* * *
I don't do gardening myself (as you'll know if you've ever read my column, "How Not To Do Gardening," in
Gardener's Week Magazine
), but the quickest route from my house to the pub is via a footpath that runs alongside a little river, right past the allotments— and even I know what an allotment site is: a patch of wasteland divided up into strips, which the local council rents out to residents, mostly old people and food faddists, so that they can grow their own fruit and veg there. Though why anyone should want to bother, when they're lucky enough to live in a country with perfectly good burger bars conveniently situated on every street corner, is far beyond my powers of explanation.
The point is, however, this: What did I often see on those allotments, on my way to and from the boozerama? Cats. I saw cats. Loads of them. Stray cats, presumably. Well, either that, or gardening cats.
Never having had a cat, I didn't know what kind of gear you needed to catch them. So I just grabbed everything I could think of: a big sack, a length of wood, a tin of date-expired treacle, a box of candles, and a whistle.
* * *
Took me two hours. Partly, that was because I kept losing count. It's not easy— and if you ever have anything to do with cats yourself, you might want to remember this— it's not easy to count cats in a big sack. Eventually, I had a brainwave: What did it matter if I got too many cats? I mean, if there were thirteen of them, I could just tell the photographer that one of the little buggers had had a baby, right?
Don't ask me to describe the cats. They were various colours. I don't know what you call cat colours. Some were sort of splodgy, some sort of spotty, some sort of stripy. And some were sort of splodgy and spotty and stripy all at once. They were various sizes.
They were cats, anyway, so I took them home.
I just about reached the gate when all of a sudden there was a man standing in front of me holding his arms out like a recently demoted traffic cop. I didn't like the look of him: a long, cruel face, a superior scowl. Fair enough, though— he obviously didn't like the look of me, either.
"What have you got in that sack?"
"In the sack?"
"What's moving about in your sack?"
"Oh, yeah. Tortoises," I explained.
"Tortoises?"
Like he didn't believe me.
"Certainly," I said. "Just picked 'em up in those woods back there."
Trying to edge round me, trying to get a good squeeze at my cat-sack, he said: "There are no
tortoises
in those woods, for heaven's sake."
"Of course there aren't," I said, "I got them all in this sack."
"What for?" he sneered.
"For? Why, for my three kids, naturally. They love tortoises, but the way they get through them, I can't afford to keep buying them. Kids, huh? So I thought: Hey, do it yourself!"
He sneered on in silence.
"So I'm taking them home for… for little Gerald," I said. "And…" The man waited. "And for little Geraldine."
"That's only two children," he said, unpleasantly.
"Well, not really," I said, "because you see, the third one's also called Geraldine, due to, like, y'know, a mix-up at the hospital."
He started to say something that apparently began with
"You—"
but then he stopped, and I realised he was staring over my shoulder. Turning round, I saw in the distance, back by the entrance to the woods, a scruffy young guy in a combat jacket, striding towards us.
"You just stay away from those cats. Got it?" And with that the interrogation was broken off, as the long-faced vigilante disappeared through a gap in the bushes.
Weird behaviour. But then, once people let cats into their lives, they do strange things. That's a medical fact.
* * *
Home safe, with about thirty minutes to spare, I unleashed the cats. Then I poured a gigantic vodka, lit a small cigar, and relaxed.
Carl, the pointlessly enthusiastic, ponytailed lensman— bright orange shirt, collar size XXL— was pretty impressed with my cats. "Great cats!" he said. "They're so— I dunno, they're so wild, aren't they?"
"Oh yeah," I said. "They really are."
"They just never keep still for a moment, do they? Rushing around like crazy things!"
"Oh yeah," I said. "Thing is, they're not really used to company."
"No?"
"Not really. I tend to ignore them, myself."
"Okay! Look, do you think you could get them, sort of, all together in one place? You know, so I can do the old clickety-click?"
"Well," I said. "It's like you said yourself: They're pretty wild cats."
"Maybe if you fed them?"
"Brilliant!" I said. "That's a brilliant idea. Um… you got any mice or anything?"
The photographer laughed— rather meaninglessly, I thought. "Might be easier if you just, you know, opened a can or something."
"Oh yeah," I said. "Good thinking." So I opened a few cans, emptied the contents into a plastic washing-up bowl, and put the bowl on the kitchen floor. Sure enough, the cats came running.
"That is amazing," said Carl.
"Must've been hungry," I said.
"Yeah, but— chili con carne? I never knew cats ate chili con carne."
"Oh yeah," I explained. "Your cat, you see, your average cat is a big meat-eater."
He laughed again and started setting up his lights. "Well, they obviously love it. And I can see you love your cats, too. That tinned chili costs a lot more than cat food."
Cat food
, I thought.
Damn
.
An hour later, he'd gone ("Listen, if you ever decide you've got too many cats," he said on the doorstep, "my little girl…" —"Don't worry," I said, "you'll be the first to hear") and it was over. Just call me Mr. Resourceful.
* * *
It wasn't over.
Once the photographer's car had disappeared around the corner, I loaded up the old sack again, and set off once more for the allotments. I whistled as I walked, light of heart though heavily burdened.
I didn't meet anyone on my short journey, except a comedian in a milkman's tunic, who told me: "You want to change your butcher, pal. That meat's wriggling."
Back amongst the beans and squashes, I shook out the sack, and out tumbled the cats. They sat there on the ground, looking at me, but they didn't look for long. They couldn't, because I wasn't there for long.
Late that night, a crashing sound woke me. By the time I got downstairs, there were three cats sitting in my hallway, making cat noises. Even as I stood there, another two appeared through a small, flapped hole in the door (which I'd previously supposed was there for the benefit of short-sighted postmen).
I hastily gathered up a couple of cats and opened the door. That was a mistake. The cats in my arms screeched, scratched, and then leapt back into the house. A cat which had been in the process of using the hole when I opened the door, and which was now swinging there like a magician's assistant interrupted in the middle of a sawing-the-lady-in-half trick, just screeched. And all the cats outside, who had been queuing patiently for the hole, dashed past me with the odd chirrup of appreciation at my good manners.
Right
, I thought.
Deep breaths. Go about this logically.
I found a bit of stiff cardboard and sellotaped it over the hole. I retrieved my trusty sack and carried it up to my bedroom. There I found three cats: one under the bed, one already asleep inside the bed, and another squatting vulgarly on top of the wardrobe. Not without some difficulty, and a few minor wounds, I achieved their ensackment.
Then I left the bedroom, shutting the door firmly behind me, and emptied the captured cats out onto the street. There was no way I was visiting the allotments at this time of night, dressed only in boxer shorts and a pair of mock-leather slippers.
I repeated this operation in each room, methodically, and then, exhausted and slightly bleeding, went back to my bedroom.
Which now contained four cats.
It was a hot night, and I'd left most of the windows in the house open. Not open enough for burglars, but evidently open enough for cats.
I started over.
I have a vague memory of myself, at some stage in that eternal furry night, standing in the hall with a bottle of vodka in one hand and a box of Elastoplast in the other, singing, "Close the doors, they're coming in the windows! Close the windows, they're coming in the doors!"
I don't know if you've ever been in one of those situations where you're trying to shove a number of small jellies up a wide drain-pipe? I know I haven't. I don't suppose anybody ever has, actually, but if by some extraordinarily unlikely chance you know what I'm talking about, then you'll know exactly how I felt.
* * *
Late morning, crusty on the sofa, I awoke to discover I still had the vodka, I still had the sticking plaster, and I still had a house full of cats. Twelve of the little buggers.
Obviously, clearing them out one by one, or even sack by sack, wasn't going to do it. They'd probably just hang around the front door, and I'd never be able to go outside again for fear of inviting reinfestation. No; what I needed here was a permanent solution.
So I called my Aunty Cissie.
Aunty Cissie is eighty-seven, and to my certain knowledge she's been dead three years. I should know: I was at her funeral.
"Jim, my dear! You good boy, you've just rung up to see how I am."
"Now then, Aunty. You know I only ring when I want something." Incapable of hearing harsh truth without disbelieving it, my Aunty Cissie; podgy, breathless, sagging, permanently on the homeward leg of a return trip to doolallyland. Or do I mean a jolly, rotund, chuckle-faced, happy-go-lucky senior citizen? No, I don't.
"Do you know, I haven't seen you for three years?" she said, as delightedly as she said everything. "Not since your Great-Uncle Norman's funeral."
"Oh, right," I said. Now I come to think of it, it might not have been her funeral. Might have been somebody else's. I don't remember; I didn't stay long. "So you're still alive, then?"
She chuckled. "Just about, dear. You are sweet. I know how you worry about me."
"Mmm-mmm," I said. I don't like to commit myself too strongly over the phone; you never know who's listening. "Look, Aunty. You know about cats. You ever heard of cats… adopting people?"
"Oh yes, they'll do that, dear. If their old owners have got a new baby, or a new kitten, or a new computer game. Cats demand attention, and they won't tolerate rivals. Or if they've been mistreated, or living rough, or they're not getting the kind of food they like. I had a cat once that wouldn't eat anything but Chinese stir-fried mushrooms."
"How about twelve at once? Mass defection— you ever hear of a case like that?"
"Oh, dear! Is that what you've got? Twelve of the little buggers! Well, I'm not surprised. You always were a gentle boy. They must all be in love with you!"
Just my luck
, I thought.
In a world full of seventeen-year-old nymphos
…
"Still," said Aunty Cissie. "They're company, aren't they? And we all need company, don't we, now and then?"
Oh, God
…
"Which reminds me, dear. When are you coming to see me? How about next week?"
"No, sorry, I'm pretty busy next week. And the week after. But you're right, we must make a definite date. Tell you what, I'll come round one day next year."
"Oh, that is kind of you, dear. I shall count the hours! Oh, but Jim?" she added as I began the long process of hanging up. "Don't make it a Thursday."
"Not a Thursday, Aunty. Right you are."
"No, dear. You see, Thursday's my night for going to the lavatory."
* * *
So, there you are. Cat psychology is pretty simple really, once you know what you're doing. And what I did was this: I didn't feed them, and I removed the cardboard from the hole. And after twenty-four hours of involuntary hunger-striking, they forgot the taste of chili con carne, began to wonder what they were doing here, and one by one slipped off back to the allotments— having first peed on every available surface and in every imaginable crevice. I could have rented out the house as a rehabilitation centre for the nasally-disadvantaged.
Anyway, it was over.
Until Jenni rang again.
* * *
"Jim— the pics are totally fabulous! What we thought was, we'd like to blow one of your cats up."
"Blow them all up if you like," I said, pleased to hear so sensible a suggestion from so unexpected a source.
"For the cover," she said. "That gingery one with the kinky tail— you know which one I mean?"