When I was growing up in the Sussex countryside, a trip to the dentist was always tempered by the fascinating thought that we’d be parking outside catwoman’s house. This was a spooky place, dark and gloomy under its canopy of trees, and smelling strongly of tom cat.
Catwoman lived there on her own with, it was rumoured, around 80 felines of various size and hue. With her wild, dark hair and ragged clothes flapping around her spare frame, she was a haunting figure. Despite having two cats at home, it gave me the lasting impression that there was something odd and a bit sad about spinsters who live alone with cats.
Although I was fond of our cats – Kitty, who gave birth in my cot, and her errant son, Footso, (named after the tabby in the 1960s cartoon, Twizzle) – my affections were eclipsed by the arrival of Diggy, a wilful basset hound. One of her puppies, Victoria Plum, became my first dog and I loved her to bits.
Years later, when I moved from the city to the country, I wrote in Woman & Home how I intended to get myself a dog. I had dreamed up a fantasy basset hound puppy called Myrtle and nothing else would do – certainly not a cat. I hoped a dog would help me bag myself a good country lad but before I could get my Myrtle, major building work had to be done on my cottage.
Then one moonlit August night, in stalked a long black cat with peridot eyes who scuppered all my plans. Half Burmese, I later discovered, he pawed his way into my life against my better nature. “He wants to move in,” said my friend Isobel. “No chance – I don’t want a cat, I want a dog,” I replied. “But he wants you – and you won’t have a say in it,” she said. Oh how right she was.
Two nights later he turned up again and told me his story in a series of escalating and increasingly pitiful miaows. When he’d finished, he swivelled on his black velvet heel and left. The following evening, he walked into my sitting room. I patted the sofa and he jumped up beside me. Tentatively, I put my hand next to him and very gently he put his claws out and pulled it towards him. My dog-loving heart was lost and I named him Augustus Moon – Gus for short – after the night we met.
Learning to live with an adult cat has been an education. His main mission has been to change my ways to his. Friends accuse me of having being wound round his little paw because I take his cat food upstairs at night but it beats being jumped on at 5am because he’s hungry. He expects morning and night-time cuddles and glares at guests who stay past 10pm because he wants to go to bed. With me.
And therein lies the problem. I am still single and living alone and he seems to think he is the man of the house and sees off any male with macho displays of behaviour. Once he jumped 10 feet diagonally upwards to land, swaggering, on the flat roof where my mate Simon was looking out of an upstairs window. If Gus could have put his hands on his hips and said, “Beat that, big man,” he would have done.
Another time my friend Nick was barbecuing some chops in my garden when Gus returned with a dead rat and threw it at Nick’s feet. He’s never done that when I’m barbecuing.
What’s more, Gus hates dogs with a passion, which has ruined my plans for Myrtle. But I wouldn’t be without him for the world. He’s always there when I open the front door, waggling his elegant tail in the air as greeting and rubbing round my legs with his silken fur. He is the perfect companion – faithful, affectionate and comforting – and when he sleeps with me, he doesn’t snore.
He is also the inspiration for my first novel, The Tail of Augustus Moon, (Book Guild Publishing, £9.99). Strangely enough, it’s a story about a woman who’s looking for love and is adopted by a cat, learning a lot about independence in the process.
So although I’d still like to meet my country gent, I’m doing as Augustus Moon does and living in the moment, refusing to hanker after what I haven’t got and enjoying my freedom. It’s a lesson no dog could have taught me.
Five cat facts
- Cats are the UK’s favourite pet and fit in well with urban, working lifestyles.
- There are over nine million cats in the UK, twice as many as 30 years ago.
- There are 1.28 million male-cat owners and 4.7 female-cat owners in the UK. Most live in London.
- The cat has lived in close association with humans for up to 8,000 years.
- Just as no two humans have the same fingerprints, no two feline’s nose prints are alike.