Kittens and cats

I never really thought of myself as a cat person, or a dog person for that matter. More a horse person if I’m honest. Back in the 80’s we were living  up Brixton Hill. One day a council workman knocked on the front door holding the upturned back of a telly, in which were a huddle of four  tiny kittens. ” If I can’t find someone to take them, I’m going to have to drown them”  he said. Well, I don’t need to tell you what happened next. 

They were very new, and their eyes hadn’t even opened. And so began my life as a multiple cat owner. They needed feeding regularly through a tiny syringe which took ages, and I carried them around with me in a sling. I even took them to work We had a complicated chart between us so that there was always someone on duty. Amazingly they all survived and moved to Camberwell with us. We kept two, Mr Sniff  ( who was in fact a female who went on to have more kittens of her own including Rev Banana and Desmond Tutu. Unfortunately my friend Stuart managed to tread on one of the other kittens with a hideous crunch, thus removing the need for re homing,  and Doolally. Jon next door had Boot ( who got pregnant very  young and had Norman Bates, herself a couple of sandwiches short of a full picnic ). I’m ashamed to admit I can’t for the life of me remember who took Beetle. The only thing I remember about Beetle was that he spent most of his days running up and down the curtains

Doolally  ( or Lally / fat Lall as we called him)  was a real character. He grew enormously fat, mosty because he spent his days wandering round the street pretending he was homeless and being taken in by various neighbours. One morning he arrived home for his evening snack sporting a large bandage on his paw. We had absolutely no idea where or who this had come from. A couple of days later I happened to be out in our street. Lall sloped past at the same time as one of the local policeman happened to be passing. In those days the Camberwell police station was functioning and had an entrance at the end of the road.   “Hello Ginger” he said,  bending down to stroke the ginger monster. ” His name is Doolally” I said. “Well” said the policemen, “he’s our station cat and we call him Ginger. He comes in every morning, has his breakfast  and gets inside a paper bag we leave by the gas fire for him. He spends most of the day asleep. He appeared with a cut paw the other day so we bandaged it up”. 

Lally’s third home was opposite . The rest of the  houses in our street were what was  known as sheltered housing, though from our experience there wasn’t much shelter. One of the residents had obviously been in the army or the war (or both ) and spent each  night marching up and down his bedroom listening to regimental marching band music. If you ever bumped into him in the street he would salute you,  though I never once heard him utter a word. Years later I was at the Oval waiting for a bus home and he suddenly appeared, tears in his eyes and  saluted me silently before disappearing off into the drizzle. Anyway, in the same house lived a sallow cheeked woman who took a fancy to fat Lall. Predictably she also named him Ginger and used to follow him down the street calling his name.

Over the next couple of weeks it got to the point when he was so fat he could’nt fit through the cat flap and on interrogation  Mrs Sallow cheeks  confessed that she fed him a tin of salmon twice a day. This combined with breakfast at the police station and the sub standard fare dished up at home meant he was in danger of exploding. 

Then one day she moved house. And Lally mysteriously disappeared. After a couple of days of searching and calling I went to see the sheltered housing manager who told me that Mrs S-C had indeed moved and had gone to Ladbroke Grove. And taken our cat with her. So we got in the car and drove up west. The flats were new , bleak and sparse. In fact when she answered our knock on her door it became apparant that  the only bit of furniture inside  was a large cage. Sitting on a cushion inside and looking very pleased with himself  was fat Lall. Literally the cat who got the cream. What had seemed quite funny on the drive up suddenly felt really sad. There was Mrs S-C  all on her own, without a stick of furniture, home comforts  or family and her only companion was the cat. But he was actually my cat and I wanted him back. We wandered around looking for the office and finally spoke to someone. I explained the situation and offered to get her another cat to replace fat Lall. We were told that no pets were allowed and that once they had realised he was there they would have got rid of him anyway. Shamefaced and feeling really mean , we bundled him up and drove back to Camberwell. I drive past those flats in Ladbroke Grove every now and then and I always wonder what became of her. 

Lally finally came to a gruesome end after we had moved to the house we live in now. He developed a habit of sleeping in the middle of the road..yes you can guess where this is going. 

We now have Gollum, a reincarnation of Doolally but much more of a wimp and definitely in touch with his feminine side. He is frightened of most things including leaves but we love him. And I also have Camberwell chickens but that’s another story.