The Caprice Of Mr Pussy

With your help, I am compiling a collection of stories of my old cat THE LIFE & TIMES OF MR PUSSY, A Memoir Of A Favourite Cat to be published by Spitalfields Life Books on 20th September. Below you can read an excerpt.

I am delighted by the generous response from you, the readers – both in preorders and offers of financial support – but I am still need a few more who are willing to invest £1000 in THE LIFE & TIMES OF MR PUSSY before I can send it to the printers. In return, I will publish your name in the book and invite you to a celebratory dinner hosted by yours truly. If you would like to know more, please drop me an email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com

Alternatively, you can preorder a copy of THE LIFE & TIMES OF MR PUSSY and you will receive a signed and inscribed copy in September when the book is published.

Click here to preorder your copy

If I am looking more bleary-eyed than usual these days, it is not because I am sitting up any later writing my stories, but because Mr Pussy insists on waking me at dawn at this season of the year. The first yowl usually wakes me from my slumber in the glimmering of daylight, yet if I should try to deny it, descending quickly back to my former depths of sleep, a louder, more insistent cry tells me that he will not be ignored.

If I should persist in feigning sleep, he will extend his claw and reach up to the bedside bookshelf to hook the copy of King Lear by the spine and tug it off in one stroke to crash down onto the floor – employing a particular choice of title that I have yet to understand fully.

Then I open my eyes momentarily in weary exasperation to face his pitiful expression of need, quelling my anger.  The question rises in my mind, did I put out any food for Mr Pussy last night? Now, in my half-awake moment of emotional vulnerability, the seed of doubt is sown and sympathy aroused for Mr Pussy, pleading for his rations whilst I indulge my luxuriant ease. But I am capable of indifference to his pain, rolling over in bed to seek another forty winks – even though experience has taught me that Mr Pussy will respond by running up the covers and leaping on my back with the agility of a mountain goat, so that he may repeat his yowl directly into my ear.

Thus I have learnt not to roll over, instead – without opening my eyes – I extend a crooked forefinger in an attempt to pacify Mr Pussy through petting, stroking him beneath his chin and on his brow – provoking a loud and emotional purring and snakelike twisting of the neck. Making a sound like his engine is revving, Mr Pussy bares his teeth and rubs them up against my finger several times in glee, which causes him ecstatic delight and coats my finger in saliva. He may repeat this action several times with an accumulating sense of excitement, glorying in the moment, knowing now that it is only a matter of time before I recognise that it is simpler to bow to his will than to resist.

Submitting to Mr Pussy’s inexorable persuasion, I stumble to the kitchen and commonly discover plenty of food in his dish – revealing that  I have been played, his ruse was an exercise in pure manipulation, a power game. Too weary to recognise the humiliation I have suffered, I climb back into bed, put King Lear back on the shelf and resume my slumber.

When I wake hours later, Mr Pussy is stretched out on the quilt, oblivious to me rising. Yet if I should wake him, he stretches out in pleasure. Mr Pussy has every reason to feel secure, because each night he tests me and confirms his control. Mr Pussy can relax in the knowledge that he is training me to become obedient to his will, and in my weakness I comply. I let him get away with murder.

CLICK HERE TO PREORDER A COPY OF THE LIFE & TIMES OF MR PUSSY

Anyone that has a cat will recognise the truth of this memoir of a favourite cat by The Gentle Author.

“I was always disparaging of those who dote over their pets, as if this apparent sentimentality were an indicator of some character flaw. That changed when I bought a cat, just a couple of weeks after the death of my father. “

THE LIFE & TIMES OF MR PUSSY is a literary hymn to the intimate relationship between humans and animals, filled with sentiment without becoming sentimental.