The Story of Fester Cat: How One Remarkable Cat Changed Two Men's Lives - Softcover

Ungow!

I read a cat book a couple of years ago. Paul asked me to review one or two on his blog for him. He was like, “Look, Fester, you spend all that time lying on my chest when I’m reading. When I’m on the bed settee in the Beach House at the bottom of our garden, I’m reading and you’re lying on me. I’ve got to hold the book up over your head because you’re lying there, as close as you can get, until our noses are touching just about, and your paws are right under your chin.”

“Yeah, so what?” I said.

And he goes, “Well, while you’re lying about, maybe you could read some of these cat books for me. Maybe review them on my blog? It would be good to get a proper cat’s point of view.”

Well, I am a proper cat. That’s very true. I’m a cat!

And I’ve been one for quite a long time, as it turns out. Last time I went to see Mr. Joe the hairdresser I had a peek at my notes and they were saying there that I was probably about eighteen. Eighteen! What’s that? About a hundred and fifty in human years? Probably. But I’m not one of them who goes on as if they’re old, if you know what I mean? I’m nimble and trim and I can still run about at a fair clip. So, you know, people never really know my age.

Anyhow, I know Mr. Joe’s not really the hairdresser. I know he’s a vet. In a little shop on the Stockport Road. These two I live with—this daft pair—they hark on that I’m going to the hairdresser’s when they have to take me for pills or to give blood or have a checkup, whatever. I don’t know how the hairdresser thing started. Oh, maybe because he shaves a patch of fur under my chin to take blood (right in my Special Spot, as it happens, just as if Mr. Joe knows it’s the most delicious spot to have tickled).

So, Paul was like, “Review some cat books why don’t you, Fester?” And then he suggested this one about a cat who got on buses. He waited in the queue outside his owner’s house every day, apparently. And then jumped aboard the bus and went all over the city and people got to know him. Sounded pretty daft to me. You’d never catch me doing that. And then at the end some awful taxi driver runs the poor devil over and that’s the end of that. Well, I blame the owner, really. She had a houseful of cats and didn’t look after her commuting cat enough. I mean, I hear that the buses and some people round here can be pretty rough. No way would Paul and Jeremy let me get on those unsupervised. And I wouldn’t want to.

I don’t think this book about the bus cat was set in Manchester, though. I reckon it was pretty far away from here. Some dump down south where I’ve never been.

And this is the important part—this old wife who wrote the book—she was all pretty mawkish and stuff because her cat was dead and everything. She was full of regrets like, “Oh, why did I let him get on public transport unsupervised every day!” etc.

But then, in her book, she has these bits where the bloomin’ cat writes his own chapters! He writes letters from some kind of heaven . . . !

I mean, what’s that about?

He was on about sitting on the rainbow bridge and sending these letters back to his beloved owner and all her friends and—oh yeah—the readers of her bloomin’ awful book.

Rainbow bridge, my bum.

I thought back then, when I was reading that book and reviewing it for Paul’s blog, it won’t be like that. No decent cat would think very much of a rainbow bridge. I certainly wouldn’t walk on such a thing. Garish and not very solid.

Down the middle of our garden we’ve got a plank. I dunno where it came from. Jeremy’s always got bits and pieces of DIY and gardening stuff lying about, which is great. Anyway, for as long as we can all remember, this plank has been Fester’s plank. Nowadays it’s laid across the lawn diagonally between the shaded walk from the terrace, beside the pond wall, and it goes all the way to the Beach House. It’s a long, slightly muddy, sun-faded piece of wood that is great for scratching your claws and stretching out your body on.

And what I do is, I sit right in the middle of it. When the sun is full upon it I lie there and soak up all the light and heat and sometimes I doze, but what I do mostly is sit there and from my spot on that plank I can see the whole garden. I can see Paul working or reading in the Beach House or I can look back at the terrace where Jeremy might be reading the paper at the patio table, or diddling about with shovels and plants. He likes to move plants around and wear old clothes that he gets really filthy. He digs up all sorts of interesting stuff.

Also from there I can see the back of the house and the open windows and doors. The kitchen door is open at the top of the back stairs and any moment I like I can trot back down the garden and have a snack at Fester’s feeding station. These two fellas make up gags about Fester’s running buffet, but we all know it’s important I have food there all the time, just whenever I want it. It’s Fester’s smorgasbord. But I’ve got a thyroid problem, right? That’s what all the hairdresser stuff is about.

I can see the pond and maybe those frogs gadding about. I’ve got easy access to Poo Corner, should the mood take me. And I look up into the branches of the magnolia and the larch. Watching for those squirrels and what they get up to. I’ve a complicated relationship with the squirrels running rampant all over the trees of where we live in Levenshulme, but on the whole I guess they’re all right. They’re just getting by, I suppose. These are tough days for everyone, I’ve heard people say. The squirrels have to get along and survive, same as everyone else. So I’ve given up trying to catch them.

So the point is—my plank. I’m a materialist, I’m a realist. I don’t believe in rainbow bridges and cats sitting up there in cat heaven writing letters home after they’re dead. I don’t believe they write to their owners and say, “Blessings from the celestial beyond from your moggy who still loves you, even if you did let him get run over by a bloomin’ cabdriver.”

I think, if it’s like anything, it’ll be like sitting here, on my plank, with the whole world spread out around me. From here I can see nearly all of my world, and I’m happy because the sun’s out a bit today—it’s the start of spring. It’ll be my eighth summer here in this house with these two. And from here I can watch them doing the things they like to do.

And if it ever comes to it and I have to die, if my life turns into anything at all, I’d be happy enough if it was just this. Me being in the garden forever, with this daft pair, like this.

Oh, with the sound of that seventies radio station drifting out from the kitchen. They’ve got that on all the bloomin’ time. I guess I’ve been brainwashed and now I love all those silly songs as much as they do. At some point I’ll tell you about Cat Discos at Lunchtime.

I’ll tell you the whole lot. I might as well, mightn’t I? Doing those scathing reviews of other people’s cat books on Paul’s blog has given me the taste for expressing myself. Writing’s pretty easy, I reckon, whatever that dafty says.

So I’ll tell you everything I can remember about our lives here together.

Ungow!!

Mystery

Although I’m not like the cats in those books, today I feel like there’s a mystery going on. I’ve got all the clues like a cat detective. I’m like in one of those American novels where the cat is the cleverest character of them all and he pieces it all together and reveals the solution at the very end.

But my head is banging today. I’ve had a headache for days and I can’t shift it. My eyesight’s not right, either. There’s quite a few things been going wrong this week. It’s not been one of my favourite weeks, I must say.

And the worst thing about that is that the sun’s been coming out. Weird weather, this year. Last weekend we even had snow. We so rarely get snow in south Manchester. I don’t know why. When it falls it feels like a novelty. By the time it rolls around each year I’ve forgotten what it is. And I’m like—hey! What’s that?—all over again.

Monday it snowed almost horizontal. A very quiet blizzard through the morning. We were indoors, in the front room. Paul was trying to write downstairs because Jeremy had started—actually started!—doing DIY in the little room at the front of the house. Pictures were down, paintbrushes were out, and Paul was downstairs with his laptop, doing his work. I sat on his lap between him and the laptop and then I sat beside him on a blanky for a while. Then I got up and had a snack and I walked back into the front room and he was still going, but the snow had stopped. I could see through the big front window that the snow was petering out and the sun was coming through the trees at last. It was streaming over the houses and the trees at the bottom of our garden and it was slanting into the room. Golden, luscious, warming sunlight. So I charged over there and hopped onto the back of the armchair so I could stretch out in that light.

Paul joined me there. He put his chin on the back of the chair and his arm around me. I let him. I didn’t squirm away. I let him ruffle my fur up. And we just sat there for a while. Until the next load of clouds came over. He said something about the weather changing at last and how it should be spring by now. He said the snowdrops in the window boxes and planters had withered, but the anemones were holding up, even in the snow. Yeah, yeah, I thought. You don’t even know about gardening. Jeremy planted bulbs in those boxes and you just thought those things had grown there spontaneously. But I snuggled in. I had that headache coming on and the hug was good.

It was a headache like I get in the middle of the night. When my mouth is parched and I know I have to make the trip up the length of the bed, up to Paul’s pillows and then hop over to his bedside table. I can perch there, with my whole body curled up and my head in his water glass. He often wakes at the sound of my lapping. Sometimes I have to be extra loud because the water level’s gone down and I need him to top it up. He keeps a bottle of spare water on hand. I think it’s what he drinks from when he gets thirsty. For some reason he’s gone off drinking out of his glass.

One night just before last weekend—I sat there on that bedside table, having had my drink. I just sat there in the middle of the night and I didn’t have a clue what I was doing there, or where I should go next. I remember looking from the water glass to the bookcase on Paul’s side, and his wardrobe, and Jeremy’s messy wardrobe and all the bookcases at the bottom of the bed, and then the bed itself with the tangled blankets and the two of them underneath. They were both awake by then and looking at me. Paul clicked his light on and they both looked concerned. I guess I was moving my head from side to side and casting about like I didn’t know what I was doing.

“What’s up, Fester Cat?”

Then I was reminded that I had to go and lie on Paul’s knees and then in the crook of his legs and fall asleep until first light. It all came back to me and I was suddenly relieved. Ungow! I hopped back over and that was okay. It was fine. But it was a scary moment and the headache stayed with me when I woke up. It went away a little but it kept coming back and I knew it had to do with that raging thirst that keeps coming over me.

Monday morning and we’re sitting in the sun until the snow clouds cover it, and Paul decides we should take a walk down the garden. It feels daring after all the cold and snow. Some parts of the country have been snowbound all weekend. But when we crack open the back door and look out—the patio is dry. It’s not right hot or anything, but it’s dry and oh, the smell of the garden is wonderful. I can feel my nose doing that dimpling thing and I’m breathing faster as I sit there on the back doorstep. I love it and it always makes Paul laugh. He says I’m sniffing the news from outside. I guess that’s right. You can tell a lot of what’s been going on from the smells outside.

Down the garden we go. Down the crazy paving path Jeremy built, between the little walls he made out of old red bricks and the urns of herbs—all a bit frosty and dead by now. There’s a skin of ice on the pond and I reckon all last year’s frogs will be dead. Or do they sleep underwater? I don’t even know.

Down the plank. Look at the magnolia, and the buds are there but nowhere near out yet. They’re curled up tight on the knuckly, dark branches. Paul is opening the Beach House door, dragging it open, and it takes some doing. The wood has swollen in the cold and wet.

The cool air and warm sun are making my headache lift away. I hop onto the veranda of the little house and then I can smell last summer’s scents coming out of there. It’s all damp books and trapped sun and dust and cat hair, mellow wood and dry soil. It’s wonderful—and here comes the sun again, sliding through the dusty panes.

Paul sits on the bed settee, trying to write with his laptop. I jump on my wickerwork chair and my cushion smells divine. After a while of gentle dozing, I jump over to sit in the crook of his legs. Hey, I nudge him and my nose feels dry. This is the first day of spring, probably. This is the first afternoon we get to spend out here. The first of many, all over again. It’ll be our eighth summer here together.

He’s distracted, though. Off in that world of his own. He’s sitting up awkwardly, typing with one hand and giving himself backache and neck ache. But he never moves his legs and so I don’t have to move.

That was the Monday things started to seem funny. Last Monday. I wobbled a bit, swaying, as we went back down the garden, only an hour later. I dithered a bit on the patio. I know I did, and I know Paul noticed.

I sat on the back stairs and I had this amazing thought. I think the sun brought it to me as the clouds cleared once more.

It was: I’ve not had a tummy tickle in so long. What’s that about? I love them! I crave them. I always have. And yet I can’t remember the last time I flung myself onto the ground in an almighty flomp and shouted at that pair to come and tickle me daft.

I guess I’ve been feeling a bit less cushioned. I lost weight before Christmas and then again recently. I feel a bit more bony. But how could I forget about all the tickles and rubs? The fur on my stomach was the only bit Paul couldn’t get to when he combed out the snags and tangles in my fur recently. I wouldn’t lie down. I wouldn’t flomp. One night the two of them got down on the front room floor and rolled about on the rug. They were wriggling and shouting “Flomp!” and “Tummy Tickle!” and I just didn’t understand. That was last week sometime. I just thought they were being daft, as per usual. But they were actually trying to tell me something and now I remember.

I love flomps! I love flinging myself sideways and landing jaw first and rolling around onto my back with my paws up in the air.

I especially love it on the gritty concrete of the patio or the backdoor steps. There’s something immensely satisfying about rubbing the dirt into your fur like humans do shampoo.

Paul is delighted that I’ve suddenly remembered. He tickles me like crazy and I can’t help grinni...