Terry Pratchett - The Unadulterated Cat

It appeared to do a minimum of 15,000 miles last year, much of it in car engine compartments, where only its piteous mewling alerts the driver when he stops off for a coffee. Confirmation will not be achieved until Oscar has been tracked down by researchers armed with a truckload of painful equipment, but the current, rather interesting, theory is that what initially appears to be this piteous mewling is in fact a stream of directions on the lines of “left here I said left, left you twerp, all right, keep going until we get to the trading estate and then you can pick up the A370…”

Oscar is, in fact, trying to get somewhere.

The process is a bit hit and miss, and possibly he has underestimated the size of the country and the number of vehicles in it, but he's keeping at it. Certainly, in the best tradition of Real cats everywhere, he's doing anything rather than get out and walk.

Incidentally, some recent press cuttings suggest that Oscar has given birth to kittens in a car engine compartment. This makes a tiny hole in part of the theory—nothing that a reasonable grant couldn't plug—but leads to the intriguing thought that perhaps there will be a new race of Travelling cats after all. And all growing up believing that home is something that you can only get to by climbing inside noisy tin things that move at 70 mph.

Perhaps lemmings started out like this.

In the course of this work one researcher did turn up a fascinating anecdote about St Eric, the 4th-century Bishop of Smyrna, believed by many to be the true patron saint of Real cats. While on his way to deliver an epistle he is said to have tripped over a cat and shouted, “In faith, I wysh that Damned Mogge wode Goe Awae and Never Come Backe!” It was a small black and white tom, according to contemporary accounts.

This type has been around since the Sixties at least. You may recall stories about cats fed on sweetcorn and avocados (no, really; a local pet shop sells vegetarian dog food). And, indeed, if the rest of the household is on the path of inner wholeness it rather lets the whole holistic business down to have tins of minced innards in the fridge.

We had vegan 4friends who handled the cat food tin in the same way that people at Sellafield handle something that's started to tick. In the end, they worked out a vegetarian diet with the occasional treat of fish. Their cat was a young Siamese. It thrived on the stuff. Of course it did. It used to go out and hang around the organic goat shed, and ate more rats and mice than its owners had hot dinners, which wasn't hard. But it was very understanding about it, and never let them know. We occasionally saw it trotting over the garden with something fluffy in its mouth, and it used to give us looks of conspiratorial embarrassment, like a Methodist minister caught enjoying a pint.

In fact cats are naturally Green animals. After all:

a) No cats have ever used aerosol sprays. Sprays, maybe, but not aerosol ones. The ozone layer is perfectly safe from cats.

b) Cats don't hunt seals. They would if they knew what they were and where to find them. but they don't, so that's all right.

c) The same with whales. People might have fed whales to cats, but the cats didn't know. They'd have been just as happy with minced harpooner.

d) Antarctica? Cats are quite happy to leave it alone.

Of course, they have their negative points:

a) All cats insist on wearing real fur coats…

All cats, we know, have several names. T. S. Eliot came nowhere near to exhausting the list, though. A perfectly ordinary cat is likely to be given different names for when:

a) you tread on it

b) it's the only animal apparently able to help you in your enquiries as to the mysterious damp patch on the carpet and the distressing pungency around the place

c) your offspring is giving it a third degree cuddle

d) it climbed up the loft ladder Because it Was There and then, for some reason, decided to skulk right at the back of all the old boxes, carpets, derelict Barbie houses, etc, and won't be coaxed out, and then when you finally drag it out by the scruff of its neck it scratches your arm in a friendly way and takes a beautiful leap which drops it through the open hatchway and onto the stepladder, which then falls over, leaving you poised above a deep stairwell on a winter's afternoon while the rest of the family are out. 5

It's an interesting fact that fewer than 17% of Real cats end their lives with the same name they started with. Much family effort goes into selecting one at the start (“She looks like a Winifred to me ”), and then as the years roll by it suddenly finds itself being called Meepo or Ratbag.

Which brings us to the most important consideration in the naming of cats: never give a cat a name you wouldn't mind shouting out in a strained, worried voice around midnight while banging a tin bowl with a spoon. Stick to something short.

That being said, most common names for Real Cats are quite long and on the lines of Yaargeroffoutofityarbarstard, Mumthere'ssomethingORRIBLEunderthebed, and Wellyoushouldn'tofbinstandingthere. Real Cats don't have names like Vincent Mountjoy Froufrou Poundstretcher IV, at least for long.

The chosen name should also be selected for maximum carrying power across a busy kitchen when, eg, a bag full of prime steak starts moving stealthily towards the edge of the table. You need a word with a cutting edge. Zut! is pretty good. The Egyptians had a catheaded goddess called Bast. Now you know why.

Real cats are subject to the same illnesses that unReal cats get, although by and large Real cats tend towards rude health—not counting, of course, the occasional little intestinal problem which could happen to anyone.

However, there are several specifically Real cat ailments:

Weird, this. We had a cat who suffered badly. The vet couldn't explain it. The cat could climb trees, ladders, anything, it was as agile as you please, but when it tried to run fast it was all okay until its back legs tried to pass . Then it'd get so embarrassed at the sight of its own rear end coming past on the fast lane it would stop and wash its paws in shame. If it forgot itself and really made a dash for it, it was likely to end up facing the wrong way.

Well, okay. Not common. But one of the biggest cat ailments we've ever faced. Ho—we said—let's be ecological, remember the ozone layer, have no truck with flysprays, whatever happened to good old-fashioned flypaper. Finally found some, after shopkeepers made mad faces (“man here wants flypaper, keep smiling, desperately signal assistant to call police, will soon be asking for crinoline hoops and a pound of carbide crystals”). Got it home, hung it up in open window, bluebottles soon stuck fast like small angry currants, hooray, paper swayed in breeze, Real Cat leapt… Real Cat becomes spinning furry propeller. Paper snaps, cat falls out of window, begins massive chase across gardens as it tries to escape from unwound paper trailing behind it, finally brought to earth in distant shrubbery because only one leg now capable of movement.

Panic, panic, where box flypaper came in? This is 1980s, paper bound to be covered with Polydibitrychloroethylene-345, oh god, cat now immobile with terror inside kitchen towel. Fill huge bowl with warm water, drop cat in, swish it around, cat doesn't protest, oh god, perhaps Polydibitrychloroethylene-345 already coursing through tiny veins. Change water, rinse again, brisk towelling down, put cat on path in sun.

Cat looks up, gives mildly dirty look, turns and walks slowly up garden, lifting each paw one at a time and giving it a shake, like C. Chaplin.