Talk to the Tail: Adventures in Cat Ownership and Beyond Read Online Free

soft pom-pom when bounding onto the bed and asking to have his chest scruffed, but he was also one with scalpel-deadly talons. I found this to my cost one day, when I reached through the cat flap tunnel and readjusted the door, only for Pablo to mistake my hand for Ralph and punish it accordingly. 2
    Soon, the exits and corners of the house became places of fiery red trepidation for Ralph. The top of the small staircase leading from the bottom floor was a particular danger point. Once, I arrived here to find Ralph and Pablo both simultaneously suspended upside down, in mid-air, three feet off the ground. From what I could work out, no string, rope or pulley system was in place. It was my usual habit to hurl myself in between them during their scraps, but this time I held back just momentarily, unable to stop myself admiring the ballet of the performance. I will not be persuaded that a full three seconds didn’t elapse before both their heads hit the ground. It was like something from The Matrix , the main exceptions being that, post-fight, characters from The Matrix don’t a) violently shed fur all over the floor and b) go and sulk behind the sofa.
    There was always far more fur to clean up in the aftermath of Ralph and Pablo’s tussles than there was following the recreational wrestling bouts between Janet and Shipley. If I’d had the foresight to save the stuff, it probably would have only taken about half a dozen fights before I had enough to make a whole new cat: a tabby-ginger half-breed named Rablo who might go forth and spread peace, putting an end to racial tension in the cat universe once and for all.
    But it seems doubtful Rablo would have succeeded where ‘mellowing’ Feliway plug-ins, valerian drops and pep talks had not. My own interventions certainly weren’t doing much good either. Perhaps the most calamitous of them was the occasion when, in whisking Pablo out from Ralph’s reach and closing the bedroom door, being careful not to shut it on Pablo’s tail, I suddenly realised I was holding a furry ginger air raid alarm whose off switch I could not locate. I’ve never heard such a bloodcurdling sound coming from a cat and an interminable twenty seconds went by before I realised that it was not a continuation of Pablo’s battle cry I was hearing but his way of informing me that, in going to such an attempt not to trap his tail in the door, I’d trapped it in the hinge of the door instead. It took me quite some time to apologise for that one, with the extensive use of pâté – always a dangerous move with Pablo, a cat who, once given a taste, can never quite be convinced that a human is incapable of producing spreadable paste on demand.

     
    Working from home takes strict discipline. That discipline can easily be fractured when a person spends half his day serving as a peacemaker between his cats. Now, with Dee out at her new job at a local horse charity, I found myself devoting large amounts of time to trying to placate Ralph and Pablo and soothe their bruised egos. Ralph is a cat who can twist his way inside your chest like a rusty screwdriver with his repertoire of hurt looks, and I found myself being particularly diligent to make sure his feelings weren’t damaged. Outsiders might think the logical thing to do, having run for the doorbell, fallen over on the stairs, lightly trodden on your cat, bruised your shin and scraped a chunk of skin off the palm of your hand, would be to attempt to stop the courier driving off with the package containing the DVD you need to review in your newspaper column that afternoon, or sit down and recover with a calming cup of tea. Instead, I chose a third option: chase after the cat in question, telling him how profusely sorry you are, and promising never to do it again, not once considering that it might be his own stupid fault for sitting on the stairs in the first place.
    Sometimes, as I found myself singing my alternative version of Billy Joel’s ‘Vienna’