AN OBITUARY FOR COW, MY 20 YEAR OLD CAT
It’s traditional in obituaries not to state the cause of death. But in this one, I will. Cowpatch died of old age. Technically, a combination of gradual liver failure, paralysed back legs and occasional seizures that made him twitch violently then wake up looking faintly put out and feeling hungry. When he stopped eating though, even roast chicken pureed to a luxury paté in the processor, and red snapper sous-vided and flaked and offered by hand, we knew it was only a matter of days. Two, in fact. He put us through two nights of half-asleep terror at what we might find in the morning; then died quietly and calmly with the dogs both on his bed and me stroking his head, while porridge was being made for breakfast. Actually it was their bed, but it had somehow become his bed, that they were allowed to share.
Cow was born on the eve of my 30th birthday, in 2000. His Mum, Mabel, was a gymslip bride, only a year old, who had been trotting about in a panic all day, and finally gave birth with me mid-wifing, on the marital bed just after midnight. Cow was first out, a little black and white atom with wide-apart eyes, whom we called Cow because we needed names so we could recognise them all easily. Obviously we’d change it later.
He spent his kitten-hood behind the wardrobe in my son Wolf’s room. Mabel had carried all four there and liked the combination of warm carpet and quietness. When they got bigger, we kept two, and the others went to family. Cow was always secretly our favourite.
One Christmas we bought him a catnip mouse and he went full Requiem for a Dream, rolling about with his eyes like whirling orbs. He was the most sociable cat imaginable — he would stalk out from wherever he’d been sleeping- usually somebody’s bed — and come and do a meet and greet at parties. His unusual, Slavic looks, his enormous monochrome fluffiness and his general air of “I have chosen you to speak to” won over even cat-haters.
My best friend lived in the flat downstairs, and swears he deliberately slept only on her black clothes, leaving a tidal scum-line of white fur. I found it very sweet.
At night, he’d sleep in the bed with us, or on the kitchen table. He would bite my husband’s eyebrows for fun, or nibble our chins at 4am. In the morning, he’d follow my son to school over two roads, then sit at the corner of the really big junction, waiting till he was out of sight.
He was kind and intuitive. If anyone had a hangover, he’d come and lie on their head like a Russian hat, vibrating lightly, till the pain went.
By 2009, the cats would stay in the kitchen at night, banging in and out of the cat-flap. One night, in November, we had a serious house fire. It started in the kitchen, and after we’d been rescued from an upstairs window, my husband explained he’d been alerted by the cats howling, and woken up. We cried when we realised we must have lost them. Except we hadn’t, because the next day they were all sitting on the garden wall, covered in soot.
Cow showed no after-effects apart from a broken mew. Instead of one note, it was now two, like the “no” buzzer on Family Fortunes.
He was friends with the neighbours, he was my son’s best friend and confidante, he owned the neighbourhood. Apart from when strange cats entered the cat flap which made him wee with alarm, everywhere that might need protecting, like sprinkling holy water.
He liked to look out of the window at birds, making that feline creaking sound that means “if you were on this side of the glass, I’d have you.”
In 2013, we moved to an apartment in a stately home — Dyrham Park, in Gloucestershire. It was on the first floor and overlooked the deer park. Cow like to sit on the windowledge of this majestic Georgian mansion, while visitors captured him in their snaps forever, or he’d sit on the hill outside watching the deer thunder past with a puzzled slant of his ears.
Soon after we moved, he climbed through a window that had been left open in The Orangery after hours. This was a beautifully tiled, glass-roofed marvel, full of tropical plants. It also had a missing grate leading directly into a Victorian heating system that wound directly under the entire building, like the minotaur’s labyrinth. If a large cat, say, got stuck under there he was never coming out.
Looking for him, in a state of panic, we heard the distant sound of mewing echoing up through the old pipes. It took two solid hours of banging a tin of Whiskas and calling through the grate, until the mewing got nearer and nearer and eventually he burst out like a panto demon, covered in cobwebs.
He liked to sit on the gravel outside on sunny days while a stream of admiring passers-by stroked him and murmured ‘what a beautiful boy!’
After a diversion to a flat in Bath (ground floor so he came in and out of the window whenever he fancied), we spent a year in a house in Manchester after my marriage broke up, where he liked to follow me down the steps to the tram platform every morning. I lived in fear that he’d stroll onto a tram and end up in Miles Platting or Wythenshawe, but he never did.
My new boyfriend, Andy had a spaniel puppy, Ellroy, and the first time he came to stay, Cow and his sister Mini spent the full weekend on the garage roof, hissing with rage. They learnt to sit on the worktop in the kitchen and bat wildly at his nose as he tried to noisily make friends. That did not happen until we moved up to rural Scotland to live with the boyfriend and Ellroy.
Andy built cat-shelves around the top of all the rooms in the cottage, seven feet up. They could travel about like monorails, far above the dog, and had a sleeping platform with a basket just above the bathroom door. After Mini died in 2016, Cow couldn’t be bothered with the hassle though. Instead, he just made friends with Ellroy, sleeping closer and closer until eventually, they were just a tangle of fur and ears.
This bold approach also worked with Larkin, Ellroy’s son, who came in late 2019 and thought it was funny to chase Cow to the airing cupboard, until he got put right by Cow whacking him over the head. By 2020, they were all spending evenings in a heap on the couch. In Cow’s last week, he had a long, peaceful sleep on Larkin’s left ear.
I will never forget Cow’s love of being stroked and having his ears scratched. To make sure it happened, he’d just bat your hand relentlessly with his paw, until you got back on ear duty. I won’t forget how he lay on the table after dinner like a furry pudding. Or how he’d sneak up and sit three inches away from whatever we were eating, shrugging to prove how un-bothered he was till we weren’t looking. Or how warm and comforting and loving he was, and how much he loved people. I won’t even forget stepping in mouse entrails at 2am on the way to the bathroom.
Rest in peace, wonderful cat. So many people loved you for over twenty years. Most of all, me and Wolf.
xxxx
