Epiblog for St Aidan's Day

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley, and one of those I hope never to see the like of again. We started the week far away from home, on the Western shores of the Isle of Arran. We finally got away on holiday, as you may have gathered from the fact of my witterings failing to appear in your inbox with monotonous regularity for the past two Sundays. We went via Walney Island, Mossburn, to Ardrossan and thence crossed to Arran. We were there three days when the steel hawser on the winch for the kayak rack broke, necessitating a two-day trip back to the mainland to get it fixed. Then back to Arran, basically because it was too late to go anywhere else by then, for the remainder of the second week. Kayaks were launched, porpoises and otters were spotted, and, although it was a very strange and a bitter-sweet experience being there without Tig, nevertheless I did get some rest, and I did spend some time looking out to sea, and I did spend some time writing.

This year, we’d decided to put Kitty in the cattery while we were away on Arran. I had written them a covering note, to be handed in with her, to the effect that she was an elderly, crotchety cat, who liked to drink lots, and eat little and often. A bit like me, in fact. After we had been away about four days, I had phoned the cattery and had been assured that she was fine, and not pining. We were due to come home on Tuesday 28th anyway, but the weather forecast for the Bank Holiday Monday was so bad that I’d wondered if we might get washed out and come home early, so I’d phoned the cattery again on the Saturday, just to check if they might be open on Bank Holiday Monday, if we got back a day early. She was fine then, too, or so I was assured.

So it was a shock for all sorts of reasons when my mobile went off at 9.16AM on the morning of Bank Holiday Monday, the cattery telling me that they were concerned about Kitty, she hadn’t eaten her tea the night before, and she was looking ill and unresponsive. I told them to take her straight to Donalsdons the vets. The best the vets would say was the prognosis was “guarded” – they thought her kidneys were finally giving out. We couldn’t get a ferry from Arran until 1640hrs, and even then the service was contingent on the ferries actually being able to sail in the gale force winds in the Firth of Clyde, and therefore on Monday night we only got as far as Dumfries, back to Mossburn again. The vets had her on a drip overnight Monday night, and they kept her in again Tuesday.

All day Tuesday, with Debbie driving the camper like the proverbial bat out of Hell, down the motorway, Kitty was like Scrodinger’s cat to us; the only way we knew if she was alive or dead was when we checked in by phone, the rest of the time she was in a strange, in between limbo.

By Tuesday night we were both shattered after two sleepless nights and pretty fragged. We’d got back to Huddersfield at about 2.30pm on the Tuesday and went straight to the vets, and they brought her through to us in one of their little consulting rooms. I got to hold her and stroke her for about three quarters of an hour, but most of the time she was sleeping, the vets were very good, though, and very accommodating of our needs.

The arrangement was that we were to ring them at 11AM on Wednesday and unless a miracle had happened, I expected the outcome would not be a good one. I duly phoned at 11AM and they said she was no better, if anything she was even a little bit worse, and the kindest thing to do was to let her go, so we did, we went down there at just after 12.30 and the vets were very good again and let me hold her, while Debbie was stroking her head, as she was actually put to sleep.

We’ve brought her home and we’ve buried her in the garden next to Dusty her (putative) sister, who died in 2008. So, there you are: sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Requies cat in Pace. At least she is at peace now, and in cat heaven with Colin, who will have her on his knee with Dusty and Cuddles. I said as much to Debbie, and she said, what’s Colin doing in cat heaven, and I said, well, perhaps cat heaven is just, well, heaven.

Of course, I prayed: I prayed to every manifestation of every deity that’s ever crossed my spiritual path. Starting with Big G and working downwards, Jesus, of course, St Francis of Assissi. St Jude, St Padre Pio, and St Gertrude of Nivelles, who is actually the patron saint of cats, and mental illness, so I reckoned I had at least two chances there. I imagined them all coming into God’s waiting room one by one, where he makes the saints queue up to do intercessions, and nodding in recognition at each other, and saying “You here about the cat?” and “Yep, me too.” I even chucked in a couple of pagan rhymes and a prayer to Bast, the cat-goddess of the ancient Egyptians. Nothing nada, zilch.

It shakes your faith when shit happens for no reason especially bad shit and you get no response to your prayers even though you do nothing else but pray, doze fitfully, and sip bottled water for two days. By Wednesday, I was ready to make a bonfire of the whole lot of it. The only thing that stopped me was that quotation from Playback by Chandler (Raymond, not the guy from Friends) which always gives me food for thought, and which I dug out and read again:

"There are grave difficulties about the afterlife. I don't think I should really enjoy a heaven in which I shared lodgings with a Congo pygmy or a Chinese coolie or a Levantine rug peddler or even a Hollywood producer. I'm a snob, I suppose, and the remark is in bad taste. Nor can I imagine a heaven presided over by a benevolent character in a long white beard locally known as God. These are foolish conceptions of very immature minds. But you may not question a man's religious beliefs however idiotic they may be. Of course I have no right to assume that I shall go to heaven. Sounds rather dull, as a matter of fact. On the other hand how can I imagine a hell in which a baby that died before baptism occupies the same degraded position as a hired killer or a Nazi death-camp commandant or a member of the Politburo? How strange it is that man's finest aspirations, dirty little animal that he is, his finest actions also, his great and unselfish heroism, his constant daily courage in a harsh world — how strange that these things should be so much finer than his fate on this earth. That has to be somehow made reasonable. Don't tell me that honour is merely a chemical reaction or that a man who deliberately gives his life for another is merely following a behaviour pattern. Is God happy with the poisoned cat dying alone in convulsions behind the billboard? Is God happy that life is cruel and that only the fittest survive? The fittest for what? Oh no, far from it. If God were omnipotent and omniscient in any literal sense, he wouldn't have bothered to make the universe at all. There is no success where there is no possibility of failure, no art without the resistance of the medium. Is it blasphemy to suggest that God has his bad days when nothing goes right? And that God's days are very very long?"

But who’s to blame? Whose fault is it that Kitty died? I can't help feeling that it's all my fault, for putting her in that stupid cattery in the first place, I should have just given up the idea of going off on holiday, and we could still have gone off for days, then she wouldn't have stressed out and got dehydrated and got kidney trouble - anyway, if wishes were fishes, none of us would ever go hungry. Well, only the vegans and veggies, I guess. I made a stupid mistake, because I wanted us to have a holiday, and started off an inevitable chain of events. Cat goes to cattery, cat gets stressed, cat gets dehydrated, cat gets kidney disease, cat dies. I can’t understand how all of that happened in the space of 14 days, but it did, and as with computers, fatal errors are irrecoverable.

We talked about all sorts of things in that mammoth three hour drive from Dumfries to Huddersfield, including whether, if Kitty were to die, we should get another cat. At one point, Debbie said

“Get two cats, then if you kill another one, you’ll have a spare!”

To her eternal credit, she is possibly one of two or three people in the whole wide world who could have said that to me on that day, in those circumstances, and raised the first, albeit wan, smile of the week. We smiled through the tears, then went back to being misty-eyed again.

Anyway, that was the demise of Kitty. During our second visit to the vets, I had made a point of noting down the phone number from an advert taped to the door of the surgery, from someone who was trying to re-home a dog called Max, who is 7 years old, and looks like a slightly chunkier version of Zak. Deb had noted this the previous day, and although she’d said she wasn’t interested I thought I’d just take a note of the number anyway, in case Debbie changed her mind. So I trundled over there, while I was waiting for Deb to take Kitty back to the camper van and then come back for me, and noted down the mobile phone number.

I was suddenly aware that there were other ads stuck to the back of the door. Lots of them in fact. One caught my eye. It said something like 8 year old torty cat desperately needs re-homing, ask at reception for details. Ever since the late lamented Dusty (RIP) I have always fancied having another torty cat, mainly because they are all totally bonkers and it’s never a dull moment. Dusty, for instance, used to object to my having pens of any sort on my desk, and would jump up and widge them all onto the floor with her paw, even while I was working. I spent much more time picking up pens than writing with them, while Dusty was alive.

Dusty’s other habit was to invade the duvet in the middle of the night, wriggle her way down to about crotch level, and then curl up and go to sleep. Of course, as she got warm and happy and started purring, like all cats, she would start to stretch out her claws and “make bread” on the nearest object, which was frequently my scrotum. I don’t recommend it, as a way of being awakened at 4AM.

You don’t often see torty cats in the sanctuaries and shelters, so the word caught my eye. So I asked at reception for details, like it said on the handlettered notice, fully expecting to be told that the cat was at such and such an animal centre, here’s the web site and phone number, phone up and make an appointment, etc.

“Oh yes, we’ve got her out the back, would you like to meet her now?”

Stunned, I nodded, thinking “Debbie is going to be so furious about all this.”

While they were fetching the cat (apparently called Betty) out of the storage area at the rear of the surgery, Shona, the young vet who had helped us with Kitty, came back out to talk to me.

“Listen, you really don’t want this cat, believe me, she’s a horrible old beast, she’s really crabby and bad tempered. She hisses and growls all the time. The family that owned her brought her in a month ago to be put to sleep because she kept biting their children.”

This was an immediate point in Betty’s favour, in my book. My eyes lit up. I can think of several children that I would cheerfully bite, if only I could catch the little buggers, so I was with Betty on that one. What this world needs is fewer, and better, children, and if it was up to me, I’d probably have kept the cat, and had the children put down.

“Why is she here?” I asked.

All the shelters are full, apparently, and if no home could be found for Betty by this Friday, she would have to be put down anyway. Nobody wants her, because she’s old (9 years) and bad-tempered, and crotchety. Well, we had just lost an old crotchety cat. By this time, Betty had been brought through, and plonked onto my lap. Christ, she was a size. She’s like a small sandbag and about the same size and density, but beautifully coloured, torty, black and cream, with large luminous eyes. Instead of hissing and growling, she settled herself down tucked her head in, and started purring. By now, the various nurses, vets and receptionists were all gathered round in a half-circle, saying things like “amazing” and “is it really the same cat?” and stuff like that. At this point Debbie returned.

“I can explain everything.” I said, and did. Eventually, Betty had to be prised off my knee, where she had clearly settled for the remainder of the day, and taken back to her little cage out the back. We said we would go home and sleep on it. To be honest, emotionally, neither of us was in a logical or level headed frame of mind to think about anything, with Kitty’s funeral, in the garden next to Dusty her secret sister, to be organised.

The next day, Thursday, we called back and I asked a few more questions about Betty. She is neutered, and microchipped, but that could easily be changed to our address, they added hastily. She had the equivalent of a cruciate knee ligament operation on her right hind leg three years ago and she might walk with a limp. Old, irritable, gammy legs, unwanted by everybody. But that’s enough about me, back to the cat. I asked again what would happen to her if we couldn’t take her. The answer was that nobody else was interested, with the best will in the world, they were a vets not an animal shelter, and no shelter could take her, because the shelters are all full. They’d already kept her a month, and if they hadn’t found a home for her by next week, she’d be put down. At this point, Debbie broke into the conversation to say we’ll have her. We’re due to pick her up on Monday 3rd September.

The shelters are all full, because, of course, in hard economic times, for many people, pets are the first to go. The hard economic times are the fault of The Blight, but I wouldn’t expect anything else from a Junta that is quite capable of accepting ATOS of all people, as sponsors of the Paralympic Games, a move of breathtaking hypocrisy comparable to putting Dracula in charge of the Blood Transfusion Service. But whatever the cause, the system for rescuing stray and unwanted and abandoned animals in this country is under strain like never before. The shelters are all full.

The shelters are all full. Same with dogs. I hope somebody can take Max, and I hope someone can take Brian, the cream lurcher cross we were looking at before we went on holiday. Unfortunately, because we’ve taken on Betty, we’ve set back our own plans to get another dog now, because it would be unfair to Betty, at least in the short term. If you can help Max, the number off the poster is apparently 07789 712945.

We need to do something about this appalling situation where several thousand abandoned dogs and cats are being put down every year simply because nobody wants them. Given the relatively small cost (in political budget terms) of the government acting as the “owner of last resort” to ensure a “no kill” policy, which could anyway be funded from the revenues of a reintroduced dog licencing/microchipping scheme, it ought to be possible for the lives of these animals to be saved. All that is lacking is the political will, and something needs to be done to drive the issue up the political agenda.

I suggest that here and now, we start a campaign where people print out a picture of their pet, and post it to David Cameron at 10 Downing Street, or send it as an email attachment, with the following form letter:

Dear Prime Minister. This is my pet [insert name of pet]. Just to let you know, at the next election, I will be voting for the candidate that I judge has his/her[delete as applicable] best interests at heart.

There is a precedent for this. Apparently, back in the 1950s there were a couple of occasions where Eisenhower was thinking of taking action against the Chinese, and there was a famine in China at the time. Peace organisations in the US started sending in little bags of rice in the post to the White House with a similar agreed form of words, urging President Eisenhower not to bomb the Chinese, but to feed them instead. They also attached a specific verse from the Bible, about feeding your enemies. Perhaps our verse could be Matthew 10:29: Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.

In Eisenhower’s case, apparently he asked if “those little bags of rice” were still coming in, one day when he was about to press the nuclear button, and when they said “Yes Mr President, thousands of them”, he took his finger away.

Maybe in our case, while we can’t hope for anything quite so dramatic, Cameron will pass them on to the people concerned with formulating animal welfare policy in his so-called apologetic shambles of a government, with a well deserved rocket up the arse telling them to sort something out before the next election. We can only hope.

Meanwhile, for ourselves, we must now face the prospect of an uncertain future, and a winter without Kitty. Close ranks, and carry on. Fare forward, keep her head into the wind, and ease her when she pitches. Caistermen never turn back. My main reservation about Betty is that it all seems so quick, there hasn’t been any time for a decent period of mourning for Kitty. There is precedent, of course, back in that abysmal howling year of 1992, Nigel arrived the very day Sylvester was killed. But even so, I feel that not only have I killed Kitty by my hubris in wanting a holiday, but now I’m also ratting on her memory by installing another cat in her place far too quickly. The problem being, of course, that if we didn’t, Betty would be Dead Betty.

Whatever happens with Betty, I know I will never forget Kitty. Like Russell before her, she wasn’t a good cat, and that was precisely what made her such a good cat. She wasn’t even good at cat things, things other cats are supposed to do. I don’t think she ever caught a mouse, and she had been known to fall off the settee in the midst of one of her energetic catlick washing sessions, then try and pass it off as if that had been what she’d intended all along, like one of those gymnasts dismounting from the horse with a somersault.

This morning, when I was getting up, the wind round the side of the house blew the cat flap and it click-clacked just like it did when she used to come through it, and my heart lurched with renewed grief. I will so miss her clambering on my knee when I was trying to light the fire, actually hindering me from doing the very thing she was trying to urge me to get on and do.

She will be sorely missed, also by her legions of fans on the Internet, who used to look out for the pictures of her on the settee next to the stove, and send me emails asking where she was if I didn’t post them early enough in the day! I will so miss her little face in the mornings, peering round the edge of the door to see if I was coming through to feed her, and answering my question of whether she wanted to be fed later, or “naow”.

Obviously God wanted her “naow”, rather than later; alas, my cat, so mote it be, so mote it be.