A Cat Called Birmingham Read online

  I don't know how these two always did it to me, but they'd definitely developed straight-faced mickey-taking into an art form. They could keep me from saying what I wanted to say, i.e. explaining what on earth I was doing this time, with absolute ease.

  Len opened with a few comments about the weather: 'Not of'en this warm in April. Reckon tha's them ozones and all tha'.'

  I nodded dumbly.

  'If our ruddy cat keeps layin' them dead mice in your's porch, jus' throw 'em in the waterbu' and the dogs'll eat 'em. Thas wha' I allus does with 'em.'

  'Oh, yeah, okay, no problem,' I mumbled, slightly horrified.

  Michael then began postulating theories on Arsenal's forthcoming world domination. All in all they must have talked for quarter of an hour.

  Not once did either of them ask why I had one (badly aching) arm in the air. Neither did they enquire why it should be that the lead I was gripping so tightly would every now and then jerk violently skyward.

  And, when I thought they were finally about to go, Len looked me squarely in the eyes. His face darkened slightly and lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper he said, 'You do know you gotta cat on the end of that bit o' string, do you boy?'

  The memory is very painful but I can just about recall mumbling something inane like 'Er . . . yes . . . yes, that's fine . . . thanks.'

  As they sauntered off towards the bungalow, they couldn't resist a backward glance. I raised a hand in acknowledgement and they both waved back as they disappeared through the door.

  It took some time for me to get Brum down.

  It took a little longer for the colour to leave my cheeks.

  One Cold Winter

  'Through the dear might of Him that walked upon the waves.'

  John Milton

  I remember reading a sci-fi book some time ago that featured a cat called Pete. When leaving the house, Pete would try every door and window, checking out the weather from each, before choosing his best option. The book, The Doorway to Summer, was named for this activity.

  It was a great book that almost had a happy ending. When man and cat had beaten all the bad guys and got the girl just one chapter from the end, you felt great. When the final chapter opened with something like 'but cats grow old and Pete died that year' you were absolutely choked. And then - the coup de grace - 'Pete never did find his doorway to Summer.'

  Oh strewth.

  I mention this book for a reason. Not to do with cats getting old and spoiling feel-good factors, but this cat's belief that summer must still be out there somewhere, on the basis of it having been there before. This is loosely connected to the story I am about to tell of Brum and the farm fishpond.

  Brum is not a killer, and so fishing has never appealed to him. The fishpond is something to be avoided rather than the exciting lucky dip it is for many cats. He has enough hazards to deal with without walking on slippery rocks around a hole full of water connected to the farmyard electrics (uplighting).

  But things are very different in the wintertime. What was once leaky guttering can become a magical overhang of shining icicles, what used to be an old tin incinerator becomes a snowy mountain rising majestically from the shining white ground. And what used to be a dangerous pit full of water becomes solid ground. Tempting solid ground. Misty transparent ground with mysterious moving shapes and lights beneath its surface.

  Brum took it all in from his window. The temptation was too great. After near on a year of hermit-housecat existence, Brum went outside to take a look. In the subzero temperatures and vicious Arctic wind, he decided now would be a great time to spend every waking hour outdoors.

  For the next couple of weeks his world froze. The pond had iced over and the ice was firm. I wouldn't have chanced it myself but something as light as a cat wouldn't have stood a chance of breaking it. There's a childlike urge in many of us to walk on something so beautiful and dangerous as a frozen pond. It's walking on water, cocking a snook at the liquid beneath, going somewhere you usually can't. But, although Brum was fascinated by the ice, he was never quite tempted enough to walk across.

  The pond had been frozen for some time when the huge farm moggy strolled into the yard and demanded Brum withdraw from her territory immediately. Brum wouldn't go. A long standoff ensued, with the adversaries facing one another across the pond.

  With the temperature way below zero I can think of better things to do than stare at one another across frozen water for the best part of an hour, but every time I looked outside, there they were. They should have just had a scrap, it would have warmed them up a bit.

  Eventually the huge moggy stood and, sounding a high-pitched battle cry, began to advance slowly across no-man's-pond. Brum stood bravely and ran away, his normal battle tactic.

  Halting his retreat after around ten feet he stopped and turned to face the foe. Both settled down to stare again.

  Why do they do that? Are they receiving orders from somewhere? Why did one start to attack and then stop, the other retreat and then stop? Are they receiving info from the air via robin reconnaissance?

  Brum looked a little more startled now. Because his enemy had advanced? Or was it that he'd noticed something very odd?

  The moggy was sitting in the middle of the pond.

  I feel sure Brum recognised this. There was no real way of knowing. But then something happened that I found equally as strange as Brum must have found a cat sitting on water - Brum got up and started walking towards the moggy. A manoeuvre of this kind (going forwards) had never been a part of his outdoor war strategy before this day. The sight of him on the attack was totally bizarre.

  He was distracted. He seemed not to notice the low growling coming from the middle of the pond. As he reached the pond's edge he seemed not to notice the moggy at all. His foe seemed a bit put out by this. She stood, stretched and walked away, coolly and unhurriedly, as if she'd never wanted a fight in the first place and had only come out for a stroll.

  Brum sniffed the ice but didn't step out. Instead he made for the cat door, carefully skirting the pond. I noticed that he somehow tripped and fell a couple of feet from the door. Over what I can't imagine RIGHT SQUARE BRACKET maybe he slipped on the ice or something. One of the genuine pleasures of being around Brum is moments like that. A cat tripping over is a hilarious sight. The look of wide-eyed shock as he stumbles back to all fours is priceless. Brum gets up more like a camel than a cat, struggling awkwardly to find his feet and then lurching up like some great beast of burden with a half-ton load on his back.

  I pretended not to be looking. I didn't want to spoil his rare moment of victory.

  Around an hour later he went into a state of panic. I think it may have dawned on him at that moment that he had advanced on an aggressive enemy. His ears stayed back and his eyes wide open, staring into space in a haunted manner, for most of the evening.

  The next day he toyed with the pond. He walked around its edges. He sniffed it and pawed at the ice. Eventually he walked out onto it, sliding about a bit, falling once, but looking pretty pleased with himself.

  Over the next couple of days he got to know the pond well. He played on it like a kitten, jumping onto the ice and skidding

  35

  about, chasing his own tail and catching imaginary insects in mid-air.

  And here the story takes on a familiar tone. It is this type of catastrophe that epitomises Brum. You just know it's coming from somewhere. It would seem obvious this time, with so blatant a hazard involved. But the ice didn't break. He played on it happily for days and the ice didn't break.

  In fact, there was no ice involved at all, and that was the problem.

  The weather had been warming slightly and on Saturday morning it warmed a lot. By Sunday morning only the thickest lumps of snow and ice remained. The guttering was dripping, the incinerator was an incinerator and the pond was just water.

  I didn't see it, but my father - dragged along by Mum for yet another mercy visit - did.

  Brum is sai
d to have flown through the air majestically as he threw himself into that pond. It is a sight that I dearly wish I'd seen. What a moment. To be idly inspecting the garden, smoking your pipe and daydreaming, and then to see a cat come hurtling down the garden at speed, bound over the rockery and take a four-foot leap into the centre of a pond. The splash was so huge it totally soaked Dad's trousers, even though he was standing at least three feet from the water's edge.

  Brum came into the house first. And this freezing cold sodden shivering water rat landed square on my lap before I saw him coming, adding half a cup of lukewarm tea to his liquid coating. Dad followed, soaking trousers, soaking jumper and a badly bleeding arm (obligatorily slashed by Brum for lending assistance).

  We all looked at one another in shock, wet, wide eyed, ears back. Nobody spoke for a good half minute and then we all spoke at once, even Brum, hissing bitterly at Dad for rescuing him. He was still giving him filthy looks from his bundle of towels by the fireside as he set off for hospital.

  And so you see the connection?

  It's a kind of reverse 'Doorway to Summer'.

  Pete, God rest his soul, believed that the summer was always out there, whilst Brum, God damn him, believed much the same about winter.

  And of course . . . both were complete pillocks.

  Psycho

  'Mad, bad and dangerous to know.' Lady Caroline Lamb

  The farm moggy was tough, no doubt about it. She may have retreated that cold day, but she'd merely mistaken Brum's vacuous advance for a fearless charge. Her hard farm upbringing and ruthless hunting instincts put me very much in mind of another cat I once knew. A cat who'd never have retreated. A cat named Peanuts.

  Peanuts belonged to a couple I once worked for and spent most of his life in our International Courier Control Centre - which in actual fact was a homely little office in a rural cottage. He's getting on a bit now and had become quite docile by the time I left the company, but in his early years he was a fearsome creature. I can honestly say he was the hardest bastard I have ever known. Far harder than the moggy, and completely out of Brum's league.

  He too was brought up on a farm, and lost his sister in a fight with a mink. He used to fight all sorts of fierce animals and survive but was constantly battle scarred, ears hanging in strips, eyes haunted and damaged.

  One of his worst habits was dragging home rabbits and eating all but their tufty tail and one front paw which he used to leave, together with a few entrails, on the office floor, probably as a gift or as an offering to God for the profitable running of our company or something. Probably the latter as I can think of no earthbound reason for a company with me at the controls to have made profit.

  This habit became almost obsessive. We would forever be finding a tufty tail and one severed paw in the middle of the room. Serial killing. Peanuts was the only cat I have known who could be described, accurately, as a serial killer. I remember at the time we had a very slow, elderly courier driver named John

  working for us. John was incredibly slow. He would go off on a job that would take anyone else half an hour and, two hours later still hadn't reached his destination. It was as if he went into an unknowing stasis on every trip, unaware that he'd lost two or three hours and therefore hurt and surprised at your suggestion that he'd taken a little longer than for ever.

  Our greatest fear was that Peanuts would one day turn his attentions to John. I always half expected to wake to the headlines:

  THE DAILY GRIND

  Bugs Bunny Killer Strikes Again

  New Terror Wave Strikes Sleepy Bucks Villages

  The notorious mass murderer known as 'The Bugs Bunny Butcher' has killed again at another Buckinghamshire beauty spot.

  The Butcher, notorious for the horrific trade mark cannibal-lsation and ritual severing of his victim's paw and tail, is feared to have slaughtered and eaten 59-year-old local man John Simmonds It is the first time the killer has struck a non-rabbit victim.

  Simmonds is known to have been working in the area as a courier driver. While engaged in urgent courier work, Simmonds would often remain motionless for hours at a time, and police believe that the killer may have mistaken him for a rabbit.

  A spokesman for Thames Valley Police said today 'Mr Simmonds could be very still when working, and could look very much like a startled rabbit, twitching and not actually moving or doing anything much at all. If the Bugs Bunny Butcher had spotted him on the side of the road he could very well have mistaken him for a very large rabbit and therefore killed and eaten him. I believe the killer may have only realised his mistake when he found Mr Simmonds to be without bobtail.

  'We also believe that this is the reason why only Mr

  Simmonds' left hand was found at the murder scene. We consider this to have been a tragic error and we do not believe other non-rabbits are in any immediate danger. I would, however, strongly urge anybody intending to imitate a rabbit in a lonely location to think again. If it is not urgent and you can put it off until a later date then I would advise that you do so.'

  Mr Simmonds was off the critical list yesterday and his condition was described as stable . . . but dead

  Peanuts was, and probably still is, a proper cat. Cool, calculating, vicious and sadistic. I really liked him. Brum did not. He met him only once and just who was the dominant male was decided within two seconds.

  I had taken Brum into the office for a couple of hours, as he had a vet's appointment to attend during the day (Brum has a great many vet appointments to attend) and I was taking him straight from work.

  Having climbed my shirt and tried to hide behind my head on first sight of the battle-scarred, muscular and dangerous looking Peanuts, he wouldn't be persuaded to return to the ground. Peanuts regarded him with an almost friendly, uncaring eye, showing no real emotion whatsoever.

  Eventually I managed to get Brum to the floor, whereupon Peanuts Jekyll become Peanuts Hyde, instantly transforming into a savage snarling beast. Brum took one look at him and legged it, tail between his legs. Peanuts chased him three times around the circular plan office, Brum finally jumping clear of him onto a desk, landing on the stomach of my boss's 'squeeze me 1 talk' teddy bear which immediately launched into a stirring rendition of 'Are you Lonesome Tonight?' at full blast to an already stressed and startled Brum. Faced with something as terrible as a crooning soft toy, he almost jumped back into Peanuts' waiting claws -luckily thinking better of it at the last moment.

  I still retain the image of a slightly horrified, wide-eyed Brum staring into the mechanical moving jaws of a happily singing teddy bear.

  But as cool as Peanuts might have appeared to be, he did have a weakness. Just one. Revolving chairs.

  That lad just could not understand the concept of a seat that moved. This weakness led him into mishaps Brum would have been proud of. Peanuts would stand and stare at a chair for ages. He would appear to be deep in thought, calculating approach routes, trajectories, velocities, possible landing sites, everything.

  Only when entirely satisfied that he had covered every possible angle and that absolutely nothing could go wrong would he make his move. And then, after all of his meticulous planning he would simply forget everything he'd just been working out and hurl himself blindly at the chair, hit it full blast causing immediate seat spin, and be flung straight back to the floor as it whirled around at high speed.

  The process would then begin again. You could enliven many a dull office hour watching him at it. We had cartoons of him doing it pinned to the wall. It was his party trick, much as Brum's is staying alive.

  Interestingly, when we moved offices, he stopped doing it. He would climb carefully down onto chairs from desk tops. It was a shame. His rabbit habit also dwindled after the move, although he was still doing the odd spot of serial killing last time I saw him, just to keep his hand in.

  I think the rabbit thing calmed a little simply because there would have been less rabbits around the place we moved to, but why he should have suddenly sussed t
he chairs out because of a change of office escapes me. What Peanuts was doing mainly at the time of my saying goodbye, however, was sleeping. Getting on in years, he deserved the break, and so did the rabbits. I doubt whether I or Brum shall ever meet a tougher cat in our lives. I would think Brum fervently hopes he doesn't.

  Sammy's Story

  'One fool at least in every married couple.' Henry Fielding

  With very little reluctance, Brum and I finally left the farm and moved in with another luckless lady. I'd first met Lorraine a few years previously, at a medieval theme night, but made no impression whatsoever. I'd been dressed as a knight, and fallen for her instantly, but she can only remember me as having a big round face and swears I'd come as a jester.

  Our second meeting came at a party. I'd ventured out from the farm during a power-cut, looking every inch a man who'd dressed in the dark RIGHT SQUARE BRACKET and on this occasion I made a real impact, hitting her square in the back as I slipped over dancing. When I helped her up, she recognised my 'balloon-like' face. I don't know how hard she'd hit her head, but not very long afterwards she invited me to move in.

  For Brum, as well as for me, it seemed like salvation. The farm moggy had never forgiven him for the pond incident and spent most days carefully stalking him, Brum had never forgiven the pond and spent most days staring at it in bewilderment. With so much animosity bubbling under the surface of our peaceful rural existence, it was a huge relief to move back to the edge of town.

  Until we got there. You see, Lorraine already had a cat, and nobody had warned us about Sammy.

  Sammy is the sort of cat it's difficult to get to know. A semi-long-haired, predominantly white cat with scattered tabby markings, she has calendar cat looks.

  Her personality isn't quite so attractive.

  She is sullen, scathing and generally asleep, the feline equivalent of a spoilt teenage girl. She even seems genuinely embarrassed