Cat flap
Jeremy Clarke
I’ve been in bed for the last fortnight, my brain numbed by painkillers. Between Christmas and New Year, the owner of the flat I’m recovering in was away visiting relatives, so there was only a cat for company.
I detest cats. This particular cat is black with a white star on its chest and green eyes. I think it’s a female. It has pointed ears and long whiskers. It let itself in and out of the cat flap to do its business in the garden. Otherwise, the cold, wet weather kept the cat indoors asleep on the bed. It was my first relationship with one.
I was flat on my back. It was the only comfortable position, though the smallest movement made me whimper and groan. Hearing my groans, the cat would come and sit on my chest and stare into my eyes. There was not a glimmer of sympathy in those green eyes — just cold acumen. It was as though they were calculating how long before I was carrion and it could start tearing off pieces of flesh.
‘What?’ I’d say to it. Say ‘What?’ to a terrier, or simply raise your eyebrows, and it will furrow its brow or wag its tail or look earnest. But the interrogative tone of my voice registered nothing at all in those eyes. If the eyes are the window of the soul, this cat hasn’t got one. The poet Christopher Smart said of his cat: ‘I will consider my cat Jeoffrey/ For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.’ Well, I think he’s making it up. Cats are automata.
Neither have they any manners. Once, it was standing on my chest giving me the cold stare and sneezed full in my face, peppering me with snot. My angry protest didn’t even register in those eyes. Sometimes it would come and stand on my chest, kneading my most painful rib with its paws and purring as if a small internal electric motor had started up. This meant I had to stroke it. ‘Bugger off!’ I’d say. Not taking no for answer, it would then headbutt my chin repeatedly until I’d bring my arm out from beneath the bedclothes and reluctantly scratch the top of its head.
If it decided it was time to eat, and there was nothing left in the food bowl, its insolence knew no bounds. It would take a standing jump from the floor up on to my chest and miaow dementedly at me. I’d lash out angrily at it and throw it off. Then it would resort to plan B. This was to scratch furiously at the furniture and soft furnishings until I could stand it no longer. I’d throw off the bedclothes, reach for my crutches, and set off on the long and ago nising journey to the kitchen. And the cat would go just ahead of me, with its tail up like a banner, as if it was heading a triumphal procession. The first time this happened I was so angered by its presumption, it nearly went in the microwave. In the event, I got my big toe under its backside and sent it skating across the kitchen floor. In the act of slowly bending down to fork food into its vile bowl, I pulled a muscle in my back, which for a while was more painful than my fractured pelvis, cracked ribs and broken finger. The cat contentedly ate its food while I gnashed and wept above it. This sorry scene was played out at 3.30 in the morning.
I could have listened to the radio if I’d wanted to. But, after listening to the British ‘people’ characterised in a patronising Today programme competition as ‘citizens, consumers, voters’, I gave up listening to the radio for the rest of the year. I couldn’t reach the knob very easily anyway. I tried to read by holding a book open above my head. But the only accessible book was a compilation of suicide letters — one from the 18th century simply said: ‘All this buttoning and unbuttoning!’ and I soon gave that up. So looking at and talking to the cat was my only outside interest for the best part of a week and I became reconciled to it.
But we didn’t become friends. There was nothing to get friendly with. The thing is a robot. It doesn’t even engage in any meaningful way with its environment. One gets the impression that, to a cat, everywhere is the same.
When my hostess returned, the cat was absent. ‘Where’s Coco?’ she said. She should go and look in the microwave, I told her. And it was perhaps a measure of her opinion of my own morals that for one horrified moment she took me entirely seriously.
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