The first house we bought was in Twickenham, Middlesex (outside of London) back in the mid-nineteen-nineties.It was a cute little two-up-two-down semi-detached terraced affair with an apple tree in the back garden and a front garden that was so small that the front door effectively led straight out onto the street.
There wasn’t any hallway in the little house so the relationship between the living area and the street was quite intimate to say the least.
We didn’t have the most auspicious start to our ownership of that house. The previous owner vacated a week or two before we got to move in and, as vacating owners sometimes do, they took everything away with them that wasn’t cemented in.
This included such inconsequential items as lightbulbs and doorknobs They also took one item which had traumatic consequences. They took the back door cat flap.
Oh dear.
No, we didn’t actually have a cat but the neighbourhood seemingly had a few. This was obvious when I opened my new front door and peered in. The sunlight beamed in through the hole where the cat flap had been. It illuminated the carpet on the living room (no they didn’t take that).
Oh dear.
The carpet was littered – is there a pun there? I don’t care, I’m too sick recalling this – littered, it was, with cat poo. The smell was overpowering and the visuals were nothing to write home about either.
It was a poor welcome to our new house.
As a result, I became temporarily embittered towards all the cats of my new neighbourhood. I’ve never touched a cat in anger (bear that in mind for later) but I was certainly not above glaring at passing moggys angrily and even muttering powerful swear words under my breath. I know, I was terrible wasn’t I?
There was one particular cat who I suspected as the main culprit. He seemed to be resident a few doors up from us and he was the target of the bulk of my suppressed vitriol.
One Sunday afternoon, some weeks after we first moved in, we were sitting in the living room enjoying the early spring afternoon outside our open front door. There were three of us in the room, my wife, her sister and me. I was the one closest to the door.
I glanced idly away from the TV towards the open door and I froze. Directly outside, pointing its pencil-sharpener butt at our climbing ivy – and thus in the front door – was the neighbour’s cat. I’m no expert in feline asses but my assessment was that this one was about to squirt all over our ivy and possibly into the house.
I gestured at the girls, shushed them, and rose ever-so-quietly from my couch. I got behind the unsuspecting cat, right at the door and drew my boot back as I took careful aim at its ass…
Okay, let me hit the pause button here for a moment. I know a lot of cat lovers come through here and what I am about to say now really is the truth. I was not going to actually kick the cat – it’s not in my nature – but I certainly did intend to whiz my boot within a few millimetres of its offending orifice and make it think twice about ever defecating on my new property again.
… so I drew my boot back and took aim.
Did you know that peripheral vision is extremely sensitive to light and movement? Well, it is. And right at that moment, my peripheral vision told me that a man was approaching along the sidewalk. Furthermore, in one of the few possibly-genuine psychic events of my life, I knew (I just knew) that this man owned this cat.
With my foot swung out at 65 degrees behind me, I seemed committed to the drop-kick but, in a balletic movement worthy of Nureyev himself, I swooped down on my one planted leg - my other leg was still out behind me - and laid my hand on the kitty’s back in a gentle caress . The cat bristled and jumped away.
“Ah”, the approaching gent said, “I see you’ve met Thomas.”
“Yes, yes,” I replied, “a lovely cat, really lovely”.
“He’s a character all right,” laughed my new neighbour, “terribly sociable.”
None of this was helped by the fact that my lovely wife and her sister were in absolute hysterics behind me in the living room. The stunning level of my doorstep hypocrisy – not to mention the impossible body-formation I was somehow managing to maintain during this wonderfully friendly discussion – was too much to not enjoy.
“Well,” my new neighbour said, after an impossibly long pause, “'must be off.”
“Right, well, see you then.”
And he went… and his cat went with him… but not before briefly squirting my ivy.
Bloody cats!
