenham. Having nursed him back to health, he not only realised that Bob wanted to stay by his side, but that he was perfectly happy to ride around on his shoulders and sit patiently with him while he busked. At first, Bob would trot into town alongside James unshackled, but, following a hairy incident when Bob got frightened by a man in an inflatable suit on Piccadilly Circus and ran away, he introduced a harness. “Some people have told me I’m cruel to keep him on a lead,” says James, “but if a cat is unhappy on a lead, it’s obvious. And Bob is happy with it.” In agreement, Bob gazes beatifically up at him, before – and I really have to pinch myself as I watch this - giving him a high five with his paw.

 Soon, James and Bob became London celebrities, whose fans would bring Bob daily treats and clothing (“his wardrobe is much bigger than mine,” says James). As an author of two books about cats, I remember my readers sending me photos of the pair of them as far back as 2008. Now their adventures have been recorded by James in A Street Cat Named Bob: an instantly bestselling memoir that, beside its heartwarming tale of their friendship, offers an insight into the injustice of life on the streets that’s by turns frustrating and life-affirming. “My life really can be divided into two periods: Before Bob, and After Bob,” says James. “I feel blessed every day to know this cat. Some people have asked me if they can buy him, and I always reply with the same question: ‘Would you sell me your firstborn child?’.”

  A Street Cat Named Bob
  Under The Paw
  Talk To The Tail

A Brand New Video From Simon's Cat

Talk To The Tail is out in paperback today!

Have you ordered YOUR copy yet?


Some nice things people have said about the book:

"If you think this very funny book is just about cats, you will be joyfully mistaken. Talk to the Tail also magnificently covers everything from depressed tigers to judgmental horses to mischievous alter ego spaniels to Jon Bon Jovi. I, myself, am allergic to cats, but with Tom's realistic and descriptive powers, I'm definitely not allergic to this book." - Rich Fulcher

"Even a confirmed and partisan dog person such as myself cannot fail to be charmed by Tom Cox's gently seductive prose and his quirky tales of singular feline behaviour. A delight." - Stuart Maconie

"If you've ever been owned by a cat, you'll love this. Books about animals can be mawkish, but this one is often hilarious, occasionally sad, and full of the strangeness of sharing your life with a loved pet." -Woman's Weekly

"Warm, wryly witty, hilariously observed and more often than not, genuinely laugh-out-loud funny." -Easy Living

"A book with a sting in the tail that may give pause to even the most cynical petaphobe." - Mail On Sunday

Read my previous book, Under The Paw....

Probably The First Photo Ever Taken Of Me With A Cat

Read about me and Felix in Under The Paw.
Read the sequel, Talk To The Tail.

Under The Paw: Out In Canada this week!

Just to let Canadian readers of this blog know. You can buy it HERE from Amazon Canada. Still no news on an American publication of the book - though we're getting closer! - so this might also be the easiest way for US blog followers to purchase.

10 Things My Cats Have Disdained Recently

1. Mismatched dustpan and brush neglectfully and quite frankly hurtfully left, "like some kind of sh***ing hint", near notorious cat dust collection spot behind back door.
2. Mint (or at least it was mint) original radio play promo copy of 'Naked And Warm', the seventh album by Bill Withers (1976, Columbia).
3. All laptops but particularly those with their big nasty plastic mouths open.
4. Use of the phrase "See what I did there?" in stand-up comedy routines or casual banter.
5. The formerly cherished, now catnipless giant catnip mouse in the above photograph.
6. Stringy gribbly bits at the bottom of a bowl of Felix As Good As It Looks - aka As Bad As It Smells - cat food (second fortnight running).
7. The resemblance of Silica tablets to Vidalta hyperthyroid pills.
8. My dad's use of the phrase "DO YOU MIND IF I INTERRUPT?" seventeen times in one afternoon, during his recent visit.
9. The decision of the massively underrated 1970s power pop band Artful Dodger to film this masterful song in 1980, as a promo, four years after it originally came out, in a last ditch attempt for the commercial success their New Wave take on Stonesy rock surely deserved.
10. Human hygiene products. Particularly those that write wacky things on their labels, in an attempt to "be your friend".

Come Join The Under The Paw Group On Facebook...

... And invite your cat-loving friends!



I am also now on Twitter - tweeting about other stuff, as well as cats - at twitter.com/tomcox75, if you'd like to follow me there.

Under The Paw Has Feline Readers Too

Dante From Petra:

Fur Ball From Lindsey:


Lister from Sandy (for some reason this picture won't rotate: perhaps Lister is actually one of the rare, legendary Sideways Cats):

Cats And Moving: A Piece By Me From Yesterday's Independent

A generous photo spread of his grizzled mug on page 46 and 47 of a national newspaper clearly doesn't impress The Bear, although it does provide a good makeshift place mat on which he can drop his gribbly bits.

He is far more enamoured of his new "Kitty Disco Pole" scratching post. Here he is (I know - I could have done with having the flash on) doing his David Blaine impression on it. For The Bear, to just scratch it would be far too simple:

Under The Paw: Now Available In Paperback!

Click HERE and then click on the book cover to read an excerpt using amazon.co.uk's 'look inside' function.

Seven Art Installations My Cats Have Been Working On Recently

1. 'Mouse-En-Scene'
One toy rodent placed in perfect symmetry with a real rodent, at the bottom of my stairs.
Pablo: “I suppose my initial inspiration from this came from the famous scene in Goodfellas, when Joe Pesci shows off his mum’s painting of two dogs to Ray Liotta and Robert De Niro: ‘One dog goes one way, one dog goes the other way’. My twist on this classic motif is that I didn’t use dogs, I used mice, and both are facing in the same direction. In the end, the fact that one mouse was freshly killed by yours truly the previous morning and the other was bought from a pet shop in Swaffham in June 2002 is immaterial. Both animals yearn for the same thing - the top of the stairs, and whatever lies beyond – but are ultimately doomed to find that what is there is not the promised mouseian Utopia, but more cats and the restrictive barrier of a ceiling. These rodents face a realisation that has haunted every idealist from Francis Bacon to Britney Spears: that there is only so much “up” in any life. More receptive, intellectually inquiring students of the piece will notice an extra theme: that of The Permanence Of The Transitory, expressed in the juxtaposition of the “real” mouse – soon to be placed in a plastic bag and put in the wheelie bin to quickly rot – and the “fake”, “ephemeral" mouse, still going strong and, amazingly, still squeaking, despite its mass-produced origins and early Noughties vintage.

2. 'The Venerable Bead'
Somewhere between five and seven thousand tiny polystyrene beads from a recently split bean bag, with a fluffy black cat lolloping about in the middle of them.
Janet: “Surely my most ambitious and dramatic composition to date. One of the questions I've most been asked about 'The Venerable Bead' is, 'Why put yourself in it?'. I suppose the most concise answer is that, despite its universality, I always saw it as an ultimately autobiographical work. I would also say that, in the five minutes between the bean bag's contents pouring out onto the floor and my owner returning with a bin bag and a vacuum cleaner, I played around with various other arrangements and none quite felt as true to me; they just didn't have the same sense of journey. A room full of beads: well, that's just, y'know, a room full of beads. But with my startled face in the midst of the chaos, beads stuck all over it, you get the duality of all maelstrom: the sweet release from convention ('Yay! Little white things to twat around the floor!') and the humiliating hangover that inevitably follows ('Bugger! What's this weird stuff stuck to my chin and nose?!").

3. 'Scum Shadow'
A cushion festooned the various miniscule debris of a hard cat's night, but leaving a perfect sleeping cat-shape within its centre.
Shipley: "See my scabby detritus, my sticky buds, my stray, dried eye bogeys, my scurf and dead cells, feel the negative space they create. See me, then see my outline. Who is the real one? Who is the clean one? Ask yourself: what are we all, but outlines, waiting to be filled in?"

4.'Dilemma?'
A single Pets At Home Pet Mitt, placed on the other side of a window to a gardening glove
"Sometimes - and I say this not just because of my own personal sleeping habits - the best art is about doing nothing. It was not me who placed my favourite pet mitt on the window ledge, any more than it was me who dropped the lone, crusty gardening glove on the garden path on the other side of the glass, yet by being there to witness their strange symbiosis, I feel I can claim a kind of ownership. Turn your fingers into a letter box and look through it: the framed scene is perfect.. preordained, one might say. The contrast is fecund and evident. On one side of the glass: the pet mitt, better than any brush, perfectly dimpled for his or her pleasure. On the other side: the gardening glove, provider of a more invigorating stroke than a bare human hand, maybe, but ultimately always the pretender, always feted to be on the outside, looking in."

5. 'Protection'
Two ancient crisp packets, once respectively housing near-forgotten lamb and mint- and spare rib-flavoured snacks, rescued out of the lake at the bottom of my garden, standing half upright against one another.
Janet: "Who says the commercial and throwaway has no place in art? Not Andy Warhol, and not me. What is most interesting to me here is not the outdated nature of the products on offer, but the way they appear to lean on one another for support. They are, if you like, their own teepee, built against the inexorable forward press of potato-based snacks. Designed to withstand an eternity spent submerged in water, to stay crinkly and robust against whatever the UK's landfills have to throw at them, they nonetheless have their own fragility, their own worries about an uncaring, harsher future. They must hide and regroup, and for this regrouping, they choose a spot to the left of the outside drain, beneath the buddleia, before the crazy paving begins: cool, tranquil, reflective."

6.'Usurper'
An aging, stuffed toy otter, abandoned on the floor alongside a favourite armchair.
Bootsy: "I think of this as not just the dispatching of the unreal (i.e. that bloomin' otter that my human slaves always put on top of that expensively covered chair so I don't ruin it) by the kicking, vibrant legs of the real (i.e. me), or even as a statement against the futility of materialism, though it could be argued to be both. I also think of it as my own little joke on those of my peers who choose to cruelly speculate on my lack of bowel movements, simply because I spend an abnormal amount of time indoors. It is a metaphorical silencing of the doubters. It is proof that, despite what my impeccable, Queenly deportment would suggest, I do, just like everyone else - like even the Queen herself - sometimes squeeze out an otter."

7. 'Once-White towel, Now Black With Fur'
A once-white towel, now black with fur.
The Bear: “Genius does not need to justify itself.”

Your Cat Magazine

I have an article in the July issue of Your Cat Magazine, which is on sale in all good newsagents and supermarkets from June 15th. That's me on the cover up there, hiding behind the indignant black wannabe Siamese/Bombay loudmouth. Do check out their smart new website.

Stray Dave Chows Down On His Spoils

Thanks to Lenise for taking these pics of the Under The Paw Hardest-Looking Cat Comp Winner enjoying his prize at the Lewisham branch of CHAT.

MY BOOK, UNDER THE PAW: OUT NOW!

Well, it's actually officially published on Monday, but it's available now on amazon. Click HERE for more info.