All The Cats Of My Life

Elizabeth Von Arnim, the author best known for writing The Enchanted April, also penned an autobiography called All The Dogs Of My Life.

Arnim had an exceptionally strange life in which she discovered several times over that men were something of a burden to her. In her later years she gave up on men entirely and plumped for dogs instead. Here she is, writing about the loss of one of her dogs and the disappointment of still having a husband.

‘Ingraban’s death had shocked me very much, and my husband, seeing this, began comforting me, and one thing led to another in the way things do, and before I knew where I was I was caught once more in the toils of childbearing.  A strange form, I thought, as I dealt as best I could with the aches and pains, the dark forebodings and tendency to make Wills, which always, in my case went with that condition.’

I was thinking of her this morning as I walked out the back door into the spring sunshine and trod, with bare feet, in the remains of a mouse that one of the cats of my life had left on the doormat.

It is fair to say that all of the cats of my life are shifty, unreliable bastards who, if I collapsed on the lounge floor and died, would attempt to eat me before calling 999.

And yet, unlike some of the men of my past life, I would, if the roles were reversed, attempt to give them CPR and mourn their passing for years to come.

How do they inspire this type of love/loyalty?

Is it their incessant need to back their arseholes into your face when they are attempting to settle themselves down on your person?

Is it their perverse delight in eating all the snacks and then throwing up on every step of the stairs and watching as you accidentally tread in it?

Is it their ability to ransack the kitchen while you’re sleeping and put their paws into any food you might accidentally leave out, even though they have Michelin starred cat food of their very own?

Is it their excessive nosiness that means that every closed door is a challenge that must be met by forming themselves into furry cannon balls and hurling themselves repeatedly at it until it gives way under the onslaught?

Is it their need to ‘kiss’ your face with their stinky, spitty mouths and sulk with you if you don’t let them?

Who the hell knows?

All of this and more has occurred in the last week, usually first thing in the morning when I am least prepared for it, or last thing at night just as I am about to calmly go to bed, only to find I have to put that on hold to spend twenty minutes chasing a spit covered mouse round the skirting boards while the cats watch on from the stairs.

Having read this back it seems increasingly obvious to me that they must be using that kitchen time in the wee small hours to put drugs in the butter to keep us in thrall to them.

All the fucking cats of my bastard life, all the fucking time.