To All the Cats We've Loved Before

After almost 11 years of marriage, Grumpy and I have yet to make that final commitment which would, in the eyes of many, make our union complete. I'm speaking of course of getting a cat.

We love cats; we've always adopted the cats of the neighbourhood; but we haven't yet made the irrevocable move of getting one for our very own. It's nice to have a neighbour's cat frolic in your yard and then go home to be fed and washed and have its nappy changed.

Well, you know. It's not like I'm talking metaphorically here or anything. I am actually talking about cats.

The first thing we do when adopting a cat is give it a better moniker than the degrading thing its human christened it with. What kind of cat-hater thinks Fluffles or Baci are appropriate cat names? The same kind of people who wash their cats in perfumed substances, that's who.

So in the past we've enjoyed the company of the likes of Krayzleburg and Smokey von Smoke Cat (and not forgetting his manservant, Wuss Puss). Now we hang around with Slothberry and Thuggable (who reminds me of Master Betty from Kung Pow: Enter the Fist; don't let him come near you with a rubber glove).

But the greatest of all of these was the mighty Chocky Duds. He was a bad tempered, drooly, stinky wonder who would lie still for a pat for about 2 minutes and then suddenly go into a frenzy of scratching and biting - it was fun to hold him down and tickle him. It made him wild. The next day the joke would be on us because those scratch and bite marks would itch like billy-o. He had a very bad habit of coming inside and spraying - it was like everything played out in slow motion as you watched him back up to a stack of records or some diving gear, mewling pitifully, and then let rip.

Then he'd be banished from the house but the sound of his little bell at the back door in the dark was always so tragic that we'd relent and let him in. The day we were shifting out, though, he knew it. He stalked away and never looked back. Ungrateful little sod.