
The Unadulterated Cat1IWE(IJVAPULTEM~4CATA Campaign for Real CatsFACELondonVictor Gollancz Ltd1989First published in Great Britain 19891)~, Victor Gollanez Ltd14 liciirietta Street, Londoii WC2E 8QJA Gollancz paperback OriginalText (p Terry and Lyn Pratchett 1989(',artoolis (D Grayjoliiffe 1989British Libran, Cataloguing in Publication Datallratcliett, Terry, 1948Theunadulterated cat.1. Title 11. Jolliffe, Gray823'.914 [1~'IISI3N 0-575-04628^7Photoset in Great Britain byRowland Phototypesetting Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolkand printed by St Edmundsbury Press LtdBury St Edmunds, SuffolkDesigned by Peter GuyDEDICATIONAll right, all right.Time to come clean.Despite the fact thatthis book clearly statesthat cats should have short namesyou don't mind yellingto the neighbourhood at midnight,The Unadulterated Catis dedicated to:OedipussThey don't come much realer.Far too many people these days have grownused to boring, mass-produced cats, whichmay bounce with health and nourishing vitaminsbut aren't a patch on the good old catsyou used to get. The Campaign for Real Catswants to change all that by helping peoplerecognise Real Cats when they see them.I lciice this book.The Campaign for Real Cats is against fizzykeg cats.All right, How can I recognise a Real cat?Simple. Nature has done a lot of the work foryou. Many Real cats are instantly recognisable.For example, all cats with faces that look asthough they had been put in a vice and hitrepeatedly by a hammer with a sock round itare Real cats. Cats with ears that look as thoughthey have been trimmed with pinking shearsare Real cats. Almost every non-pedigree unneuteredtom is not only Real, but as it hangsaround the house it gets Realer and Realeruntil one of you is left in absolutely no doubt asto its Realness.Fluffy cats are not necessarily unreal, but ifthey persist in putting on expressions of affronteddignity for the camera while advertisinganything with the word 'purr-fect' in theassociated copy they are definitely bringingtheir Realness into question.Ab. So cats in adverts aren't Real?Actually being in adverts doesn't make a catunreal - it can't help it if someone plonks itdown in some weird pyramid made of carpetand takes pictures of it peeping anxiously outof the hole - but its demeanour once thereFor example, if you put an unreal cat downin front of a row of bowls of catfood it willobediently choose the one made by the sponsorsof the ad even if all the others haven't gotsump oil on them. A Real cat, on the otherhand, will head for the most expensive regardless,pull it out onto the studio floor, eat it withgreat~' pleasure, try some of the others, trip upthe cameraman and then get stuck behind thenewsreaders' podium. Where it will be sick.And then, when its owners buy several largetins of the wretched stuff, it'll refuse to touch itagain.Real cats never wear bows (but sometimes theydo wear bow-ties; see 'Cartoon Cats').Or appear on Christmas cards.Or chase anything with a bell on it.Real cats don't wear collars. But Real cats oftendo wear dolls' clothes, and sit there also wearingan expression of furry imbecility whiletheir brains do a complex radar scan of theirsurroundings and then they take a special kindof ]cap that gets them out of the mob cap, dress,apron and doll's pram all in one move.Real cats are not simply self-possessed. Nor arethey simply neurotic. They are both, at thesame time, just like real people.Real cats do eat quielic. And giblets. And butter.And anything else left on the table, if they thinkthey can get away with it. real cats can hear afridge door opening two rooms away.There is some dispute about this, but some ofthe hardliners in the CRC say that Real catsdon't go to catteries when their owners go onholiday, but are fed by a simple arrangement ofbowls and neighbours. it is also held that Realcats don't go anywhere in neat wicker Nissenhuts with dinky little bars on the front. Nowlook. Schism and debate are of course thelifeblood of democracy, but I wouldjust like toremind some of our more enthusiastic membersof the great damage to the Campaigncaused by the Flea Collar Discussion (1985),the Proprietary Cat Litter Row (1986) and whatbecame rather disgracefully reported as theGreat Bowl With Your Name On It Fracas(1987). As I said at the time, while of course theideal Real cat eats its meals off an elderlysaucer with remnants of the last meal stillcrusting the edge or, more typically, eats it offthe floor just beside it, a Real cat is what youare, not what is done to you. Some of us mayvery well feel happier carting our cats aroundin a cardboard box with the name of a breakfastfood on the side, but Real cats have an inbuiltdistrust of white coats, can tell instantly whenthe vet is in prospect, and can erupt from eventhe stoutest cardboard box like a ICBM. Thisgenerally happens in dense traffic or crowdedwaiting rooms.11Despite the bad feeling caused by the GreatBowl With Your Name On It Fracas mentionedabove, we should make it clear that Real cats doeat out of bowls with PUSSY written on theside. They'd eat out of them if they had theword ARSENIC written on the side. Theyeat out of anything.Real cats catch things.Real cats eat nearly all of everything they catch.A Real cat's aim is to get through life peacefully,with as little interference from human beingsas possible. Very much like real humans, infact.Can I be pedigree and a Real cat too?Of course you can't. You're a human.il~l, cat, I mean.Ah. A thorny one, this. Logically, simply knowingyour great-granddad's name should not bea bar to enjoying the full rich life, but some ofthe Campaign's more committed members believethat a true Real cat should be in somedoubt as to its own existence, let alone that ofits parents.We feel that this is an extreme view. It is truethat many of us feel the quintessential Real catlooks like the survivor of a bad mincer accident,but if people are really going to goaround judging a cat's Realness by looks andfur colour alone, then they must see that whatthey are working towards is a Breed in its ownright ('And this Year's Supreme Champion isSooty, by "Thatdamngreythingfromnextdoorsonthebirdtableagain"out of "We just Call HerPuss" of Bedwellty').The point is that cats are different from dogs.A certain amount of breeding was necessary torefine dogs from the rough, tough, originalstock to the smelly, fawning, dribblingmorons* of uncertain temper that we seetodayAfter considerable heated debate, the Committeewishes it to be made clear that this statement should notbe taken to include, in order, small white terriers withan IQ of 150, faithful old mongrels who may be smellybut apl)~irelitly we love him, and huge shaggy wheezingSt Bernards who consume more protein in a day thansome humans see in a year) but understand every wordwe say, no, really, and are like one of the family~,.The committee, failing despite tremendous pressure to havethis phrase removed, haha, have asked it to be amended to'hasa healthy appetite for a dog of his age'. This refers to the waythe huge snout drops like a bulldozer and pushes a bowl thesize of a washbasin clean across the kitchen, 1 sul)i)o,,,c.The committee can say what they like, but the Chairman, who indeedfully admits never to have experienced the joys and pleasures of dogownership, intends never to do so, and fully accepts that there arelioti,,cs k~lic.ic (1()gs cits lik,e iii domestic harmony, has seen him("11. As they were turned into anything thatsociety felt at the time that it really wanted self-powered earth-moving machines, forexample, or sleeve ornaments - so the basicdogness was gradually diluted.Thus, your Real dog is far more likely to be amongrel, except that the word is probablyillegal these days, whereas all cats are, well,cats. More or less the same size, variouscolours, some fat, some thin, but still recognisablycats. Since the only thing they showedany inclination to do was catch things andsleep, no one ever bothered to tinker withthem to make them do anything else. It's interestingto speculate on what they might havebecome had history worked out differently,though (see 'The Cats We Missed'). All that catswere bred for, in fact, was general catness. Allcats are potentially Real. it's a way of life ...What has the Campaign for Real Cats gotagainst dogs, then?Nothing.Oh, come on.No, there are perfectly good, well-trained,well-behaved dogs who do not bark like astuck record, or crap in the middle of footpaths,sniff groins, act like everyone's favouriteon mere assumption, and generally whine,steal and grovel in a way that would put a 14thcentury professional mendicant to shame. Werecognise this.("oo(l.There are also forgiving traffic wardens, tartswith hearts of gold, and solicitors that do notgo on holiday in the middle of your complicatedhouse purchase. You just don't meetthem every day.1 1,.................Ante--c l~to .40C.OrsGetting startedWe got a cat because we didn't like them much.Our garden was debated territory betweenfive local cats, and we'd heard that the best wayto keep other cats out of the garden was to haveone yourself.A moment's rational thought here will spotthe slight flaw in this reasoning. However, ifyou're predisposed to keep cats, rationalthought has nothing to do with it. We've nevermet anyone who recalls waking up one day andthinking:'This morning I will go shopping andbuy some sprouts, one of those blue things forthe lavatory, some baking foil - and, oh yes, acat would be nice.'Cats have a way of always having been thereeven if they've only just arrived. They, move intheir own personal time. They act as if thehuman world is one they just happened to havestopped off in, on their way to somewhere thatis possibly a whole lot more interesting.And what, when you come right down to it,do we know about them? Where did they comefrom? People say, well, evolution, it stands toreason. Why? Look at dogs. Dogs descendedfrom wolves. You can tell. Some dogs arealsatians, which is just a wolf in a collar, bidingits time. And then there's all these smallerdogs, going down in size until you get theweird little ones with lots of Zs in their namewhich squeak and can get into pint mugs. Thepoint is, you can see the evolution happening,all the way from hairy semi-wolves to baldyappy things bred to go up Emperor's sleevesor whatever.You know that if civilisation suddenly stopped,if great clanking things from Alpha Centaurisuddenly lurched out of the sky andspirited mankind away, the dogs would beabout two nicals away from becoming wolvesOr look at us. Some of the details might be abit fiddly, but we - bright, civilised us, whoknow all about mortgages and non-stick saucepansand Verdi - can look back over our geneticshoulders and see a queue of stumblingfi(ytit-es going all the way back to little crouchingshapes with hairy chests, no forehead andthe intelligence of a gameshow audience.Cats are different. On the one hand we havethese great tawny brutes that sit yawning underthe hot veldt sun or burning bright in jungles,and on the other there's these little things thatknow how to sleep on top of off-peak heatersand use cat doors. Not much in between. isthere? A whole species divided, basically, between500lbs of striped muscle that can bringdown a gnu, and ten pounds of purr. Nowheredo we find the Piltdown Cat, the missing lynx.All right, there's the wild cat, but that just lookslike your average domestic tabby who's beenhit on the head with a brick and got angryabout it. No, we must face it. Cats just turnedup. One minute nothing, next minute Egyptiansworshipping them, mummifying them,building tombs for them. No messing aroundwith a spade in the sad bit of the garden behindthe toolshed for your Pharaohs, not when20,000 men and a load of log rollers werestanding around idle.Scientists working for the Campaign for RealCats believe that, because of the Schrodingerexperiments (qi)), the whole question ofwhere cats come from, and how, is now totallymeaningless, since there appear to be somecats that can travel quite painlessly across timeand space, and therefore this means that theonly place time we can be sure cats come fromisHow to get a cat1. Adverts in the Post OfficeFive adorable tabby kittens, Just readyto leave Mum, Free to Good Home, PleasePhone ...Yes. Please, Please Phone, because they'reall big and fighting with one another and someof the males are beginning to take a sophisticatedinterest in Mum. Do not be fooled intobelieving that you will need to turn up bearingevidence of regular church-going and soberhabits; good home in this case means anyonewho doesn't actually arrive in a van markedJ Torquemada and Sons, Furriers.if you answer the ad you'll find there's onekitten left.There's always one kitten left. You spendages trying to figure out what it was that madethe previous four purchasers leave it behind.Eventually you will find out.Nevertheless, Adverts in the Post Office are agood way of acquiring your basic cat.2. Adverts in posh cat magazinesPretty much like (1.) except that the word'adorable' probably won't be used and theword 'free' certainly won't be used. Not to becontemplated by anyone on a normal income.The cats acquired in this way are often verydecorative, but if that's all you want a cat forthen a trip to the nearest urban motorway witha paint scraper will do the business.Pedigree cats talk a lot - catownerspeak foryowling softly - and tend to rip curtains. Beingso highly bred, some of them are mentallyunstable. A friend had an Arch-Villains' cat (qv)which thought it was a saucepan. But, becauseit was very expensive and more highly bredthan Queen Victoria, it thought it was a saucepanwith style.3. Buying a house in the CountryA very reliable way of acquiring a cat. It'llnormally turn up within the first year, with asmug expression that suggests it is a littlesurprised to see you here. it doesn't belong tothe previous occupants, none of the neighboursrecognise it, but it seems perfectly athome. Why? It is very probably a ScbrodingerCat (qv).4. The Cats'HomeAnother very popular source, especially justafter Christmas and the summer holidayperiod, when their sales are on. Despite thefact that you can barely hear her on the phonefor the background of yowling, the harassedyoung lady will probably take rather morepains than the average Post Office Advert catseller to ensure you haven't actually got skinningknives in your pocket. Often no payment,just a voluntary donation - made at pistolpoint. You will be offered a variety of furrykittens, but the cat for you is the one-year-oldspayed female lurking at the back of the cagewith a worried expression who will show herappreciation by piddling in the car all the wayhome.5. InheritanceThese cats come with a selection of bowls, halfa tin of the most expensive cat food on themarket, a basket and a small woolly thing with abell in it. They will then spend two weeksunder the bed in the spare room. Try to get itout and it could be you in the hospital havingskin from your buttocks grafted onto your arm.Cats are not always inherited from deadpeople. if the previous owner is still alive, theReal cat will probably be accompanied by a listof its likes and dislikes. Throw it away. They'rejust fads anyway.Try to avoid inheriting cats unless they comewith a five figure legacy, or at least the expectationof one.6. joint ownersb *Do you know where your cat spends its timewhen it's not at home? it's worth checking withmore distant neighbours that they don't have acat with the same size and colouring. it canhappen. We once knew two households whofor years both thought they owned the samecat, which spent its time commuting betweenfood bowls. A sort of menagerie,5~ trois.An interesting fact about acquiring cats isthat the things are, by and large, either virtuallyfree or very expensive. It's as if the motorindustry had nothing between the moped andthe porsche.types of catForget all the business about Blue Points andPersians. Real cats are likely to be:1. Farm CatsA dying breed. Once upon a time every decentbarn supported a thriving, incestuous colonyof them, depositing small nests of mewlingkittens amongst the hay-bales, and there's stilla few around. Worth getting if you can. Theyoften look like flat-headed maniacs, but they'vegenerally got a bit of sense. Not usually foundon the kind of farms that are apparently madeof extruded aluminium, but still scratching aliving here and there.2. Black Cats with White PawsThere must be a breed of these. Most SupPostOffice cats (qv) are black cats with white paws.They are always called Sooty.3. Neighbours'CatsUsually grey, and often seen in the newlyseededbit of the garden with a strained expressionon their faces. Normally calledYaargeroffoutofityarbarstard (see 'NamingCats').4. Boot-faced CatsThey have fangs, crossed eyes, enough scars toplay a noughts and crosses championship on,and ears like old bus tickets. They're invariablymale. Boot-faced cats aren't born but made,often because they've tried to outstare or occasionally rape a speeding car and have beenrepaired by a vet who just pulled all the bitstogether and stuck the stitches in where therewas room. Most Boot-faced cats are black.Strange but true.5. Sort o Tabby Cats with a Bit ofGinger, But Sometimes In theRight Light You Could SwearThere's a Hint of Siamese ThereYour basic Real cat. Backbone of the country,'cat population.6 Factory CatsLike farm cats, now ambling their way intohistory. They were once kept because they dida useful job of work, but now they're often thesubject of friction between management, whowant them out because they don't fit in with thenew streamlined image of United Holdings(Holdings) plc, and staff, who don't. Usuallysomeone called Nobby or Dotinthecanteensmuggles in food for them. Some factory catsget to be quite famous and have their picturesin the staff newspaper when they retire. Thepicture always shows Nobby or Dotinthecanteenholding a saggy black-and-white cat whichis staring at the camera with quiet, self-satisfiedmalevolence.On retirement, they set up home with Dotinthecanteenbut saunter down to the old firmoccasionally and hang around while the workingcats are going through a busy patch, tellingthem how much better they feel these days,wish they'd done it years ago, of course youlads don't know what it was like when MrMorgan was manager, what a tartar he was, if hesaw so much as a mouse doodah he went spare,you were kept at it in those days ...... and then they saunter back home, and7. Arcb-villains' CatsAlways fluffy and white, with a diamondencrustedcollar. other qualifications includethe ability to yawn photogenically when thecamera is on them and complete unflappabilityin the presence of people dropping throughthe floor into the piranha tank. We've all seenArch-villains' cats. However, it's not the easylife that it appears to be. For one thing, thepeople who design the megamillion undergroundyacht bunkers and missile bases inwhich the arch-criminals live never think toinclude a dirt box. If they did, it would beSUrrOunded by landmines and have ingeniousand unpleasant traps buried in it. And Archvillains'cats never use a cat door. This isbecause they know what happens to peoplewho go through doors.Arch-villains' cats are not Real. This is obviousto anyone who cares to examine the facts.Next Christmas, when once again the TV remindsyou that a saviour was born on Earth andhis name is james Bond, look closely at thesets. You will find there are no:a)                            dead birds under the laser-driven spysplitting tableb) scratch marks on the megamissile conttrolwheelc)                            forlorn squeaky toys lying aroundwhere people can trip over themd) half-empty tins of suppurating cat foodin the cryogenic unit.Somehow, it's hard to imagine your averageArch-villain owning a Real cat (although somemembers have pointed out that many Archvillainshave leather gloves on their hands,and/or only one eye, so maybe they have Realcats at home they try to fondle after anotherhard day of holding the world to ransom.)8. Cartoon CatsUsually black and white. And they often have anamusing speech impediment. If your cat canread newspapers, it is a Cartoon cat. If it can gethold of a stick of dynamite by simply reachingoff screen, it is a Cartoon cat. If it wears a bowtie,it's a Cartoon cat. If, when it starts to run, itslegs pinwheel in the air for a humorous fewseconds making binka-binka-binka noises, itis a Cartoon cat. if you are still uncertain, checkto see whether the people next door have abulldog called Butch who has spikes on hiscollar and is usually to be found dozing outsidehis kennel. If they have, you'll know whatkind of cat you've got.9. The Sub-Post Office CatA sub-species of Factory cat. Can be any colourin theory, are almost always black and white infact. The significant characteristic of this breedis an ability to spread out when asleep, like arubber bag full of mercury. They're graduallyfading out, made redundant by the loss of thevery shops they tended to inhabit and also bythe Public Health laws, which are not drafted toaccommodate the kind of animal that considers its natural role in life to go to sleep on apile of sugar bags I used to be taken into ashop where a Sub-Post Office cat used to sleepin the dog biscuit sack. You'd reach in to pincha bikkie and there'd be all this fur. No oneseemed to mind. (Whatever happened to thosedog biscuits? They were real dog biscuits, notthe anaemic things you get in boxes today; they,were red and green and black and came invarious interesting shapes. The black onestasted of charcoal. That's modern times foryou. Our grandparents had oil lamps and gaslights to look back to, we've got dog biscuits.Even the nostalgia isn't what it was.)10. Travelling CatsOscar's 2,000 Mile Purr-fect Trip says theheading in the local paper. Or something likethat. At least once every year. In every localpaper. It's a regular, like 'Row Over Civic Site'or'Storm As Schools Probe Looms'.So many stories like this have turned up thatresearchers from the Campaign for Real Catshave been, well, researching. The initial suspicionwas that here was a hitherto unknownbreed of Real cat, possibly a sideshoot of thenow almost extinct Railway cat. It'd be nice tothink that there was today an Airline cat,although perhaps not, because warmingthough the idea is, the thought is bound tooccur to you at 30,000 feet that it's probably gota favourite sleeping area somewhere on theplane and it is possibly somewhere in thewiring. Or perhaps there is now a Lorry catundreamed of by T. S. Eliot. Felis Freubaf, aninternational creature, loitering in the cabs ofthe world and growing fat on Yorkie Bars. Or itcould be further proof of the Schrodingertheory, since from a quantum point of viewdistance cannot be said to exist and all thisapparent space between things is just the resultof random fluctuations in the matter matrixand shouldn't be taken seriously.The astonishing truth has not been suspected,possibly because not many people inthis country have more than one local paper.But, from hundreds of cuttings sent in by Campaignmembers, it finally emerged.They're all the same cat. Not the same type ofcat. The same cat.It's a smallish black and white tom. Nevermind about the variety of names, which areonly of significance to humans, although interestinglythe name Oscar does seem to crop uprather a lot. Careful analysis of dozens of picturesof the Travelling cat blinking in the flashlight's glare have proved it.it appeared to do a minimum of 15,000 mileslast year, much of it in car engine compartments,where only its piteous mewling alertsthe driver when he stops off for a coffee.Confirmation will not be achieved untilOscar has been tracked down by researchersarmed with a truckload of painful equipment,but the current, rather interesting, theory isthat what initially appears to be this piteousmewling is in fact a stream of directions on thelines of 'left here I said left, left you twerp, allright, keep going until we get to the tradingestate and then you can pick up the A370 . . .'Oscar is, in fact, trying to get somewhere.The process is a bit hit and miss, and possiblyhe has underestimated the size of the countryand the number of vehicles in it, but he'skeeping at it. Certainly, in the best tradition ofReal cats everywhere, he's doing anythingrather than get out and walk.Incidentally, some recent press cuttingssuggest that Oscar has given birth to kittens in acar engine compartment. This makes a tinyhole in part of the theory - nothing that areasonable grant couldn't plug - but leads tothe intriguing thought that perhaps there willbe a new race of Travelling cats after all. And allgrowing up believing that home is somethingthat you can only get to by climbing insidenoisy tin things that move at 70 mph.Perhaps lemmings started out like this.In the course of this work one researcherdid turn up a fascinating anecdote about StEric, the 4th-century Bishop of Smyrna, believedby many to be the true patron saint ofReal cats. While on his way to deliver an epistlehe is said to have tripped over a cat andshouted, 'In faith, I wysh that Damned Moggewode Goe Awae and Never Come Backe!'it was a small black and white tom, accordingto contemporary accounts.11. The Green., Bio-Organic,Wbole Eartbbox CatThis type has been around since the Sixties atleast. You may recall stories about cats fed onsweetcorn and avocados (no, really; a local petshop sells vegetarian dog food). And, indeed, ifthe rest of the household is on the path of innerwholeness it rather lets the whole holisticbusiness down to have tins of minced innardsin the fridge.We had vegan* friends who handled the catif lilect ~t \~egiii it's bad for-iii to give them the famousfoiii--fingere(l V sign and say 'Live long and prosper'.for vulcans. Vcg2iiis are the ones ",ith the 1),.ilercoiiil)lcxioiis \N,Iio can't disable people by touchingthem getitl~, on the neck.food tin in the same way that people at Sellafieldhandle something that's started to tick. inthe end, they worked out a vegetarian diet withthe occasional treat of fish. Their cat was ayoung Siamese. it thrived on the stuff. Ofcourse it did. It used to go out and hang aroundthe organic goat shed, and ate more rats andmice than its owners had hot dinners, whichwasn't hard. But it was very understandingabout it, and never let them know. We occasionally saw it trotting over the garden withsomething fluffy in its mouth, and it used togive us looks of conspiratorial embarrassment,like apint.In fact cats are naturally Green animals. Afterall:Methodist minister caught enjoying aa)No cats have ever used aerosol sprays.Sprays, maybe, but not aerosol ones.The ozone layer is perfectly safe fromcats.b) Cats don't hunt seals. They would ifthey knew what they were and whereto find them. but they don't, so that's allright.c)The same with whales. People mighthave fed whales to cats, but the catsdidn't know. They'd have been just ashappy with minced harpooner.1) Aiitaretic~t? Cats are quite happy toleave it alone.Of course, they, have their negative points:a) All cats insist on wearing real furiNaming CatsAll cats, we know, have several names. T. S.Eliot came nowhere near to exhausting the list,though. A perfectly ordinary cat is likely to begiven different names for when:a) you tread on itb) it's the only animal apparently able tohelp you in your enquiries as to themysterious damp patch on the carpetand the distressing pungency aroundthe placeyour offspring is giving it a thirddegreecuddlec)d) it climbed up the loft ladder Because itWas There and then, for some reason,decided to skulk right at the back of allthe old boxes, carpets, derelict Barbiehouses, etc, and won't be coaxed out,and then when you finally drag it out bythe scruff of its neck it scratches yourarm in a friendly way and takes abeautiful leap which drops it throughthe open hatchway and onto the stepladder,which then falls over, leavingyou poised above a deep stairwell on awinter's afternoon while the rest of thefamily are out.*All right, not perhaps a name you'd use every, day, butbest to have one ready, just in case, because when you'releaning against the freezing cold water tank trying tostaunch the blood with a priceless antique copy of biiiztl,you don't want to have to tax the imagination is A,cll.It's an interesting fact that fewer than 17% ofReal cats end their lives with the same namethey started with. Much family effort goes intoselecting one at the start ('She looks like aWinifred to me'), and then as the years roll by itsuddenly finds itself being called Meepo orRatbag.Which brings us to the most important considerationin the naming of cats: never give acat a name you wouldn't mind shouting out in astrained, worried voice around midnightwhile banging a tin bowl with a spoon. Stick tosomething short.That being said, most common names forReal Cats are quite long and on the lines ofYaargeroffoutofityarbarstard, Mumthere'ssomethingORRIBLEunderthebed,and Wellyoushouldn'tofbinstandingthere. Real Cats don't havenames like Vincent Mountjoy Froufrou PoundstretcherIV, at least for long.The chosen name should also be selectedfor maximum carrying power across a busykitchen when, eg, a bag full of prime steakstarts moving stealthily towards the edge of thetable. You need a word with a cutting edge.Zut! is pretty good. The Egyptians had a catheadedgoddess called Bast. Now you knowwhy.IllnessesReal cats are subject to the same illnesses thatunReal cats get, although by and large Real catstend towards rude health - not counting, ofcourse, the occasional little intestinal problemwhich could happen to anyone.However, there are several specifically Realcat ailments:Impatient legsWeird, this. We had a cat who suffered badly.The vet couldn't explain it. The cat could climbtrees, ladders, anything, it was as agile as youplease, but when it tried to run fast it was allokay until it.,; back legs tried to pass. Then it'dget so embarrassed at the sight of its own rearend coming past on the fast lane it would stopand wash its paws in shame. If it forgot itselfand really made a dash for it, it was likely toend up facing the wrong way.Well, okay. Not common. But one of the biggestcat ailments we've ever faced. Ho - we said- let's be ecological, remember the ozonelayer, have no truck with flysprays, whateverhappened to good old-fashioned flypaper. Finallyfound some, after shopkeepers mademad faces ('man here wants flypaper, keepsmiling, desperately signal assistant to callpolice, will soon be asking for crinoline hoopsand a pound of carbide crystals'). Got it home,hung it up in open window, bluebottles soonstuck fast like small angry currants, hooray,paper swayed in breeze, Real Cat leapt ...Real Cat becomes spinning furry propeller.Paper snaps, cat falls out of window, beginsmassive chase across gardens as it tries toescape from unwound paper trailing behind it,finally brought to earth in distant shrubberybecause only one leg now capable of movement.Panic, panic, where box flypaper came in?This is 1980s, paper bound to be covered withPolydibitrychloroethylene-345, oh god, catnow immobile with terror inside kitchentowel. Fill huge bowl with warm water, dropcat in, swish it around, cat doesn't protest, ohgod, perhaps Polydibitrychloroethylene-345already coursing through tiny veins. Changewater, rinse again, brisk towelling down, putcat on path in sun.Cat looks up, gives mildly dirty look, turnsand walks slowly up garden, lifting each pawone at a time and giving it a shake, like C.Chaplin.After all that it was a bit of a let-down to findthe flypaper box at the bottom of the waste binand find that, far from being the complexchemical trap we'd feared, it was just somejolly ecological plain sticky paper.Sitting and hiccupping gently(with the occasional burp)We've always put this down to voles.Eating grassNever been sure that this is a symptom ofillness. it probably comes under the headingof Games: ('Hey, I'm being watched, let's eatsome grass, that'll worry them, they'll spendhalf an hour turning the house upside downlooking for the cat book, haha.')LorriesCan be fatal. But not always. We knew a catwho regarded motorised vehicles as sort ofwheeled mice, and leapt out on them. It had somuch scar tissue that its fur grew at all angles,like a gooseberry. Even its stitches had stitches.But it still lived to a ripe old age, terrorisingother cats with its one good eye and foreverjumping out at lorries in its sleep. It was probablylooking for one that squeaked.However healthy the cat, there will come atime when it needs a Pill. Oh, how we nod andlook like respectable, concerned cat owners asthe vet hands us the little packs (one grey oneevery five days and then a brown one after tenday,s, or was it the other way round?) And oncewe were all innocent and thought, the cat foodsmells like something off the bottom of a pondanyway. Real cat can't possibly notice if wecrumble the damn things up a bit and mix themin ...As we get wiser, of course, we learn that theaverage Real cat has taste buds that make themost complex computer-driven sensory apparatuslook like a man with a cold. It can spot analien molecule a mile off (we tried halving thesuspect food and adding more from the tin,and kept on doing it until it was like thatfamous French chemical experiment with theweird water and everything, there surelycouldn't have been any pill left, but Real catknew).Next comes the realist phase ('after all, froma purely geometrical point of view a cat is onlya tube with a door at the top.')You take the pill in one hand and the cat inthe other ...Er. .You take the pill in one hand and in the otheryou take a large kitchen towel with one angrycat head poking out of the end. With your thirdhand you prise open the tiny jaws, insert thepill, clamp the jaws shut and, with your fourthhand tickle the throat until a small gulpingnoise indicates that pill has gone down.You wish.It hasn't gone down. Because it's just gonesideways. Real cats have a secret pouch in theircheeks for this sort of thing. A Real cat can takea pill, eat a meal, and then spit out the slightlydamp pill with a noise which, if this was acomic strip, would probably be represented asptooie.It is important to avoid the third stage, whichbasically consists of Man, Beast and Medicinelocked in dynamic struggle and ought to besculpted rather than described (as in Rodin's'Man Giving Pill to Cat).The fourth stage is up to you. Usually by nowthe cat is displaying such a new lease of life thatthe treatment might be said to have worked.Grinding the pill up with a bit of water andspooning it in sometimes does the trick. Afellow Real cat owner says powdering thewretched object - the pill, not the cat, althoughby stage four you'll entertain any idea - mixingit with a little butter and smearing it on a paw isa sure-fire method, because the cat's ancientinstinct is to lick itself clean. Close questioningsuggested that he hadn't actually tried this, justdeduced it from theoretical studies (he's anengineer, so that explains it). Our view is thatan animal that will starve and asphyxiate beforetaking its medicine won't have any troublewith a grubby paw.MFeeding CalsFor centuries the idea Of feeding cats was asunbelievable as squaring the circle. so wasfeeding chickens, for that matter. They justhung around, making their own arrangements.the whole Point about having them was to keepdown vermin and generally tidy up the place.Dogs got fed, cats got scraps. If they were lucky.We all know what it's like now.Feeding Real cats follows a pattern aschangeless as the seasons.1. Real cat turns up its 'lose at gold-platedtinned,Stuff recommended by woman on television.2. Out Of spite, You buy some down-markeown-brand stuff whose contents youwouldn't want to know about (after all, c reallycring what can be put         onsidinbeefburgers andsausages ... no, You really wouldn't want toknow about it ... ) Cat wolfs it down, licksemtY plate across floor. Pff.d3,ozOeuiit tionf sreolfiethfenheuxtmsmh iongpisntug trip You buy a4~ Cat turns up nose at it after one meal. This isa cat, you understand, that will eat dragoifliesand frogs.4,Having for some time watched what cats willeat, then I can safely say that any enterprisingmanufacturer who markets a cat food made ofsteak, half-thawed turkey, grass, flies, crumbsfrom under tables, frogs and voles will be on toa winner. At least for one meal.The alternative, of course, is hunting. Thetheory is that a well-fed cat is better at huntingthan a hungry one. The reasoning is that aplump and full cat will be more content to liein wait for the things that need guile andpatience to catch - dragonflies, frogs, robins,that sort of thing - while a hungry one willmerely dash about the place filling up onordinary rats and mice. It's not certain who firstadvanced this view, but it's an evens bet thatthey probably had fur and whiskers.Real cats don't hunt for food, but becausethey love you. And, because they love you, theyrealise that for some reason you have neglectedto include in your house all those littlepersonal touches that make it a home, and dotheir best to provide them. Headless shrewsare always popular. For that extra splash ofcolour, you can't beat miniature sets of innards.For best effect such items should be leftsomewhere where they won't be found for,some days, and can have a chance to develop apersonality of their own.We had friends in an isolated cottage whohad one cat, a big fat boot-faced thing, which'dnever turn a paw to hunting despite the hordesof rats that besieged the property on everyside. So they got another one, a sleek whiteyoung female who strode off into the longgrass every day with a purposeful air. But,strangely, never came back with anything.Even odder, the resident huge cat began tohunt and turned up every day with somethingresembling a draught excluder in its mouth, orwas found sitting proudly beside a miniaturerodent Somme on the doorstep. Aha, theythought, spurred on by competition he's.finallygot cracking.What they eventually found out, as any Realcat owner would suspect, was that he waswaylaying the female as she approached thehouse and glaring at her until she dropped thebooty, then picking it up and carrying it the restof the way. When it came to delegation, thatwas a cat who got someone else to write thebook.Training andDisciplining theReal CatAlways a tricky one, this, for Real cat owners,who tend to be the types to whom paradegroundshouting and the legendary rolled-upnewspaper does not come easily (if it did, theywould then be one of those people with hugebounding dogs who do whatever they damnwell please in a huge, jolly way to distantstrains of 'Prince! NO! I said NO! PUT ITDOWN! This minute! Prince! NO!'etc).What it really boils down to is the differencebetween Inside and Outside (cf. 'Hygiene').Most Real cats cotton on to the idea fairlyquickly. Most Real cats, after all, are brightenough to know that a dry box in a corner ofthe kitchen is a better bet than a flower bedwhen the wind is blowing straight fromSiberia. Their mothers apparently educatethem, though much attention paid to this hasbeen unable to fathom exactly how this isdone, apart from persistently moving themaround in a slightly neurotic game of kittenchess. Possibly the kittens are taken to somesecret cat school where they are shown diagrams.(it's .amazing how self-possessed andintelligent cats turn out to be when brought upby their mothers. We've been brought up byour mothers for millennia, and look at us. ifRomulus and Remus had been reared by a catinstead of a wolf, Rome would be a differentplace today*).It'd have better lavatories, for a start.Beyond that, you can't teach cats to do anything.No, not a thing. You might think you can,but that is because you've misunderstoodwhat's going on. You think it's the cat turningup obediently at the back door at ten o'clockon the dot for its dinner. From the cat's point, ablob on legs has been trained to take a tin outof the fridge every night.Discipline - (once you get beyond all theblanco and school traditions - means, If YouDon't Do What I Want I'll Hit You. One problemhere, of course, is that a cat is a hard animalto hit. A dog is always amenable to the famousrolled-up newspaper, whereupon it can gointo the sorrowful grovelling, whining andsighing routine that would get a human actorbooed off the stage. Hitting a cat is like wallopinga furry glove full of pins, and doesn't makea blind bit of difference anyway. A relative whowill remain unidentified until the RSPCA Statuteof Limitations runs out always reckonedthat a half-brick thrown the length of a garden*I t'St of Assisi had prided himself on his broccoli,-iii(,1 si~,\, t lie             last I ittlcsee(-l I iiigt(ii-iiiiigy,el low because ofthe iiiiiii,,~ti-,,ltiolls of Itstliitso(-1(.liii~,,totiifi-oiiiiiextcloor, hedone the same thing.was necessary even to get a cat to pay attention.Distasteful though it may seem, however, thereare times when even a Real cat owner feels itnecessary to Take Action. Here are some options:The Great Ballistic Clod of Earth... which is the first thing to hand when you'rediggingt and you see, out of the corner of youreye, the guilty crouching shape as it sits amongthe cabbages and peas.t Al)~it-t from the garden fork, and this isn't that type ofbook.The GBCOE is therubber bullet of garden preservation, designedto chastise without actual death. Theapproved method is to hit ground zero abouteighteen inches from the culprit, the resultantshort sharp shower of shrapnel causing it toleap two feet vertically and suffer acute intestinaldistress for the rest of the day.The trouble is, though, that the cat soonworks out that you are a typical Real cat owner,* (I- tllc cIt'lifloA,ct-,s and lecks, naturally.ie, a soft touch, and realises that if it calls yourbluff, your ferocious stance will melt and you'lljust run grumbling to the United Nations. Thefour cats that turn our garden into a vegetablejonestown every Spring have realised this, andsit demurely among the whizzing clods visiblythinking'Why is the funny man jumping up anddown like that? And why is his aim so bad?'Deep Pits witb Spikes at theBottomDon't think this hasn't been discussed.Pushing them into the Pondjust occasionally Life gets It Right, like the timethe sly alsatian from up the road decided tocrap in the middle of Real cat owner's drivewayjust when Real cat owner was coming roundthe corner with a large onion in his liaii(-1.Even better, though, was Real cat ownerwaking up from a doze on the lawn to find thecurrent incumbent of the local Mad Feral Tonislot on the edge of the goldfish pond, staringintently at what remained of the inhabitants.Real cat owner quickly learns that it is, in fact,possible to go from a recumbent position intoa full-length dive. But life's a strange thing. Catscan walk on water. I'll - that is, Real cat owner'll- swear caT leapt off the surface. Where wasReal cat, obtained you will remember in orderto keep other cats out of the garden, when thiswas going on? Asleep on chair in kitchen, as isalways the case. Anyway, felt so bad about theway he wandered off, gave him free meal ofsardines later.Punishment has no effect on Real cats. This isbecause Real cats don't associate the punishmentwitb the crime. As far as they're concerned,shouting, slippers on a low trajectoryand being talked to in a loud, patient voice areall manifestations of the general weakness ofthe blobs. All you have to do to survive it iscower a wee bit and look big-eyed, and thenget on with your life.Psychological WarfareYou might as well challenge a centipede to anarse-kicking contest. You always start off ignoringthe animal, and end up treating it withadded kindness because it appears to be sufferingfrom something.Calling in the MafiaOnly in the worst case. It's beset with difficultiesanyway, because:1. They're not in the phone book.2. it's expensive. Four small concrete bootsstill cost twice as much as two large ones, it's abit like children's shoes.3. It is almost impossible to get a horse's headinto a cat basket.Games cats playNo, this isn't all that stuff with the bells andcatnip-filled calico mice. Cats only play withspecial cat toys for about two minutes, whenyou're around, in order that you don't getdepressed and stop buying them food.The thing to remember here is that cats onlyappear to be solitary animals, forever moochingaround the place by themselves. in fact allcats are plugged into this sort of huge felineconsciousness which transcends time andspace and, in its own mind, a cat is constantlycompeting and measuring itself against all catswho have ever existed anywhere. It's as if SteveDavis wasn't simply competing against anotherman in a dicky bow, but against every snookerplayer throughout history, right back to thefirst proto-hominid who needed a really mindnumbingway of spending his evenings.Cats have subtle, intellectual games.Cat che,.~.~This needs, as the playing area, something thesize of a small village. Up to a dozen cats cantake part. Each cat selects a vantage point - aroof, the coal house wall, a strategic corner or,in quiet villages, the middle of the road - andsits there. You think it's just found a nice spot tosun itself until you realise that each cat can seeat least two other cats. Moves are made in a sortof high-speed slink with the belly almosttouching the ground. The actual rules are alittle unclear to humans, but it would seem thatthe object of the game is to see every other catwhile remaining unseen yourself. This is justspeculation, however, and it may well be thatthe real game is going on at some mysticallyhigher level unobtainable by normal humanminds, as in cricket.Wet cementA popular and simple cat game which archaeologistshave found is as old as, well, wetcement. It consists of finding some wet cementand then running through it. There are degreesof skill, of course. Most marks are scoredby running through cement which, while stillbeing wet enough to take a pretty pattern ofpaw marks, is too far set for the builder tosill()otli them out.This is similar to Wet Cement, only, er, not(quite.The Builder's Nice New Pile ofCleal-7,~and1Ojj,~icleOffside is a cat game similar to Zen archery, inthat it is not what is actually done but the stylein which it is achieved that really matters. Itconsists simply of persistently being on thewrong side of a door, and goes on for as long ashuman tolerance will stand and then a bitlonger. A straightforward little game, only marginallymore complex than the old favourite,Staring at the fridge. However, there are degrees of complexity, and a skilled player ofOffside will naturally choose locations which,while preternaturally difficult for humans toget to, will be soup and nuts for the cat to getaway from.Zbt totheb oberbit;fflp!gterp is a case in point.Neighbour went away for holiday, leavingcomplex instructions re watering of garden,etc, but not to worry about the pullulatingcolony of gerbils in the dining room becausedistant relative Mrs Thing would drop in everyday, or two to keep an eye on them.Night comes, but not accompanied by Realcat. Familiar midnight performance, standingoutside back door banging plate with spoonand calling out cat's name in squeaky voice,you know how you do, in tones that you hopewill attract cat while not waking neighbours.Fancy takes hold, fears of lorries, foxes, trapsfloat across mind.Answer rises with dreadful inevitability, likeboiling milk. Take torch, put on dressinggown, pad through dewy grass to picturewindowof neighbour's house. Cat is sittingdribbling on dining table, watching vibratinggerbil colony, which is going thad. Treadmillsare squeaking frantically in the night.Mrs Thing must have been and Real cat,always on the look out for new experiences,must have wandered into the house while thedoor was open.Do what any Real cat owner does in thesecircumstances, but cat takes no notice ofshouts,; and threats. Run around house lookingfor open window, but all has been sealed tightagainst burglars, ie, self.Run back home. Wasn't listening properly toinstructions, can't remember who Mrs Thingreally is or where she lives. Also, how long is aday or two? Gerbils seem to live indefinitely inSpaceship Gerbil, with huge food hopper andnothing to do but make more gerbils. Whereascat eats with knife, fork and hammer and hashair-trigger appetite. How long can it last? Howlong can it last on gerbil?Run back again, try garage door, miraculouslybeen left open, bang clong thud in themisty dawn, Neighbourhood Watchers probablyalready have digit poised to press the third9, police will arrive deedabdeedah, pull theother one, chummy, it's got bells on, neighbours summoned from hotel bed in Majorca,may or may not corroborate story, will havecrime record, finally, shuiined iiistrect, We AreAll Guilty ...Still door from garage into house itself.1,ocked. Wonder if situation justifies breakingin 1)iit neighbours away for fortnight, can'tleave house with broken door, will have to getcarpenter, etc, in, and he won't be able to comealong for probably three weeks.look under door. See cat paws. Cat hasturned up to watch entertainment. Peerthrough keyhole, all dark, key still in there ...Sudden flashback. Eagle comic, c. 1958. Tipsfor Boys No. 5: Beating the Burglar. Apparentlymiscreants push newspaper under door,twiddle key in lock with special key twiddler,key drops down onto paper, paper pulled backHome again, grab paper, tweezers, three-inoneoil, run back, twiddle, twiddle, key dropsdown, pull paper, there is key. Unbelievablebut true.Unlock door. Cat no longer visible. Runfrom room to room. Thousands of frightenedeyes stare from tower tenement block that isgerbil colony, even sex isn't so interesting aswatching damp, crazed, dressing-gown wearercharging around room. Search under beds.Look out of window, see Real cat strollingdown drive.Neighbour had turned water off beforegoing on holiday. This had meant lifting floorboardin washroom. This had left easy access tohuge draughty space under bungalow, withdozens of entry holes for inquisitive cats. Slamboard down, stamp heavily, break tap. .Another old favourite among cat games is:Being GoodDoesn't sound much like a game, but the mostimportant rule about Being Good is that the catshould be good in such a way as to causemaximum trouble to its owner who can'thowevergive it a tbump because it is manifestlyBeing Good. We had a cat who would, veryoccasionally, catch some small, inoffensive andsqueaky creature and leave it on the scrapermat outside the door. You know - those flatscrapers that are rather like a chip slicer, withlots of little blades sticking up? And, of course,first thing in the morning you don't look downas you step out ... This might, of course, be areal cat's way of food preparation. But weknew, and it knew, that in reality it was BeingGood.SchrodingerAnd I say you must have]left a window open' CatsAll cats are now Schrodinger cats. once youunderstand that, the whole cat business fallsinto place.The original Schrodinger cats were the offspringof an infamous quantum mechanicsexperiment of the 1930s (or possibly theyweren't the original ones. Possibly there wereiio original ones.)Everyone's heard of Erwin Schrodinger'sfamous thought experiment. You put a cat in abox with a bottle of poison, which manypeople would suggest is about as far as youneed go. Then you add a little bottle-smashingmechanism which may - or may not - smashthe bottle; it all depends on random nuclearthingummies being given off by some radioactivematerial. This is also in the box. It is a largebox. Now, according to quantum theory, thecat in the box is both a wave and a particle ...hang on, no. What it is, because of all thesequantums, is in a state of not actually beingeither alive or dead,* ic, uncertain. Because of Heisenberg's Uncertaintyprinciple.but both and neither atthe same time, until the observer lifts the lidand, by the act of observation, sort offixes thecat in space/time etc. He's either looking at acandidate for the sad patch, or a spitting ball ofmildly-radioactive hatred with bits of glass init. The weird part about it is that, before the lidis lifted, not only the cat's future but also itsimmediate past are both undecided. it mighthave had been dead for five minutes, forexample.That's the story that got into the textbooks,anyway.t If you can believe it. It's like the one about one twinstaying here and the other going off to Sirius at the speedof light and coming back and finding his brother is now agrandfather running a huge vegetable wholesale operationin Bradford. How does anyone know? Has anyonemet them? What was it like on Sirius, anyway?Less well known is the work by agroup of scientists who failed to realise thatSchrodinger was talking about a 'thought experiment'*One that you can't do, and which won't work., and did it. Box, radioactive source,bottle of poison, everything. And the cat, ofcourse.They left out one important consideration,though. While the observer might not knowwhat was going on, the cat in the box damnwell would. We can assume that if the prospectof hanging concentrates the mind, then theinkling that, any minute now, some guy in awhite coat is going to lift the lid and there's afifty-fifty chance that you are dead already,does wonders for the brain. Spurred by thisknowledge, and perhaps by all the quantumsfloating around the laboratory, the cat nippedaround a corner in space-time and was found,slightly bewildered, in the janitor's cupboard.Evolution is always quick to exploit a newidea, however, and this novel way of gettingout of tricky situations was soon passed onto its offspring. it had a large number of offspring.Given its new-found talent, this is notsurprising.The important gene was so incredibly dominantthat now many cats have a bit ofSchrodinger in them. It is characterised by theability to get in and out of locked boxes, suchas rooms, houses, fridges, the thing you sworeyou put it in to take it to the vet, etc. If youthrew the cat out last night, and this morningit's peacefully asleep under your bed, it's aSchrodinger cat.There is a school of thought which says thereis in fact a sort of negative Schrodinger gene.Whereas your full-blown Schrodinger can getin and out of the most unusual places there arecats, it has been pointed out, that would find itdifficult to get out of a hoop with both endsopen. These are the cats that you normally see,or rather, you normally hear behind fridges, inthose dead little areas behind kitchen storageunits, in locked garages and, in one caseknown to us, inside the walls (dreadful EdgarAllan Poetic visions led to a hole beingknocked into the cavity a little way from thenoise, which of course caused the cat definitelya Real cat - to retreat further fromthe noise; it came out 24 hours later, draggedby the scent of a plate of food). But we areinclined to believe that this is not so and thatthese are merely examples of Offside (see 'CatGames').However, this ability, which most Real cats'owners will have noticed (and what aboutwhen they're missing for a couple of days, eh,and come back well fed? Have they just beenpanhandling round the neighbours, or didthey nip along to next Wednesday to enjoy thehuge relieved 'welcome-back' meal you gavethem?), leads on to interesting speculationabout:"-"1-the Cat in HistoryThe books will tell you that cats evolved fromcivet ancestors about 45 million years ago,which was definitely a good start. Get as muchdistance between yourself and the civets aspossible, that was the motto of the early cats.The civet cat has been a very nervous animalever since it discovered that you can, er, derivecivetone* from it and use it in scent. A 17-niember ring ketone, according to my dictionary,2is ol)l-)osed to the mere 15-membered muscone fromthe musk deer. Does the civet feel any better for knowingthis?                      llot.Exactlyhow this is done I don't know and do not wishto research. It's probably dreadful. Oh, allright, I'll have a look.It is.*Who invents these scents, aiiswa~,? There's,,i gii~,walkingalong the beach, he\,, lici-c's some wli2tie vomit, I bet wecan make scent out of this. exactly\, how likely\, eto \,otithink this is?So, the story goes, the cat family pushed onwith the evolving as fast as possible, going infor size, speed and ferocity. There's nothinglike the fear that you might be mistaken for acivet for giving jets to your genes, especiallywhen you know it's only a matter of millenniabefore your actual proto-hominids start wanderingaround the Holocenic landscape with abottle, a knife and a speculative look in theireyes.They also spread out a bit but missed Australia,which had just gone past on the ContinentalDrift; this explains why the rats grew sobig. Some got stripes, some tried spots. One65well known early variety developed its veryown do-it-yourself can opener a hundred thousandyears before cat food came in tins, anddied of being too early to take advantage ofthis.And then, suddenly, small versions started toturn up and go mee~owp, mee-owp at people.Consider the situation. There you are, foreheadlike a set of balconies, worrying about thelong-term effects of all this new 'fire' stuff onthe environment, you're being chased andeaten by most of the planet's large animals, andsuddenly tiny versions of one of the worst ofthem wanders into the cave and starts to purr.More amazing yet, it didn't get et.Dogs you can understand. They're packcreatures, humans are just another, brighter,pack leader. Dogs are handy for helping yourun down things that are faster than you are.But cats - well, from Early Man's point of view,cats are good for nothing.The first cat to approach the cave survived, infact, on sheer surprise value. It was the firstanimal the man had ever seen that wasn'teither running away or bounding towards himand dribbling. It liked him.And the reason it felt this way was that the catalready knew that humans liked cats.Here was a household in the country.Households in the country attract cats. It's oneof the fundamental wossnames of Nature. Seethe point? We know that Real cats can wander atwill through time and space, and this cat wasprobably en route between feeding bowls beforeit took a wrong turning.After all, what's the alternative? That EarlyMan had nothing better to do with his sparetime than look at a wild cat and spot that thishorizontal -headed, yellow-eyed, spitting menace was just the thing the cave needed? No, ourtheories demand that it went the other way,that wild cats are domestic cats that went feralthousands of years ago, probably because theywere upset about something, possibly the continuednon-invention of the fridge.Cats make ideal time travellers because theycan't handle guns. This makes the major drawbackof time travel - that you might accidentallyshoot your own grandfather - x,en,,unlikely. Of course, you might try to becomeyour own grandfather, but having watched afamily of farm cats, we can tell you that this isperfectly normal behaviour for a cat.T11Sexis, ifyouseewhati mean ...Ei-. . .You see, if you have a gentleman cat and alady cat who ...The point is ...in short, pedigree cats breed, Real cats mate.Breeding is best left to professionals. Mating,on the other hand, is done by cats.Breeders seem to be invariably ladies andwhile totally mad are nevertheless entirelycharming people, whose houses can be distinguished by the neat sheds in the garden andthe fact that the cat food comes, not in tins, butin a lorry.Most Real cat owners seldom if ever encounterthem. It may occasionally happen that theycome into possession of an animal whoselooks and history suggest that she shouldn't bea candidate for the vet's attentions or those ofthe huge mad feral tom which hangs aroundthe garden, and after the expenditure of a sumof money which makes male members of thefamily fantasise about the differences betweenthe cat world and ours, you come back withfigures chiming in your head - because you'vebeen told how much the kittens should go for.Something like: X litters per year X Y perkitten X save some females X X more littersReal cat owners know that life isn't like that.Keepingpetsforprofit is neverprofitable, whateverthe paperwork says. Life becomes full of. of course, it all depends how Real the catrolls of wire netting, feed bills, alfresco carpentryand huge bills from unexpectedsources, and your horizons become boundedby, well, the horizon. Who looks after theCattery so that the cattery owner can go onell?In fact, breeding has all been tremendouslysimplified these days by simply removing theoption entirely, to the extent that the 'Free toGood Home'signs seem a lot rarer and a goodjob too, and the cat population appears to bemade up of big fat neutered toms and slim,sleek females whose liberation from the joys ofmotherhood appears to have come as a bit of arelief. Nevertheless, every neighbourhood stillhas what is delicately referred to as an EntireTom.it is very hard for this animal not to be a Realcat. Once upon a time it would have been a tomamongst toms, scrapping and yowling and generallybeing kept in line by slicer peer pressure.But now all its old mates are fat and lazyand just want to kip all day, whilst the girlsdon't seem to want to know. it stalks alonethrough the shrubberies. The groundtrembles. Pet rabbits cower in their hutches.Dogs - and, let's be honest, the average dogcan be out-thought by even an unreal cat - areso unnerved by its air of make-my-day belligerencethat, when they see it coming, theythink of dozens of pressing reasons for trottingnonchalantly away. Unpruned and yet unsitishe(-1, its monstrous ld prowls with it. Themilkman complains, the postman starts leavingyour letters with the house next door ...There was one that took a fiendish delight infighting all the other local cats. Not over matters of territory, just for the hell of it. It'd creepup while they dozed in the sun, and pitch in.But we had just got a Real young female atthe time. Spayed and scarred, she came from athriving colony of farm cats so hulking greattoms with nothing on their mind except sexand violence, possibly both together, were justpart of the scenery as far as she was concerned.The first couple of times the crazed idiotchased her she ran away out of sheer amazement.Then we were privileged to watch theshowdown.it started with the normal attempted muggingand the usual chase and much skiddinground corners with binka-binka-binka legpedalling (see'Cartoon Cats'; every cat has a bitof Cartoon cat in it). Then Real cat scrambledon top of ~t ".~iterbarrel, waited until the pursuer had his front claws on top and his backlegs scrabbling for the purchase necessary tolever his trembling, pear-shaped body the restof the way, and then with great deliberation hithim across the nose. it was the kind of blow aCartoon cat would have been proud of; ittravelled through 300 degrees, I swear, makinga noise like tearing silk.Then she sat looking at his shocked face withthe expression that said he should ask himselfwhether there was any more where that camefrom, and was he feeling lucky?Matters were eventually resolved quite amicablyby both animals pretending, as is so oftenthe case when you meet something you can'tdo anything about, that the other one didn'texist. This was quite a feat. The tom was aSchrodinger cat who, before being adopted bya neighbour, had come wandering in fromwhatever hyperspace Schrodinger cats movearound in, and for some reason consideredthat our house was his natural home. Real catwas not going to hiss at him though, becausethis meant recognising his existence and wastherefore against the rules. So the two of them,by, some sort of telepathy, made certain thatthey were never in the same room. It was likethose farces when one man is playing twinbrothers and is forever running out of theFrench windows to look for himself just secondsbefore he walks in via the library door, in-a different blazer, cursing at having missedmeeting him.HygieneCats have always had the same well-meaningbut shaky grasp of hygiene as humans, viz, ifyou've covered it over, it isn't there. The importantthing is not actually to have achievedHygiene, but to have been seen to have made,the effort - as in, for example, trying to claw thelino into the dirt box.What's so hygienic about having a wash inyour own spit?However, the Real cat scores over otherdomestic pets in one unusual respect:Real cat,~ k~iou, uhat the batbroom isfor.We returned one day to find that the incumbentReal cat, by means of the usual hyperspacetravel, had been in when we thought she wasOut. Thus no dirt box had been provided.Real cat, we thought, had a rather shiftyexpression, although this particular cat has ashifty expression all the time and evenbreathes as though it is stealing the air. Aperfunctory search of the usual resorts of desperation -dark corners, the fireplace revealednothing unpleasant that wasn't noruntil, much later, we went to the bathroomYou get mixed feelings at a time like this.There is, of course, the feeling of mild admirationthat, in a house full of carpets, Real cat haschosen one of the few places that can easily becleaned by gallons of hot water and an escalationof cleaning fluids (curiously, our book ofhousehold hints is definitely reticent about thewhole, well, business of cats in the bath). Onthe other hand, there's the feeling that this isthe bath, for God's sake, I was really lookingforward to a soak and now I will never everhave a bath again as long as I live ...What was intriguing was the reaction ofother Real cat owners. They said: oh, first timeit's happened to you, is it? And went on to tellme about this cat someone heard about whoknows how to use the lavatory.it's bluetits and milk-bottle tops all overagain, I tell you. Leave the lid down, that'll foxem.tDe Real Cat onWheelsIt's a simple choice. The cat travels either in:a) a box, orb) a stupor.it's strange that dogs can take a car ride in theirstride and still bounce out at the other end,more than ready to widdle, dribble, dig, bitesmall children and all the other things dogs aregood at, while cats find the whole businessterribly trying.Research indicates, however, that a smallproportion of Real cats actually like car travel,provided it is on their terms. One of ours wasquite at home with the whole thing provided itcould sit on the driver's shoulder and watchthe road ahead, which is probably against the*it is: Cats Travelling on Shoulder (Prohibition) Order,1949.Animals loose in a car are never a good idea.Goats are generally the worst, but until yourealise there's a tortoise stuck under yourbrake pedal you've never known the meaningof fear, and possibly not the meaning of 'oldage' either.An object lesson in the perils of travellingwith a cat was provided by friends who tooktheirs with them when they moved house. Itwas the last journey - you know, the one whereyou leave the final key with the neighbours,promise to keep in touch, dig up a few prizeplants and set off up the road for the last timewith all the things the removal men couldn't ordidn't or wouldn't put in the van, like the kids,strange items of kitchen ironmongery, and thecat.But this was all okay because as far as the catwas concerned a car was just a load of sleepingareas on wheels, and off they went up themotorway, you know the sort of thing, 'Are wenearly there yet?'; 'No you don't feel sick it'sjust ~your imagination.'And then they stopped at a service area.Really, you don't need to know the rest of thestory. You can guess it. But for those who needit spelled out ...They forgot about the cat. They got out, theygot fed, they got in, they drove another seventymiles, they got out, they started to unpack,there was no cat. Cat must have got out.Midnight. Car screams into service area carpark. Near-hysterical man staggers out withplastic bowl, spoon, lurches around the carpark trying to look as nonchalant as is possibleconcurrent with banging a bowl with a spoonand shouting 'Pusspaws!' in a strained falsetto(he was not, at that time, a paid-up member ofthe Campaign; if he had been, he'd have beenwise to this sort of event and would havechanged the cat's name to something like'Wat!'or 'Zip!) An hour goes past. Leaves telephonenumber with least unsympathetic of the waitresses,drives back, visions of family pet laminatedto fast lane ...Cat leaves it until he's almost home beforecoming out onto the back seat and yawping forfood. With the elderly car so crowded, it'dfound a way via the arm-rest hole into the backof the boot, where it had settled down comfortablybehind the spare tyre. But you knewthat, anyway.The Campaign for Real Cats recommends away to cut through the whole problem oftaking cats with you to new homes. It gets rid ofall that business of hiding under the bed, peeringsuspiciously out of the back door, lookingbetrayed, etc.The thing is, you see, that your average Realcat becomes attached not to human beings butto routines and territory. It's fashionable toagonise about wives or husbands giving uphappy careers to follow the spouse acrosscountry, but no one thinks twice about the factthat the family cat may have spent years breakingin dozens of sleeping nests, working outbest prowling routes, pouncing places, etc.The human beings around the scene aremerely things provided by Nature for, eg,opening fridges and tins. The cat becomesquite attached to them, of course. You canbecome quite attached to a pair of slippers, forthat matter. But it is much easier to becomeattached to new blobs than new sleeping areas.in short, the Campaign for Real Cats believesthat when~you move house the kindest thingyou can do to the cat is leave it behind, where itwill grieve for.003 seconds before sucking upshamefully to the new owners.As for you, as a catless catlover you will findthat a stray turns up outside your new doorwithin days. We think some sort of agency,sell(-Is theill.-the Real Cat andOther AnimalsRemember. From the cat's instinctive point ofview, the animal world consists of1)                            things that eat it2)                            things it can eat3)                            things it can eat but regret immediately.anclBut we then expect it to be perfectly at easewhen faced with:~t)                  Meals on Treadwheelsb) meals in cages (the Flying MeNuggets)c) mad quivering meals in hutches,which in the worst cases may be forcedto join our Real cat, plus two dolls and ateddy bear, for a back-lawn tea, partyconsisting of water and crumbledbiscuitsd) feathery meals which are actually encouragedto come onto the back lawnfor breadcrumbse) meals in pondsf) large grubby barking thingsg) miscellaneous.It's a wonder they stay sane. In fact, as all Realcat owners know, cats get around most problemscaused by all of the above by pretendingthat they don't exist. just like us, really.The only household pet I have ever knownactually faze a Real cat is a tortoise. This may bebecause a cat has problems coming to termswith the fact that a tortoise is a fellow fauna. Itappears to be a small piece of scenery whichinexplicably moves about.These days you don't shove a tortoise in abox to tough it out for the winter, since no onemakes tortoises any more and they changehands, people keep telling us, for zillions ofpounds. We used to let ours doze the winteraway in front of the fire, lurching awake everyday or two for a bit of lettuce. A peaceful,untroubled existence, but one which did notappeal to Real cat because a tortoise is impossibleto frighten. Tortoises don't know themeaning of the word 'fear' or, indeed, anyother word. Oh, they nip into their shell at apassing shadow out of common sense, but asfar as they are concerned the presence of a catin front of the fire just means that here's a pileof fur that is nice and warm to burrow under.They, sneak up on it, because for tortoisesthere's no other way, and the first the cat knowsis when the edge of a shell is purposefully leveringit off the carpet. The cat goes and sitsin the corner and looks worried. And then oneof them develops an unnatural appetite for catfood. The Real cat sits looking gnomically at ashell seesawing madly on the edge of its dish,and sighs deeply.The Real Cat andthe GardenerPeas, greens, parsnips, rhubarb ... these are,the concerns of your average gardener.Black thread, twigs, wire netting, incendiarymines ... these are the concerns of your averagegardener who has a Real cat. Or, rather,whose neighbour has a Real cat.It is possible to cultivate your garden whenthere are Real cats around, but the price ofcelers, is eternal vigilance. As one exasperatedReal gardener* remarked, 'It's not just whatthey Do, it's what they do afterwards', viz, theconscientiously clawed conical heaps, out ofwhich the little yellow shoots of what wouldhave been beans poke pathetically.*This is not the time and place for extensive definitions.Let's just say that the Real gardener is not the same as theProper (or Radio) gardener. For example, when theProper Gardener has finished digging, harrowing, sifting,aerating and raking, he has a tiltli, possibly even afriable one; when the Real gardener has conscientiouslydone all these things he has a large heap of stones, roots,twigs and old seed row markers (Country folk used tobelieve that certain types of stone were 'iiiothei. St(IICS',which gave birth to new stones every year; under ourgarden is a Plastic Seed Row Marker generator). AProper gardener has a lawn consisting of ChewingsFescue, Red Bents and Rvegrass; a Real Gardener hasmoss imbedded with dolls'legs, plastic alphabet charactersand clothes pegs. And large .ireas (.lowii to Cat.1The Great Ballistic Clod of Earth has alreadybeen touched on. Other possible defences are:1. The things that rattle, bang,whizz and wbirr:Look, these don't scare anything. Well, allright, maybe moles. Come to think of it, wehaven't had any moles since installing them.We've never had any moles, actually.2. The Wire Maze:Real cats step over it.3. Chemical warfare, includingthe Mysterious Blobs, the TerribleDust and the Curious GungyStuff.Since it always rains incessantly imediately,this barrage is laid down, we've never foundout if any of them work. Anyway, we always feelvaguely uneasy about this sort of thing. Probablythere's some international Accord that noone's bothered to tell us about.The point is that the cat's desire to get ontoyour pitiful plot is far greater, believe me, thanyour desire to keep it off. When Nature calls, itshouts. Which leads us on to:W.The Big Roll oj'Wire Netting:The gardener's friend. Watch their Expressionswhen They Find An Impenetrablebarrier of Steel laid Above Your PreciousYou can make little wire bootees for thebeans, too, and encase the lower parts of youriiioi-e \,alliable apple trees in demure corsets ofwire. The snags are 1) a garden that looks likean MoD instalation, 2) a tendency to trip up,and 3) the fact that plants grow through thewire. This doesn't matter with things likeonions, but we left it too late with the potatoesand tlic~, 1i2td to be dug up as a unit. But if youcan't tolerate this, your only recourse is:5. The catapult..But we're not that kind of people.*The Real Cat andChildrenAh. They can grow up together.Well, not really. By the time the a~,era,,echild is no longer doing Winston Churchillimpersonations the kitten has grown up and,unless Measures have been Taken, has a familyof its own. Kittens and children get on like ahouse on fire - and just think about whatactually like in a house on fire . .A Real kitten in a Real household with ajunior member can expect to be:1) pulled.2) pushed.3) Imprisoned in Cindy's bedroom withCindy, Mr T in one of Cind~,'s dresses*, ~i ()tiearmedteddy bear, a fearsome kl,,i(leofplasticoidwith Lazer-zap cannon and a smallpink pony.4) Fed unsuitable food. in this category can beincluded peas, ghastly sweet pink goo, and afortnight's worth of Kittytreats in three minutes.5) Inserted into unsuitable clothing (cf. Cindy,Barbie, Action Man, etc).) Carried by being he themiddle, so that large amounts of cat flop downon either side. (Strangely enough, most catsput up with this, even when they are great fatThis sort of thing used to happen all the time in ohouse. I blame television.IICLItered toms. It's like all that business withunicorns. Only young maidens can get awaywith it. The rest of us need stitches.)it's not that children and young animals getalong especially well. It's just that young animalsaren't experienced enough to knowwhat's going to happen.Stick to puppies. They're practically childoEpftK^ , eThe Cats We MissedAs has been mentioned already, Man hasthroughout history tried to overcome variousdeficiencies - his inability to outrun a hare, digup a badger, bite lumps out of a burglar'sbehind, carry brandy barrels through deepAlpine snow, etc - by breeding a variety of dogto do it for him. The dog, in fact, has been akind of handy Plasticine, rolled out thin orsqueezed up fat to suit the demands of thetime.Since speculating on what things might belike if history had been different is nowthoroughly acceptable in the best scientificcircles, the research branch of the Campaignfor Real Cats started to wonder what mighthave happened if dogs hadn't been so handy.Perhaps there was a great plague, for example,or all dogs were wiped out by a series ofdevastating but amazingly accuratelypinpointedmeteor strikes back in the lowerObscene Age. They also uncovered some earlyexperiments hitherto unheard of.Winding forward to the new-look PresentDay, then, we would have seen:The builmog: Bred originally in the 14th centuryfor the purposes of bull-baiting. However,this was not a very successful experiment andled almost instantly to the virtual extinction ofthe breed since it could not, when faced withan irate bull, overcome the instinct to jump onit, try to trap it on one paw, throw it in the air,etc.Smoocher: Something of a mongrel and afavourite with poachers, the Smoocher combines elements of the Eeke, the Bi-illmog andanything else that happened to be passing andcouldn't run away fast enough. it is renownedfor its intelligence and cunning. It is so intelligentand cunning, actually, that it is verydifficult to get it to do any work at all. itspreferred way of catching rabbits, for example,is to send them a brief note consisting of letterssnipped out of newspapers, making them anoffer they can't refuse.King Charles' Lapcat: Familiar to everyone.Note length of ears.The Eeke: The smallest cat in the world. TheEcke was originally bred as a court pet of theH'sing H'song emperors, and was not introducedto occidental cat fanciers until the 17thcentury. It was, initially, a toy for high-bornladies but it was soon found to be extremelyuseful since it was the same size as the mice,and could go down their holes and mug themon the corners. Mouse-baiting, using trainedEekes, was a popular pastime among the sportingclasses for a while. This caused long-termproblems, however, since the more intelligentEekes realised that with the mice wiped outand the walls of an entire manor house at theirdisposal there was no need to come out. Theyare still a nuisance in some parts of the countrywhere, apart from the theft of food, the purringof an entire breeding colony can keep guestsawake at night.The Tabby Retriever: Likely to be seen in theback of the kind of cars that are driven bypeople who wear green wellies and thosejerkin things apparently made out of flattenedmattresses. Originally a guncat, the Tabby Retriever was renowned for chasing the quarry,letting it go, chasing it again, pouncing on it,and bringing half of it back to the owner.The Smog: A cat bred, quite simply, to fightother cats. Owing to an unexplained occurrenceof Lamarckian heredity, the Smog lost itsears in the 16th century, its tail - which opponentscould hang onto - in the 17th century,and most of its hair in the ring, while its clawsand teeth lengthened and toughened. An ordinarycat, going up against a Smog, might as wellrun into an aeroplane propeller. Good withchildren.Dachskatz: An affectionate pet, often referredto as the 'sausage mog'. Popular in the homethat can't afford draught excluders. Also, theonly cat that can brush up against the front andthe back of your legs at the same time.The St Eric: Many a weary traveller, half-buriedin the snow, has hauled himself out and kepthimself warm at the sheer rage of seeing a StEric curl up and go to sleep twenty yards away.They were never a great success, since theydepended on a cat's natural sense of charityand benevolence.The Pussky: Much used by lazy Eskimos, trappers,Mounties, etc. Refuses to go out in coldweather.The Snuftlecat: This breed came into its ownin the American South, when it was used totrack escaped slaves and convicts, who werevery lucky escaped convicts and slaves indeedbecause, although the Snufflecat has a superbsense of smell, it doesn't know what to dowith it.The German Sheepcat: Never very good withsheep, actually, but a great favourite withpolice departments across the world. The cat'snatural tendency to rub up against people has,in these 1501b specimens, become a desire tosmash open doors and knock people to thefloor, where they are drooled on.(The most famous German Sheepcat was thefilm star RanCanCan, who had a spectacular ifsomewhat brief career in the 1940s. Faced withbridges being washed away ahead of speedingexpress trains, or fire breaking out in tallorphanages, or people being lost in ancientmine workings, RanCanCan could be reliedupon to wander off and look for something toeat. But very, very photogenically.)The Future of theReal CatIf you're prepared to accept the Schrodingertheory, then it is rosy - in fact, the last man onEarth will probably look out of his bunker andfind a cat sitting there patiently waiting for thefridge to be opened.Actually, theories don't come into it. Realcats are survivalists. They've got it down to afine art. What other animal gets fed, not becauseit's useful, or guards the house, or sings,but because when it does get fed it lookspleased? And purrs. The purr is very important.it's the purr that does it every time. It's the purrthat makes up for the Things Under the Bed,the occasional pungency, the 4 a.m. yowl.Other creatures went in for big teeth, long legsor over-active brains, while cats just settled fora noise that tells the world they're feelinghappy. The purr ought to have been a pair ofconcrete running shoes in the great race ofevolution; instead, it gave cats a rather betterdeal than most animals can expect, given Mankind's fairly unhappy record in his dealingswith his fellow creatures. Cats learned toevolve in a world designed initially by naturebut in practice by humans, and have got damngood at it. The purr means'make me happy andI'll make you happy'. The advertising industrytook centuries to cotton on to that beguilingtruth, but when it did, it sold an awful lot ofCabbage Patch dolls.You've got to hand it to Real cats.If you don't, they wait until your back isturned and take it anyway.It's nice to think, though, that if the futureturns out to be not as bad as people forecast, ie,if it actually even exists, then among the domesand tubes of some orbiting colony, hundredsof years from now, dynamic people with sturdychins, people who know all about miningasteroids and stuff like that, will still be standingoutside their biomodule banging a plasticplate with a spoon.And yelling 'Zut!' or 'Wip!', if they've got any




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