Talk to the Tail: Adventures in Cat Ownership and Beyond (21 page)

Another side effect of Janet’s resurgence was the curbing of his litter habit. The drying up of the supply of empty Rizla and Chippy Chips packets in the garden was gradual, and seemed to occur in direct correlation to the improvement in his health. This seemed to confirm my suspicions that the main root of Janet’s wombling had not been a wish to be part of the Keep Britain Tidy campaign, or some bizarre autistic attachment to inanimate objects, but a mysterious conviction that they contained a cure. But what? I felt that, if The Bear could speak, he would have been able to tell me. He’d so often been around during the hard times with Janet – his most violent vomiting sessions, those moments when he gargled and clawed at me as I tried to push the pill into the back of his mouth, and the time when I found him sprawled out in the kitchen, whining mournfully next to an algae-coated monstrosity that, many waterlogged years ago, had probably had another life as a small swing-bin liner. At these times, The Bear would usually be found observing us from some high perch, wryly. As Janet faded, he’d become almost preposterously plush, as if he was sucking the life force from his fluffier companion. One day, a newspaper photographer arrived at the house, looked at The Bear, and said, ‘I assume this is one of the younger ones?’ I asked him to guess his age. ‘Three?’ he said.

There would still be much pain in the aftermath of my split with Dee. And with it loomed the spectre of Jake from Texas: the single man in late middle age, with no cat boundaries. I can’t say it was an appealing future. On the other hand, I had always quite fancied living in a shack, so it wouldn’t be without its upside. Soon, Dee would be moving into a flat with a garden, and we would have to go through the agony of dividing our cats. The exact vagaries of who ended up living with whom had not been decided yet, but it looked very much like The Bear and Janet – the cats I’d inherited from her – would be living with me. ‘Those two have always liked you better than me anyway,’ she reasoned.

But did The Bear and Janet like
each other
? I’m not sure ‘like’ was quite the right word. Fate would often look like splitting up their Odd Couple relationship, then throw them back together, usually to The Bear’s chagrin and Janet’s brief, dumb excitement. They were slightly jaded by one another, perhaps not as
interested
in one another as other cats in their vicinity, but it was surprising how often they ended up on the same bed or sofa, just a matter of inches from touching tails. They were very different characters, but they were different from my other cats too: a little less demanding, a little less spoilt. And then there was their strange pacifism: I still had no evidence that either of them had ever slaughtered another living thing.

Was that what Janet had been doing, during the early days of his thyroid troubles, when he’d been so hungry? Looking for nourishment in litter? I liked to think so: that, despite being ravenous, it was his way of doing all he could and not let his resolve crumble and go and pick off a sickly field mouse or tired jackdaw. And I also liked to think that this was why, despite the odds, he had earned The Bear’s respect. It was a rather colourful, imaginative theory, admittedly, but perhaps no more so than the other ones I clung to, to sustain my belief that my cats were higher beings, cogitators and plotters: superior animals worthy of a special respect, and the deferment of our own, slightly inferior lives.

NAME:

Mo’hen

OCCUPATION:

Scampering, generally being coot-esque

HOME:

South Norfolk, UK

BRIEF CV:

Moorhen was like, ‘You wanna piece of me?’ And I was like, ‘No, you’re a moorhen.’ And moorhen was like, ‘I’m just gonna cross this road, just you watch me.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll slow down to 15mph – in many ways North Lopham should be a 20 zone anyway.’ And moorhen was like, ‘That’s what I’m talking about – how do you like me now?’ And then we both passed safely on our way, without further incident.

14 January 2009

Today Dee and I went for a walk with Hannah, Dee’s friend from work who has just moved in up the road, and Hannah’s cocker spaniel, Henry. ‘Hannah might even let you walk him, if you’re lucky,’ Dee told me, as we waited outside Hannah’s front door. It’s been a few years since my regular walks with Nouster, the Border collie owned by our former neighbours Richard and Kath, so I was thrilled at the prospect of having a new dog in my life.

‘Really?’ I asked. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Are you . . . panting?’ said Dee.

‘
No
,’ I protested. ‘I’m just a bit wheezy, what with the cold.’

The four of us set off down the hill, leading out of East Mendleham past the old fairground site, Henry pulling Hannah along at quite a pace. ‘He’s not fully trained yet,’ she said breathlessly. Henry is a cocker spaniel, but he is so big he is usually mistaken for the next breed up: a springer. He is black with white splotches and has mischievous, red eyes that seem to glow even redder as he makes a dastardly beeline for ducks and pedestrians carrying freshly wrapped chips.

‘You’ll be okay,’ Hannah said. ‘He likes men.’ One of the men Henry showed a liking for on this occasion was a hobo, living in the woods beside the heath, where the river cuts in, about a mile from East Mendleham. ‘Henry! Come back here! No! Leave that man alone!’ Hannah shouted. She and Dee seemed nervous, but I was impressed as the hobo came out from beneath his tarpaulin to see what all the fuss was about. His weather-beaten hawkish face looked startled, with no evidence of the usual jumpy smile of the person who gets accosted by a dog in the British countryside.

East Mendleham is not without its colourful transients. The man with the overalls and the David Crosby hair who sits beside the town lake all day and reads nineteenth-century French literature has long intrigued me, and I suppose, if you like that kind of thing and don’t have to make a living from writing in the nearby vicinity, the old man with the badge-covered blazer who shouted, ‘Fucking come on then! Let’s be having you!’ at the town ducks every morning has his pluses. But, whatever terrible tragedy had put you there, however down on your luck you were, choosing to bed down in the middle of the countryside was something else: the act of an iconoclast.

I didn’t want to get too close and disturb the hobo’s business – and he definitely looked like he had some – but I found myself peering over, curious about the paraphernalia of his life. What were those papers next to his campfire? Old pamphlets of some kind, containing the wisdom of previous hobos from many years before? Or just his special Hobo’s Diary? Actually, getting a bit closer, they looked more like the last couple of issues of
GQ
magazine. But what did he cook? What did he spend his days thinking about? Did his voice taste odd in his mouth on the rare occasions he communicated with another human being? Hannah and Dee looked relieved as Henry trotted back over to us, but I was thinking forward to my and Henry’s mutual future, uncovering the eccentrics of the East Anglian countryside.

I took Henry’s lead as we turned for home. He was smaller than Nouster had been, but I was struck by his strength, particularly when he found the rotting ribcage of some sizable road kill on the verge of the road, and decided he would like nothing better than to wriggle on top of it on his back. This kind of animal communion with the deceased was new to me. My cats have killed plenty of creatures, of course, but after a couple of scissor kicks and a bit of juggling they usually lose interest in their rodent victims. You might find them neatly severing a shrew’s spleen and placing it on the carpet outside my bedroom, as a child might leave the crusts from his bread for a parent to clean away, but you wouldn’t have caught them using it as a pillow later.

‘Oh, yes, that’s happened before,’ said Hannah. ‘He sat on a dead pheasant the other day.’

Before heading home, we stopped at the local pub, and I congratulated Henry on being a good boy – I wasn’t actually sure that he
had
been a good boy, not being aware of the previous standards set, but it felt like the polite thing to do – and ordered us each a pint of Guinness and a packet of cheese and onion crisps. I was about to dip my hand into the latter, but remembered just in time to go to the bathroom, lest I fatally mix rotting ribcage with cheese powder, vegetable oil and salt. As we drank, Hannah and Dee taught me some spaniel terms, from the spaniel-heavy office of the horse charity where the two of them work. A tail, apparently, was known by insiders as ‘wagstick’. The curly scribble of hair on Henry’s dome was officially termed his ‘dogwig’.

‘It’s like I told Tom after I’d first met Henry,’ Dee said to Hannah. ‘“You’ll love this spaniel. He’s almost exactly like you, only he’s a spaniel.’”

It wasn’t the first time I’d been compared to a dog, and in this specific instance, I could see the physical evidence on hand. Since my mid-teens, I’ve had dark, thickish curly hair. Over recent years this has receded slightly at the temples, leaving something of a fluffy peninsula at the front; I can assure you that it’s 100 per cent natural, but I suppose, in spaniel vernacular, you could call it my own sort of dogwig. I was fine with that. Still, considering that the observation had come from the person I spent most of my time with, and who had also just used the term ‘simpleton’ and ‘galumphing’ in describing Henry, I could not help dwelling on it slightly, as we walked home.

23 January 2009

I hear from Hannah that, on his walks, as he passes The Upside Down House, Henry has been pulling her towards the front door. I could hardly believe this could be the case, as he’d only been to visit us once, but as I brought him down to my car, from Hannah’s house, before setting off on our first walk together alone, he seemed to know where he was going. I decided not to let him in, for fear of alienating the cats, who already seem to sense something is not quite right.

Henry, I’m told, can get a little bit antsy in the car when traffic is slow, tending to howl whenever Hannah’s speedometer slips below 30mph: a kind of dog version of the movie
Speed
, but with a spaniel instead of a bomb and a Nissan Micra in place of a bus. If so, he was on good behaviour, only beginning to whimper impatiently as we arrived at our destination, Dunwich, on the Suffolk coast.

One of my New Year’s resolutions four weeks ago was to try to complete fifty-two East Anglian walks of four miles or above, in an attempt to get to know my local area better, an endeavour for which I have purchased a deerstalker hat, and grown a winter beard. They say the most important part of the body to keep warm is the head and this hat is so absurdly furry, I sense that it doesn’t actually matter what I’m wearing, I’ll still be warm in it. This is, however, a theory I’m somewhat reluctant to test out in full.

One thing I’ve noticed about being a lone bearded man, walking through remote countryside wearing novelty headgear, is that you are not always automatically viewed as a wholesome figure. You can tell from the shift of your fellow walkers’ gaze as you pass them. Add a dog to the equation, however, and everything changes. As I walked Henry along the beach at Dunwich, everyone I saw stopped to exchange hearty hellos with us. ‘Is he a springer?’ a fellow spaniel-walker, a ruddy-cheeked, blonde lady in wellies and a Barbour jacket, asked.

‘No, just a big cocker,’ I replied, with a certain smug sense of assurance.

That I can now utter phrases like ‘big cocker’ without feeling the need to giggle is perhaps a measure of how far I’ve already come in my short time as a dog walker. Nevertheless, I remained nervous about further questioning from the Barbour-jacketed lady. What if she asked me about what products I used to clean him, or where I got his lead? I am unconvinced that my bluffing would be able to withstand such interrogation. I am also aware that when I call Henry, and put him back on his lead, I am not just doing so to prevent problematic encounters between him and other dogs; I am also doing so to prevent scenarios where, by being forced to make conversation with doggy types, my phoniness will be revealed.

I’m usually pretty good at getting Henry re-leashed, and he does always tend to scuttle back to me the second or third time I call him, but upon spotting a Labrador on the woodland track back from the Dunwich marshes, I acted a little slowly. There was a small barking exchange, and the Lab’s owner and I exchanged a nervous glance, before the Lab wibbled off, visibly upset, and Henry scuttled back to me. I noticed three main thoughts going round my head as I wandered back to the car:

Hannah and I seem to have come to a happy arrangement very easily, regarding Henry’s walks. When Hannah is away on a business trip, I will do my best to walk Henry, and can pretty much walk him any other time I please, so long as I give her at least a day’s notice. Hannah seems grateful for this, which is odd, since it’s she who’s doing me the larger favour. The bonuses are twofold: I get a quick-fix confidence boost for when my cats are treating me even more like a doormat than usual, and dog ownership without the hassle – or so it would seem. Yes, I have to pick up Henry’s excrement, and reward him with biscuits and chews, but I do not have to clean Henry, buy food for him, take care of his vet bills, or listen to his whining at night. As someone who’s toyed with the idea of getting a dog recently, I also am getting a perfect trial run for dog ownership.

This is not to say that I am able to keep my time with Henry completely compartmentalised from the rest of my life. During today’s walk near Burnham Overy Staithe, on the North Norfolk coast, Henry jumped into the river several times, and smelled distinctly ripe in the car afterwards. Later, having dropped Henry home, I collected my friends Steve and Sue from the train station. Our subsequent conversation is the second time I have apologised for the fact that my car ‘smells of spaniel’.

28 February 2009

Henry pissed on his paws again this afternoon. I’m told by Dee that this is because he has a slightly arthritic hip, and cannot cock his leg properly. To be frank, I’m still coming to terms with spending time with an animal who is not entirely self-sufficient, in terms of his own bowel functions, and further alarm comes from his habit of taking a dump in the exact middle of country lanes, usually a matter of seconds before a four-by-four comes haring around the nearest bend. Today, a few miles south of Norwich, near the village of Loddon, I was almost mown down by a Range Rover as I dived for Henry’s excrement, baggy in hand, and rolled skillfully over into a roadside ditch. Henry, however, appeared unmoved by the incident, and raced off to intimidate some ducks. There’s still a part of me that, as I carry his poo in a plastic bag, in my coat pocket, is asking myself, ‘You mean people actually
choose
to do this?
Every day
?’ Sometimes, as we walk, I’ll forget about the bag, and think about how the brisk Broadland breeze feels against my skin, or admire a scarecrow in a nearby field, but my sense of its presence never fully goes away and, somehow, as I walk further, that presence seems to expand, until I feel I am walking with not just one living creature, but two.

18 March 2009

Number of animals encountered on walk today by Henry and me: seventeen. Number of animals wound up by Henry: fourteen.

24 March 2009

When Henry and I walk locally, there are now various neighbourhood dogs we have come to recognise. For these, we like to make-up appropriate nicknames. Well, I say, ‘we’; I obviously mean ‘I’, but I feel that, if Henry could make up nicknames for his canine rivals, he would take great pleasure in doing so. I suppose he’s quite a lippy, boisterous dog, and I can see that his goading and cheek can get easily on the nerves of a snotty Dalmatian or a well-heeled wolfhound, but at least he’s not aloof or imperious in any way, and is as happy to say hello to a Jack Russell as he is to a greyhound. This is more than I can say for the Janetdog, so named by me because of its striking resemblance to my cat Janet. The Janetdog strutted past us, snout in the air, fluffy tail high, this afternoon and you could just tell we were no more than a couple of dirty specks on its radar. This seems pretty rich, coming from a creature that looks like one of the most brainless felines in East Anglia.