Boxing Cat

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):

Five Famous Cat Men

A piece I wrote recently for the Financial Times.

You've Got A Friend (And Just Because He Is A Mouse, That Is No Reason To Be Ashamed)

I was very interested to get an email forwarded to me the other day by Under The Paw reader Helen, with a link to a video from the website of the super laid-back singer-songwriter James Taylor. This can be seen here and is probably a better insight into what former seventies pop scenesters do with their free time than any number of VH1 documentaries: first Taylor builds a mouse trap with a tin can, some wood, and an almond embedded in peanut butter. He then promises to take us to "Mouse Heaven", which sounds kind of macabre coming from a garage-dwelling Taylor, particularly when you take into account his headwear, but actually turns out to be a special cabinet where he keeps Evander, a mouse he rescued earlier from his cat, Ray, who is clearly still holding a major grudge about the whole unjust episode.

I'm not convinced that Evander - so named because he has a hole in his ear - actually likes the small ball Taylor has made for him to roll around on the floor in, but the video is ultimately as sweet and gently thoughtful as it is odd. When Taylor talks about his next mouse sitting in his DIY trap and "thinking about what he's done", you realise: this is a guy who could never have been in Aerosmith. It all slightly reminds me of the time I had to interview the pre-punk childman rocker Jonathan Richman, and came armed with forty odd questions about his enormous back catalogue, only to find that all Richman wanted to talk about was his newfound interest in cement.

Taylor also has a video where he demonstrates Ray's special catladder.

Under A Bigger Paw

The week before last, I committed what my cats would probably consider the ultimate act of betrayal by taking a trip to Kent to The Wildlife Heritage Foundation, having been very kindly invited to have a look around by the UK's number one cat behavourist, Vicky Halls. Vicky has been extending her cat counselling repertoire recently by working with Ronja, a depressed, lame, agoraphobic female tiger originally from a German zoo, who's been living at WHF since 2004. Ronja didn't precisely seem overjoyed to see me, but is responding well to the toys and treatments that Vicky has suggested for her, which include extra-strength catnip and spare copies of the Yellow Pages*, which she rips up with her teeth in much the same way that Shipley does with my favourite paperbacks and draft manuscripts.

Since big cats don't meow or purr (although they do something vaguely similar to the latter, which WHF's keepers call "chuffling"), I found the idea that they would go loopy over catnip surprising at first, but less so the longer I spent at WHF. In the movements of the snow leopards, leopards, tigers, lynxes and cheetahs I met, I observed at the lazy swagger of my own cats, writ large. Although I was a bit nervous about putting my hand through the bars and feeding them chicken drumsticks initially, I soon became lulled into what was undoubtedly a false sense of security. Never was this more extreme than in the presence of the Pallas Cats, who, though ostensibly similar to my tabby narcissist, Ralph, would no doubt be more than happy to mess you up, ghetto-style, given half a chance. It was somewhat easier to stay circumspect around the snow leopards, Artur and Artem, whose paws are the size of Ralph's head, and whose tails work as in-built draft excluders (for warehouse fire doors, presumably). I'm glad that Vicky took the photos above, because I can put them on Facebook and make out to my friends that I'm really brave, but what they don't tell you is just how quickly my arm shot backwards 0.00001 of a second after Artem bit the chicken out of my hand.

I also got a peek inside "the dead shed", whose contents probably would have shocked me more were I not currently in the odd position of storing some horse's skulls on the balcony of my house for a family friend (more about this to come in the currently-in-progress sequel to Under The Paw). I've always thought of myself as the most squeamish of people, but I think after a few more hours at WHF, the site of blood, guts and dead rabbits would probably quickly become as quotidian as that of a freshly opened pouch of Felix. Having said this, I did wince a little when the volunteer keeper, Sarah, told me the story about one of the lions being semi-castrated in a fight. Apparently the claw went "all the way through". You could be the most rough and tumble, lion-cuddling outdoorsman, and you'd still find it hard not to suppress a shiver at that.

* It's good to know someone has some use for them these days.

Contribute to a vital cause:

The Wildlife Heritage Foundation.

Call Of The Wild: A Big Cat-Themed Song For Charity By Under The Paw Reader Paul Oakley.

Tiger Awareness.

The Snow Leopard Trust.

And I Thought I Was Clever For Putting A Pile Of Grass Clippings On Top Of Shipley...

The "Charley Says" Public Information Films: More Proof That There's A Lot We Can Learn From Cats

For about three months during the mid-Eighties, my schoolfriend Matthew Spitall and I became weirdly obsessed with cat food adverts. On our way to and from the bus stop, we would bellow their theme tunes, which included such unforgettable hits as "Kitty Cat: That's Living!" and "Cats Make Haste For The Munchies Taste (The Munchies Taste Makes Cats Make Haste)". This was in that brief halcyon period before the cruel social hierarchy of an apathetic English comprehensive state school stomps out that last, precious bit of unselfconscious primary school innocence. Back in our village, Matthew went by the nickname "Rocker": not because he liked to listen to rock - he did, and, incidentally, I will always be grateful to him for being the first person to play me These Dreams by Heart - but because he once hit his head on one and claimed not to have felt anything. Later, he would become one of the first people in my school to wear a leather jacket and drift away from me in favour of a gang of kids who smoked behind the local leisure centre. But during the winter of 1986-87, amongst myself and a few others, he was best known for his habit of inserting comedy meows into the popular songs and jingles of the day.

Among the broadcasts that occupied our thoughts - and those of many of our less cat-enamoured peers - at this time were the "Charley Says" public information films. These short animations followed the adventures of a young boy and his alternately killjoy/hedonist pet cat, Charley, and in the process warned of hazards variously overreported (deep water, strangers) and barely suspected (tables). They were originally broadcast in the early Seventies, but were given a rerun thirteen years later, ingraining the message that there IS DANGER EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD AND WE SHOULD ALL STAY INSIDE ALL DAY AND WEAR PROTECTIVE BODYSUITS into a new generation of children, and also giving us a glimpse of the kind of creature that might emerge if you crossed Bagpuss with a Health And Safety Official and a small, moth-eaten tiger.

Essentially, if you were at school in the UK at this point, and wanted to fully illustrate how lame a person was, there was no more cutting insult than repeating back whatever they'd just said to you in the voice of Charley's owner. Other popular parodies of the Charley films in my school year included a) whispering the words "Charley said.." to the person sitting next to you and making them spit all over their test paper, and b) making up endless variations at the bit of the Don't Talk To Strangers Charley film where Charley's owner says "I got an apple and Charley got something he likes" ("I got a blow-up doll and Charley got a crack pipe" etc). At the time, if you wanted an easy guide on how not to be cool and popular at school, you just had to look at Charleykid.

Yet what strikes me now is not the films' lameness, but their rudimentary charm, and, I think, though we weren't self-aware enough to know it, that was a big part of their original appeal for Matthew and me. You're a stronger person than me if you fail to get sucked into the expertly-plotted dramatic climax of the film where Charley falls in the river. And while my own cats run a fair gamut of voice tones, I still hope one day to find my own mog with an admonitory, Charley-style waffling meow who would warn me when danger is on the horizon, rather than just watching me fall foul of it whilst betraying just the hint of a supercilious, knowing smile.