How To Feed Six Sodding Cats: Instructions For Housesitters

1. Take five porcelain bowls and Free Sideless Entirely Pointless Curvy Purina One Plastic Dish and arrange them on plastic trays on kitchen worktop.

2. Bat Overexcitable Retarded Ginger Cat off worktop with elbow, whilst using phrase involving the word “cretin”.

3. Whistle loudly, using special Tomwhistle.

4. Open kitchen drawer and reach for two sachets of Felix Meat Selection In Jelly. DO NOT use Felix ‘As Good As It Looks’ sachets mouldering in rear of drawer.

5. Bat Overexcitable Retarded Ginger Cat out of drawer with forearm. Show Overexcitable Retarded Ginger Cat tiny space between thumb and forefinger, explaining to him that he has “that much talent”.

6. Simultaneously Remove Obnoxious Noisy Black Cat from Overexcitable Retarded Ginger Cat’s face and Grey Dwarf Cat from Overexcitable Retarded Ginger Cat’s bottom.

7. Gently greet Prettyboy Tabby Cat in unthreatening girly voice, in an attempt not to hurt Prettyboy Tabby Cat’s increasingly delicate self-esteem.

8. Open sachets of Felix Meat Selection In Jelly and distribute evenly between five porcelain bowls and Free Sideless Entirely Pointless Curvy Purina One Plastic Dish.

9. Bat Overexcitable Retarded Ginger Cat off worktop with elbow, whilst mocking Overexcitable Retarded Ginger Cat’s habit of leaving his tongue out and needling him about childhood traumas.

10. Empty and refill Strangely Named Plastic Water Dispenser, removing soggy biscuits from plughole.
 
11. Forcefully remove Obnoxious Yappy Black Cat from kitchen work surface.

12. Whistle loudly, using special Tomwhistle.

13. Remove Fluffy Dumb Black Cat’s claw from leg.

14. Call name of Troubled Sensitive Artistic Warlord Black Cat out window, being careful to direct voice in way that will not irritate neighbours, or make passers-by think that the phrase “The Bear!” could mean that there is actual bear roaming South Norfolk streets.

15. Begin to place five porcelain bowls and Free Sideless Entirely Pointless Curvy Purina One Plastic Dish at evenly spaced intervals across kitchen floor, being careful not to squish too close to kickboards for fear of “fast-dried gribbly bits syndrome”.

16. Chase down stairs after Prettyboy Tabby Cat, attempting to convince Prettyboy Tabby Cat that just because Grey Dwarf Cat has hissed at Prettyboy Tabby Cat, it is no reason not to eat.

17. Return Overexcitable Retarded Ginger Cat to original dish, clearing space for Prettyboy Tabby Cat.
 
18. Return Grey Dwarf Cat to original dish, clearing space for Fluffy Dumb Black Cat.

19. Form human shield between Obnoxious Yappy Black Cat, Overexcitable Retarded Ginger Cat and Grey Dwarf Cat and Free Sideless Entirely Pointless Curvy Purina One Plastic Dish.

20. Place Troubled Sensitive Artistic Warlord Black Cat in front of Free Sideless Entirely Pointless Curvy Purina One Plastic Dish.

21. Watch as Troubled Sensitive Warlord Black Cat looks up, deep into eyes, with a “What? You want me to eat this shit?” face.

22. Place Free Sideless Entirely Pointless Curvy Purina One Plastic Dish and Troubled Sensitive Artistic Warlord Black Cat on kitchen work surface together, gently ushering Troubled Sensitive Artistic Warlord Black Cat towards meaty jellied chunks until Troubled Sensitive Artistic Warlord Black Cat begins to take tentative licks at meaty jellied chunks.

23. Re-fill Strangely Named Plastic Water Dispenser, after removing Fluffy Dumb Black Cat puke from Strangely Named Plastic Water Dispenser’s central reservoir.

24. Return meaty jellied chunks from kitchen work surface to Free Sideless Entirely Pointless Curvy Purina One Plastic Dish whilst making gentle encouraging noises at Troubled Sensitive Artistic Warlord Black Cat.

25. Bat Overexcitable Retarded Ginger Cat off worktop with elbow, vocally noting Overexcitable Retarded Ginger Cat’s Resemblance to a recently lobotomised feline Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

26. Chase down stairs after Prettyboy Tabby Cat, attempting to convince Prettyboy Tabby Cat that just because Grey Dwarf Cat has hissed at Prettyboy Tabby Cat, it is no reason not to eat.

27. Quickly place kitchen roll under Fluffy Dumb Black Cat’s mouth, as Fluffy Dumb Black Cat begins to re-enact the video to ‘Street Dance’. Use other hand to move retreating Troubled Sensitive Artistic Warlord Black Cat out of line of fire.

28. Use Overexcitable Retarded Ginger Cat’s in-built waste-disposal mechanism on Free Sideless Entirely Pointless Curvy Purina One Plastic Dish and surrounding environs, whilst retracting all previous references involving the phrases “cretin” and “Bennie from Crossroads”.

29. Use Overexcitable Retarded Ginger Cat’s in-built waste-disposal mechanism on other bowls to prevent “fast-dried gribbly bit syndrome”.

30. Open drawer for teabag and mug.

31. Gentle remove Overexcitable Retarded Ginger Cat from drawer.

32. Wipe stray jellified chunk from tea mug.

33. Wipe stray jellified chunk from underarm, but not before using to gain spurious cupboard love from Grey Dwarf Cat.

34. Hold teabag in front of Overexcitable Retarded Ginger Cat’s face, asking, in increasingly frantic tones, “You want this? You want this? Huh?”.

35. Repeat every ten-twelve hours.

Extracted from Under The Paw: Confessions Of A Cat Man.

Read the sequel Talk To The Tail: Adventures In Cat Ownership And Beyond.

The Colonel In Crisis

Ralph is the most highly-strung of my cats. He most resembles one of that special breed of rock stars who somehow manage the feat of being simultaneously majestic and slightly fetid. I hope that one day he will be the kind of self-assured cat who demands a nickname like "The Colonel". In the highly unlikely event that I ever show off one of of my common-or-garden moggies in a cat show, he'd be the one I'd want to enter, though I'd probably earn his lifelong scorn in the process. I may already have his lifelong scorn. At the time of writing, there's a fair amount of doubt about the issue. He's always been easily upset, but normally Dee and I deal with his mood swings with a delicately-balanced combination of head-scratches, extensive sessions with the JML pet mitt and buttery treats. It's a fine line between "Dribbling Paddy Ralph" and "Celebrity Tantrum Ralph". We usually manage to just about walk it until July comes around and the great depression arrives and Ralph goes next door and hides in a bush where, for the next four or five weeks, until the weather cools, he will make distressed howling noises suggestive of a minor nervous breakdown.

I've never heard of a summer version of Seasonal Affective Disorder but, if it exists, Ralph almost certainly has it. I thought we'd been lucky this year: July arrived, and he was still his usual intermittently affectionate, intermittently panicked, narcissistic self - half Jim Morrison, half Beaker from The Muppets. Then, when the hot weather arrived a week or so ago, I heard a "heeooouurrrw" noise and, although for a moment I mistook it for the sound of one of the kids nextdoor-but-one falling off their new trampoline, I very quickly realised that Summer Ralph had once again arrived.

I know the only thing to do is wait this out. Three years ago, when the problem began, we took him to the vets, where he was diagnosed with feline depression and prescribed a course of female hormones. I'm not convinced these had any effect - although Dee claims she could detect that his howling had gone up an octave - and I don't really want to add to the gender identity issues of a cat who, for his first three months with us, was largely referred to as either "Prudence" and "our only girl". Nonetheless, I worry about him. It does not help that the few times he has ventured towards the house he has quickly been set upon by the pygmy Bootsy. Watching these episodes of Napoleonic tyranny, with their accompanying mewling sounds, is can only be described as a truly awesome and comic experience and gives me a new insight into the origination of the word "sourpuss". How can one so small and brittle-boned cause so much fear in the heart of one so chunky and beefcakelike? It's impossible to say, but I'm not completely convinced that it's Bootsy's reign of terror that's responsible for the shrubbery-based strops. After all, Bootsy slaps Ralph about in the winter too, and he doesn't run off in the manner of a spoilt seven year-old girl - or at least not nearly as often. Perhaps it's a hair issue: Ralph has a wonderful, lionish coat, and is the only cat I've ever had who can be described as having sideburns and you can see the heat getting to him, but Janet is much fluffier, and you don't see him throwing a hissy fit about it.

Maybe Ralph is pining for his long lost sister: the other tabby who came from his litter, who we decided to not take home with us after seeing her curl up and go to sleep in her crud tray. Who knows? Perhaps he's not howling at all, but singing to an imaginary pride: a cat version of the kind of girls who didn't let the smell of Jim Morrison's leather trousers deter them from seeing him as athe ultimate tousled pin-up. There is no doubt, from the way Ralph beams at me in his calmer moments, that he is happy being him - in fact, he couldn't seem happier unless he had a thought bubble above him saying "I am Ralph! I please myself immensely!" - but his self-love is a precarious commodity. It needs to be fed and that feeding is not always just about the leftovers from my Taste The Difference waffles. It is about a slow, steady massaging of the animalistic ego. I'm sure Kate Hudson and Pamela Des Barres have had similar experiences with their menfolk. I'm also sure that one autumn day, not far in the future, the old Ralph will walk back confidently into the house and begin padding my or Dee's stomach in a frighteningly vigorous manner. We'll know that he's shaken off his demon - and probably a few fleas at the same time - but we'll also know that, with another summer gone by, our hopes of ever getting our robust, level-headed Colonel are just that bit more unrealistic.

7 Ways In Which I Have Tried And Failed To Hurt My Cats' Feelings

1. Using air quotes and a sarcastic inflection whilst saying one of their names (e.g "Yeah, like you've got anything remotely intelligent to say on the subject, 'Delawney'.")

2. Going into "Sensitive Middle Class dad mode" and attempting to show them that by pissing on the side of my new brand new desk/leaving a vole's nose on the step outside the bathroom/breaking an expensive vase with their tail/getting overexuberant while I am cutting up chicken, they have seriously, and possibly irreparably, hurt my feelings (e.g. "Shipley, that is unacceptable. Quite frankly, I'm upset now, and so is D. In fact, we may not even eat dinner at all now, thanks to you. You may think it's okay to claw daddy's leg and yap like a spoilt, preternaturally effeminate terrier now, but what happens one day when you get out into the wide world? Do you think you want to be known as the kind of cat who climbs up people's legs any time he sees some raw meat he fancies? Do you think grown-up people will still like you, after you get a reputation for doing things like that? Hmm? Hmm? What have you got to say for yourself?").

3. Freaking them out by repeatedly rewinding the Sky Plus and replaying noises from nature programmes made by bigger, tougher cats (actually, this almost works).

4. Attempting to defuse an incident of living room megalomania by referring to painful memories from the out-of-control culprit's childhood ("Fine, The Bear, snub this expensive new luxury cat igloo and wee on the curtain if you want... It's not as if I expected anything else from someone who comes from a family rife with incest and grew up in a place like Plaistow.")

5. Threatening to video their noisiest bottom-cleaning sessions and post them on Youtube.

6. Using the phase "You think you're tough, but you wouldn't last five sodding minutes in the Serengeti, matey" after one of them has stormed off in the aftermath of a flea treatment.

7. Getting home and being swamped by all six of the little gits (all of whom ignored me earlier but have now got hungry, and mysteriously changed their tune) but blanking them and waving to a more interesting, good-looking cat that I have pretended to spot on the other side of the kitchen.

Turtle Soup (and other culinary issues)

I saved a turtle’s life the other day.

Even as a regular rescuer of random wild animals, this is not the kind of statement that I find myself making on a regular basis. It reminds me of the enormous wall diary in my FE college, where I and the other students were supposed to record our activities for the campus radio station, but quickly started defacing the surface with surreal statements regarding tasks involving animals. “Save a turtle’s life!”, while not quite of the quality of "Made a crow burst into tears!, might have been worthy of inclusion alongside “Scared some pigs!” and "Messed with an otter's mind!".

But I really did save a turtle’s life in this instance. I first spotted it last summer, basking on the rotting jetty at the bottom of my garden. I even managed to take a couple of quick photos of it before it took a lazy dive back into Norfolk’s most famous town mere. I guess it was an unwanted pet, and it made me feel melancholy. Sure, it might have got to eat the mouldy bread that the town’s notoriously fussy ducks left behind, sup on the dregs from the mere’s ample supply of beer cans, but what was its sex life like? What did it do for conversation? After entertaining a few thoughts about rescuing it, or at least finding it a mate, I didn’t think about it again until the other morning, when I saw a strange shape next to the jetty.

From a distance, and I assumed the shape was the heron that sometimes visits the same area: there was a torso-like blob above the water and then, above it, something thinner. This was a busy deadline day and it was only at about 4pm that I took a closer look. What I saw, as I neared the end of the garden, was an upside down turtle, its head in the water, its shell above and above that, one leg, trapped in the wire mesh on the jetty.

My initial thought was that it was dead, but as I got onto the jetty, it twitched its leg slightly. By this point I'd gone into panic mode, and was thinking all sorts of irrational things, like, "What if it’s shell falls off and I turn it into the world's biggest snail?”. After an aborted, truly pathetic attempt to flick at the leg using some kitchen roll, I used some scissors to cut the wire mesh and it sprang free. A moment later, I saw the turtle swimming happily into the middle of the mere. Maybe I was a bit of a chicken not to have actually got hold of its leg, but somewhere in the back of my brain I could remember the phrase “snapping turtles”. Also, it had got a lot bigger since last year: its shell is now about the circumference of a an old vinyl album.

Which is more than I can say for Pablo.

Actually, Pablo doesn’t have a shell, but I feel sure that, if he did, he’d be crawling under it right at this moment. Two hours ago, Delawney jumped from behind a chair onto his head, and he hasn't been seen since. He’s generally become very distant recently, fearful of his brothers: not just of his long-time tormentor, Shipley, but also of the Bear, who has never laid a finger on him, but happens to be, like Shipley, black (does this make Pablo a racist?). He is also significantly skinnier than he was back in February and March. This is a phenomenon known as “Summer Pablo”, in which, whilst still having the diet of a medium-size rhinoceros, my most primitive-minded cat begins to shed his winter weight. After two years of this, we know not to be too alarmed, but it’s sort of difficult, when you’ve seen ginger pom-pom fluffiness turn to a redheaded streak of sinew in what feels like a matter of days. This has never happened to any of my more mimsy, domesticated moggies, so I wonder if it’s a feral thing?

In Memoriam...

Things are quiet here at the moment. Well, actually, that's horsecrap - they aren't very quiet at all. Pablo is fast learning to speak (albeit in the voice of a panicked budgie), Bootsy has been giving the Bear some rather vocal bollockings for the very fact of his existence, and that weird white cat from across the road who likes to tart its tail in Janet's face keeps waking me up in the middle of the night with its Eartha Kitt purrmeow and its heavy-footed landings on top of the conservatory roof. But listen closely and there is a difference between the sound of this spring and the sound of other springs before it. What is missing is a panicked, high-pitched sound: a sound much more panicked and high-pitched, even, that the one Pablo makes when he hears the food drawer opening. What is missing, quite simply, is the sound of slaughter.

I have no idea what has caused my little serial killers to lay off the homicide this year. Have they heard something on the grapevine about that Bernard Matthews factory down the road and decided to play it cautiously with their feathered friends for a while? Is there something a bit "off" about this year's crop of rodents? Or have they just become too fat and lazy? Whatever the case, there have only been two mouse arses on the carpet in the last two weeks, and just one small bit of blood and bird bone on the parquet upstairs. It is impossible to emphasise just how different this is from 2006, 2005, and 2004, when I started to wonder if it had, after all, been a good idea to move to a house next to a haven for birdlife, and became so used to clearing up mouse intestine that the process very nearly became as unemotional as wiping some unusually adhesive curry off the kitchen work surface. Not to mention the three baby moorhens that, by this point last year, I had chased around the living room in a re-enactment of the Wacky Races.

What does it say about a pet owner when, upon noting that their pets have become less bloodthirsty, their sigh of relief is drowned out the question "But what's WRONG?" I'm sure that, even by bringing this up, I am jinxing this sedate, shrew nose-free period, and that tomorrow I will come down to my study and be greeted by two fresh coot claws and a pheasant wing, but, before the inevitable happens, I thought this might be a good time to commemorate my natural born killers' most memorable and plucky victims. God bless the poor little critters, but, as some - well, Delawney, probably - would say, "Those fuckers had it coming..."


1. Fat Rat (May, 2002)
The too-remote, too-dark starter cottage is on the market. D and I have been watching House Doctor religiously for what feels like the last seventeen years, without stopping. Colour schemes have become neutral. Surfaces have been Flash-wiped to within an inch of their lives. Coffee has been brewed. And that large, suspiciously brown leaf has been picked off Janet's big fluffy posterior at the last minute. Mr Newman has arrived. "It's like the Tardis in here," he says. "Nice garden, too." But, oh, what's that? It's the world's biggest rat, leaping out out of the antique po cabinet, and running across the room squeaking comically! That smooth operator from Selling Houses never had this trouble.

2. Dumbo Pheasant (June, 2002)
My most bloodthirsty ever cat, Brewer, might have had the mewling voice of a pathetic, incontinent human child, but by the time he was six months old, his diet was beginning to look like a dress rehearsal for the Serengeti. Vole was followed by mouse which was followed by rat which was followed by rabbit which was followed by weasel. The next step on the ladder was inevitable. Norfolk pheasants are notorious for their stupidity, but this one really walked into the lion's jaws. The ensuing scene was strangely reminiscent of an overweight striker being brought down by a small, yet unusually vicious defender in a Sunday League football match. It also provided an early indication of Delawney and Shipley's extensive goading talents. It was one of the saddest moments of my life when, three months later, Brewer was run over and killed. The peacocks at the nearby rest home, who were clearly starting to get worried by this point, may have viewed the matter more phlegmatically.

3. Melancholy Wood Pigeon (June, 2004)
"I think we have to put it out of its misery," says D, as we survey the light grey catastrophe at the top of the stairs. I agree, but I have never put anything out of its misery in my life, with the possible exception of a chicken casserole I made in Home Economics when I was 13. Plus, it would be a lot easier if Woody - and, even if this characterful creature is not called something as obvious as Woody, it is clear he deserves some kind of name - stopped staring at me in that way that seems to tell me he will be right as rain just as soon as he can get that broken wing working again. Putting him in a cardboard box, and pulling my best "What you gotta do, you gotta do" face, I place him amidst some shrubbery, in the hope that, soon, he will drift off peacefully into a never-ending sleep. Over the next five hours, I make four return visits, each of which end with me moving Woody slightly further into the shrubbery, as he looks at me more and more imploringly. I am a bad person. The next morning, I check to see if he is there. He is not. Delawney has a pleased-with-himself glow. But Delawney often has a pleased-with-himself glow. "Who's to say that Woody did not learn First Aid in the night, repair the damage, and fly home to his family?" I tell myself, until I see Shipley trying to spit a feather out of his mouth.

4. Twangy Stoat (April, 2005)
The length of a human intestine is approximately 22 feet. The length of a stoat's intestine, meanwhile, is not notably shorter. I know this. Why? Because I have seen one stretched out to its full length across my lawn.

5. Forlorn Blobby Mass (March, 2005)
Just because your identity was nebulous, do not think that you do not merit the term "plucky". You did not go to the wheelie bin without a fight, little man/woman/thing/viscous gloop - you were an absolute bugger to get off the entrance hall floor, and you will be remembered.

It's not unusual for cats to have fussy drinking habits. A couple of years ago, I stayed the night in a Paris bookstore overrun with strays whose ritual it was to drink exclusively from a fountain beside the Seine. Then, at the other end of the spectrum, there was my old cat Monty, who used to like nothing better than getting his head down deep in some toilet water . About a year ago, my smallest and youngest cat, Bootsy, started getting up on the work surface with a kind of "Well?" look in her eyes and I, like the mug that I am, began turning on the tap for her. Obviously, this is lovely to watch, but it has now become a twice-daily ritual. In fact, I don't think I have ever seen her drink from anything else. I mean, I'm sure she could survive, if the worse came to the worst, but I now find myself worrying, when faced with a couple of days away from home, "What if she dies of dehydration?". This is an absolutely ridiculous thought, coming from someone who has a five acre mere at the bottom of his garden, but it is no more ridiculous or neurotic than most of the others that go with a life of being Your Cat's Bitch.

One of the most intriguing bits of advice I remember my late grandma giving me - along with the bit about getting rid of your teeth at the earliest possible opportunity, and lying flat on your back when there was lightning in the air - was "Never touch a dog when it's eating". I have no idea why she needed to point this out, since nobody in my family had a dog at the time, and I wasn't in the habit of inviting stray beagles in to chow down on that night's chicken balti. Nonetheless, the advice stuck in my head. Upon visiting friends' houses and seeing their canines in front of the food bowl, I would have an urge to tap them on the shoulder or stick something on their back, just to find out what kind of nameless, fangy terror my grandma was hinting at. I never did so, in the end, but I have frequently run similar experiments with my cats during mealtime, and the results have been uniformly unfrightening. Upon being distracted from his Purina One by his owner sticking a post-it to the top of his head, Delawney merely turned around and gave me a withering look of the kind that seemed to demand the caption "That's hilarious, but not as hilarious as the suspicious chunk of brown substance I left next to your pillow earlier". Janet, meanwhile, looked positively delighted to be distracted from Felix's As Good As It Looks (an accurate piece of marketing, possibly, in that it looks bloody ghastly) by my incessant tapping of his tail. My cats are greedy, certainly, but I never sense that there will be any greater repercussions by me distracted them from their culinary mission.

Drinking, however, is a different matter. None of them like to be looked at while they do it, and most of them choose to do it in secret. I know the level of the water dispenser in my kitchen goes down regularly, and I know it's not just evaporation, but I very rarely see anyone in front of it. Why is that? Is the consumption of large amounts of H20 in the cat world regarded like alcoholism in the human one: as something slightly shameful, to be done in dark places? Or is it an affront to the meat-eating masculinity of my five male cats? I'm not sure. I do know, though, that the cretinous Pablo has recently started following Bootsy up onto the work surface and looking at the tap with interest. But when I trickle it, he just stares and sticks his tongue out, as if contemplating some unfathomable chrome god. He might master it yet. More likely, though, he will just join Delawney in lapping regularly at the shore of the mere. It might be a beautiful natural expanse of water, but I imagine the countless bit of duck excrement, three quarter-drunk cans of Stella Artois that go into it every week give its contents the kind of kick that even the best water-purifiers are going to struggle to match.

Puss, Mog Or Kittycat?

I've noticed recently that, when using cat slang, I only seem to refer to some of my six cats as a "puss". Others are always a "mog". I'm wondering if this is just me looking too deeply at my cats' personalities, or has anyone else noticed this: that cats are not just defined by their catness, they are also defined by their pussness or mogosity, and while a cat can be either a puss or a mog, being both would be against all the laws of nature, like supporting Liverpool AND Everton? To clarify: my cat Shipley (lean, muscley, quick-moving and obnoxious) could only be a puss, while to refer to his brother Delawney (sun-loving, tabby, narcissistic, very slightly overweight) as anything other than a mog would be like calling a badger a kangaroo. On the whole, mogs (e.g. Bagpuss, Garfield) have had much greater success in the public eye than pusses. I wonder why this is. Is it because Pusses are essentially flakey and skittish? Or it is something to do with the Mog's intrinsic sense of entitlement?

Because I think about these things far too much for my own sanity, I have come up with the following easy-to-use guide which I think defines the essential characteristics that separate Pusses from their Mog nemeses:

MOG
Possibly in need of a diet
Expensive tastes
Round-faced
Purr reminiscent of heavy machinery
Won't get out of bed for less than £3,000
Sits in windows a lot
Longish hair (not essential, but prevalent)

PUSS
Slim-faced
"Office joker" personality
Girly voice
Whiskers that look like they could get you out of a tight spot
Short hair (not essential, but prevalent)
Enjoys mouse tennis
Tree climber

Since my pygmy cat, Bootsy, doesn't fit into either of these categories, I'm wondering if I need to invent one more: that of the Kittycat. I am not sure if this exists, so it's entirely possible that the character traits listed below might only apply to one undersized, tyrannical grey cat from Norfolk, rather than an entire cat genre....

KITTYCAT
Cross-eyed
Bottomless pit for stomach
Spazzy legs
Disapproving manner
Likes chewing radio aerials
Looks a bit like Marissa from American teen drama The OC