Queen Susan

It is time to talk about Susan

The marina is full of animals. Not just aquatic varieties. We are an ecumenical community. People who live on tiny boats seem to be disproportionately passionate about sharing their limited space with domestic creatures of all kinds, some of whom I have written about before. The summer very much belongs to all the cats of the marina. In winter, the cats very sensibly tend to stay indoors, while the dogs have their day.

With the notable exception of Susan.

This is Susan.

Susan has been the source of an ongoing drama in recent weeks. Let me explain.

During the coldest days of January, Susan started hanging out rather dramatically on the pontoon. No matter what the weather or time of day, if she heard you coming, she would leap out and accost you, demanding tribute. Her commands are voiced in a throaty, rasp that makes her sound rather like one of Marge Simpson’s sisters. You wouldn’t be at all surprised to find Susan round the back of the bike sheds, smoking unfiltered Benson and Hedges and laughing raucously at dirty jokes. She may have the demeanour and collar of a queen but she’s more Lily Savage than HRH.

I say dramatic because as you can see from the photo, Susan’s fur is almost the same colour as the weathered down planks of the pontoon and in the dark of early mornings and the dusk of twilight, she would rise up out of the floor to greet you in the manner of a chain-smoking ghost. We had learned to tread cautiously on her preferred section of the pontoon, just in case we a) accidentally squashed her or b) tripped over her and went headfirst into the Thames.

Everyone who came that way stopped to talk to Susan and give her scritches. It was accepted that this was a toll you willingly paid to get where you were going. Susan was loving life. And we were all loving Susan. She is our queen.

One weekend, someone on the marina sent an email to our marina email chain asking if anyone knew anything about Susan. They said that they were concerned about Susan because she was out in all weathers and at all times of the day and night. They had talked to one of the marina managers who suggested that they call the RSPCA but if nobody owned Susan, they would be happy to take her in and care for her.

I wasn’t sure about Susan being homeless. She is as fat as butter for a start. Her fur is in immaculate condition, she has clear eyes and a wet nose. She also has a ritzy pink collar with her name picked out in diamanté jewels. Apart from an arthritic limp which I put down to age, she is clearly at the top of her game. Also, I couldn’t believe that anyone who decided to declare in jewelled letters that their cat was called Susan, would bugger off and leave her to the elements. Susan is a sensible name, given by responsible cat owners, not feckless ne’er do wells.

I kept this to myself, as I am the pariah of the group after sending that angry 72 point font message that time. Even though the font size was an accident, people still look at me askance, and to be honest, I can’t blame them.

Eventually someone replied to the ‘is Susan a homeless waif?’ email. Let’s call him Jimmy. Jimmy said something along the lines of: ‘Susan may well be appropriately fed and watered and have a lovely, warm home to go to, but I don’t want to say much more. I don’t like using this email group because there are people on here who I don’t want to know what I do with my life, so I will leave it at that.’

It wasn’t entirely clear whether Jimmy was claiming ownership of Susan, but it was very clear that some nefarious shenanigans had been going on involving Jimmy and other boaters and there was beef and schisms. We love beef and schisms.

Because it wasn’t clear if Susan was or wasn’t the property of Jimmy the Shade, we were then treated to a flurry of emails, proposing various methods of caring for Susan and what might be done about her. My favourite was a lady who is a passionate owner and lover of cats who said: ‘As a matter of interest; you can’t decide what to do with Susan. If Susan doesn’t want to be helped, that’s her business. The law states that Susan has the right to roam wherever she pleases. Maybe Susan is exercising her rights as a free agent.’

Yeah!

Susan, I thought, was exercising her rights to demand scritches and wash her bumhole in peace. She was hardly about to join the Black Panthers or scramble to the top of the shower block, waving a towel and demanding freedom for the Poplar One. Susan is entirely uninterested in contesting her legal right to roam. She would just like it if you could just scratch that bit behind her ear that’s really difficult to get to and if you have a bit more time to spare, could you sit down with her and attend to tummy rubbing duties? Nevertheless, I enjoyed the idea of Susan as a vigilante freedom fighter.

More emails rolled in, most of which were people declaring their fealty to Susan and whatever lifestyle she chose to adopt. Then there was an email from a lady we will call Mary. Mary is, to put it mildly, a very strange woman. She lives in a huge tug boat right at the entrance to the marina. She doesn’t spend a lot of time on the boat, but when she does make an appearance there is always drama. Last summer she decided that the marina management were trying to evict her. She sent the group an impassioned email begging us to take shifts patrolling her boat at the times she was absent, so that nobody could sneak off with it. Her boat is huge. It is also painted bright yellow. Nobody is sneaking anywhere with Mary’s boat.

The main thing about Mary’s boat is that all the cats of the marina love it. It is catnip in boat form. All summer long, cats appear through the gaps in the railings, sun themselves on capstans and have meetings together on the prow. As you walk by, small, furry faces poke through holes, assessing whether it’s worth the effort to come out and talk to you. Mostly it isn’t. Mary’s boat provides for all their needs. Susan is one of the main culprits in co-opting the boat. It’s usually the place she appears from if she wants to exact her tribute.

Mary, it appears, is not happy about this. Not happy at all. Susan may be our queen, but she is Mary’s nemesis. In an email to the group, Mary said that she was sick of the fact that Susan uses her boat as a toilet. Apparently Susan likes to ‘shit under my lounge’ and Mary encouraged people to report all this to the Cat’s Protection League and get this sorted as she for one would be glad to see the back of Susan, even though she doesn’t have anything against cats in theory.

At this stage, Jimmy the Shade popped back into the chat: ‘Mary. I don’t know why you are talking about sending Susan to the Cat’s Protection League when I have made it perfectly clear that Susan is my cat and she has a home here. If you have problems with Susan’s shit, I will buy you some cat poo tools and drop them to your boat when you’re next at the marina.’

Jimmy’s idea of being perfectly clear and everyone else’s are two separate things as there had been many, many exchanges about Susan’s uncertain future before Mary’s accusatory missive. It was the poo that tipped Jimmy over the edge and forced him back into the shadowy world of the email chain. Also, I loved that he called them ‘poo tools.’

Things were hotting up. Emails were flying, thick and fast, and WhatsApp messages were being exchanged between the more tech savvy elements of the marina community, offering popcorn and pulling up chairs.

Mary was furious and replied extremely speedily. English is her second language and with Mary’s rage came an unloosening of language. I quote: ‘She sleeps and shits under my living room. I can’t frighten her. I clear a big shopping bag size cat shit each summer. Bit tired as I don’t even own a cat.’

I know that what Mary meant was that there were so many poos that she could fill a carrier bag. I know that. But this was the message that reduced me to hysterics as I imagined tiny, old Susan, squeezing out individual poos so large that each one filled a shopping bag. That’s quite some achievement. No wonder Mary was tired. That’s a lot of shit.

Mary then poo-pooed the offer of ‘cat poo tools,’ which was a shame because I’d have liked confirmation of exactly what tools Jimmy the Shade was referring to. If Susan’s shits were big enough to fill a carrier bag, I suspect that a shovel may have been involved.

Finally, Mary extended a cordial invitation to Jimmy and other cat owners whose cats shit under her living room to join her in her summer cat poo excavation, which is very hard to do because they delight in shitting in hard to reach areas.

I had so many questions, the most pressing of which was why Mary waited until the height of summer to excavate giant quantities of cat shit from her boat, when it would make sense to do it a) in the winter when it was cold and less fragrant or b) more regularly. Also, why, if she knows that cats love shitting in the space under her living room, doesn’t she block access to that space? Perhaps Mary enjoys the martyrdom of tottering around the marina with bags full of stinking shit that she hasn’t got the appropriate tools to deal with. We never did get to the bottom of this as everyone had had more than enough crazy by that point.

Everything went quiet for a few weeks. Susan continued to reign uninterrupted, and presumably shit uninterrupted. Then last week there were complaints about a giant dog shit down by the post boxes. The complainant explained in graphic detail that they knew that someone had tried to push it through the slats in the pontoon ‘because you can clearly see the treads of the sole of someone’s shoe in the poo.’ I was surprised they hadn’t taken a cast from the offending shit and done a boat to boat search, demanding to see all our shoe soles.

Hot on the heels of the mysterious and incriminating shoe poo (not mysterious. The David Bowie dog (one blue, one brown eye) wanders all over the pontoons without his owner and is absolutely the culprit. Not that he cares), came a missive from someone complaining about cat poos on the pontoons, which he described as ‘cat deposits’. This made it sound like the cats had taken up banking their shit instead of leaving it at Mary’s boat. Perhaps they thought that when she was scooping it all into the carrier bags, she was taking it to some kind of feline bank and then, when they found she was dumping it, they decided to see if someone else would take care of it for them.

After this furore died down, things hotted up again yesterday when Mary, who is out of the country, sent an email to the chain entitled: ‘Cat owners beware.’ It contained a link to an article about how bubonic plague has been reintroduced to America via the medium of cat poo. It was unclear whether Mary was bringing some back (in a carrier bag) to hold us to ransom, or whether she thinks that Susan and by extension Jimmy the Shade, is trying to kill her. No doubt we will find out in the weeks to come.