Under the Paw: Confessions of a Cat Man (5 page)

The Bear’s unflinching gaze was similarly disturbing and flummoxing. What had I done to him to merit such a piercing look? Had I unwittingly snubbed him in the street for a well-manicured tabby at some point several months before? Maybe he’d helped release a depressive country record, too; from what I knew of his résumé so far, it didn’t seem beyond the bounds of possibility. There was always the additional chance that this was all about jealousy. I failed to see the logic, if you were worried about the wandering eye of a loved one, in planting a large piece of excrement in that same loved one’s nightwear. Then again, nobody ever claimed the affairs of the heart were straightforward.

We’d probably been looking at each other for forty-five seconds now, though it felt more like forty-five minutes. It was the kind of staring contest that tends to be broken only by a passionate embrace, a crying jag or someone getting the crap beaten out of them. I felt that the first option was unlikely, though I couldn’t entirely rule out the last two.

One of us had to break the deadlock, and it was pretty clear it wasn’t going to be him. ‘Um . . . The
Bear
!’ I called, in my friendliest singsong voice, glancing nervously across to Dee. I was used to calling out preposterous cat names in a camp voice, but this felt somehow wrong: like Eva Braun getting Hitler in for his dinner by cheerfully shouting, ‘The
Führer
!’

He took a nervous step forward, his eyes never leaving mine, and sniffed a chunk of my chicken bhuna. I’d actually been saving that particular bit for later, to wrap in some nan bread, but I figured I could let it go, just this once. He took a lick, then another lick, then heard something utterly terrifying at a frequency undetectable to the human ear, jolted into an alert, upright pose, gave me one last look of disgust and scarpered in the direction of some boxes. It would be the last we saw of him that evening.

‘It could have been worse,’ said Dee. ‘At least he didn’t puke in your trainers. I actually think he quite likes you.’

The following morning, I woke to find the sun beaming through my tiny studio flat in Blackheath. Returning from a morning stroll across the heath to get a newspaper, I could not help but bask in the goodly shine of the universe. Normally, when I felt energised like this, I would already have been looking forward to my first beer of that evening, but now my mind was not on the pub, or that night’s gig. In all that time I’d been burning the midnight oil had I just been trying to light the way to the right cat-loving girl? It seemed so. As I moved towards my desk, even the knowledge that I had to review the new Simply Red album later that day could not dampen my spirits. I noticed the green light blinking on my answerphone.

The message was from Dee. She did not exactly sound upset, but her tone had more of a quaver to it than usual. ‘Don’t take this personally, because I’m trying not to,’ she said, ‘but this morning The Bear got through the window and escaped. I’ve been all over looking for him, but he’s gone.’

Puss

Mog