As he has got older our cat has become far more vocal, possibly through some loss of hearing or, as often happens as one ages the desire to express ones opinions becomes more pronounced. When he first came to lodge with us in late 1993 he was silent, sleek and heaving with youthful vitality, his need to keep moving was constant and, as we didn’t have a cat flap [note: he actually lived next-door] his continual appearances at the window and his pleading left us in a constant state of flux. Once he had entirely decamped and the neighbours moved, possibly to avoid his bleating, as they didn’t have a cat flap either, he settled himself into a pattern of activity about which any youthful feline would be fluffed up with smugness. Activity, food, sleep, activity, food, sleep, a sonata of feline euphoria. The man that lives on the sofa didn’t acquire much in terms of affection from the feline interloper but tolerated him like a kind stepfather might an eccentric teenager. And so the world turned and apart from a shiny new cat flap and a bowl from Omnipuss in York our lives intertwined comfortably. When we were away his previous carers shouldered the pleasure of cleaning his bowl and topping up his water and crunchies, and hopefully they had very little to do removing the variety of novel ripperesk mutilations left so generously on the palest of carpets. After we moved out of the village and into the wide expanse of arable fenland he began to take life easier, maybe an encounter with a big scary Pheasant or a rampant Mole forced the issues of age upon him or perhaps he considered the life of a country gent appealing. As his leisure time has increased so has, exponentially, his opinions. On settling he bleats, short, sharp expletives, when climbing the stairs he yodels with a lung full of air in joyous exaltation and precedes to yap and squeal his way around the bedroom. This is now, in his 18th year, a matter of character, a loud vocal response to his environment, and his distaste for the man on the sofa spending, in his opinion, too many hours in slumber, and his revolt at the thought of visitors comfort. He had been warned, the yellow card issued on Friday night, to not practice Wagnarian operatics at 6am on the weekend, but come Saturday the howl of the banshee and the wail of Grunhilda woke us, much to the anger and frustration of two sleepy humans drawn into a state of grumpy displeasure whilst the furry little usurper snuggled down into the remnants of a warmed quilt. He maintained the quilt-in until almost sundown when he rose and yelled plaintively for his tea, after which he settled noisily into the comfort of one of his many hair lined napping spots. I have plans to purchase shares in reincarnation and at sometime, hopefully many moons from now cash them in to come back as a cat.
