Remembering Mr Pussy In Winter
Today I remember my old cat, Mr Pussy. This is an extract from the biography I wrote of him, THE LIFE & TIMES OF MR PUSSY.
On dark winter nights, Mr Pussy seldom stirred from the chimney corner. Warmed by a fire of burning pallets, he had no need of whisky to bring him solace through the dark hours, instead he frazzled his brain in a heat-induced trance. Outside in the streets, Spitalfields might have lain under snow, the paths might have been coated in sheet ice and icicles might be hanging from the gutters, but this spectacle held no interest for Mr Pussy. Like the cavemen of ancient times, his sole fascination was with the mesmerising dance of flames in the grate. And as the season descended towards its nadir in the plunging temperatures of the frozen byways, at home Mr Pussy fell into his own warm darkness of stupefaction.
When Mr Pussy grew old and the world was no longer new to him, his curiosity was ameliorated by his love of sleeping. Once he was a brat in jet black, yet he became a gentleman in a chenille velvet suit, as tufts of white hair increasingly flecked his glossy pelt. One summer, I noticed he was getting skinny and then I discovered that his teeth had gone which meant he could no longer crunch the hard biscuits that were always his delight. Extraordinarily, he made little protest at this starvation diet, even as he lost weight through lack of food. I learnt to fill his dish with biscuits and top it up with water, so that he might satisfy his hunger by supping the resulting slush. And through this simple accommodation – plus a supplement of raw meat – his weight was restored to normal and he purred in gratification while eating again.
Once Mr Pussy was a wild rover, ranging over the fields in Devon, disappearing for days on end and returning proudly with a dead rabbit in his mouth. Yet in the end, he did not step beyond the end of the alley in Spitalfields and, in sub-zero temperatures, he only ventured outside to do his necessary business. Sprinting up the stairs and calling impatiently outside the door of the living room, he was ever eager to return to the fireside and warm his cold toes afterwards, sore from scraping at the frost in the vain attempt to dig a hole in the frozen earth. Like a visionary poet, Mr Pussy acquired a vivid internal life to insulate himself against the rigours of the world and, in the absence of sunlight, the fire provided his imaginative refuge, engendering a sublime reverie of peace and physical ease.
Yet Mr Pussy still loved to fight. If he heard cats screeching in the yard, he would race from the house to join the fray unless I could shut the door first and prevent him. Even when he had been injured and came back leaking blood from huge wounds, he appeared quite unconcerned. Only two small notches in his ears persisted as permanent evidence of this violent tendency, although I regularly checked his brow for tell-tale scratches and the occasional deep bloody furrows that sometimes caused swelling around his eyes. But I could stop him going out, even though it was a matter of concern to me that – as he aged and his reflexes lessened – he might get blinded in a fight one day, losing one of his soulful golden eyes. Since he was blissfully unaware of this possibility, I had no choice but to take consolation from his response when he could not eat, revealing that Mr Pussy had no expectations of life and consequently no fear of loss. His nature was to make his best accommodation to any exigency with grace.
Be assured, Mr Pussy could still leap up onto the kitchen counter in a single bound. He could still bring in a live mouse from the garden when he pleased and delightedly crunch its skull between his jaws on the bedroom floor. If I worked late into the night, he would still cry and tug on the bed sheets to waken me in the early morning to see the falling snow. When the fancy seized him, he could be as a sprightly as a kitten. Come the spring, he would be running up trees again, even if – in the darkest depth of winter – he only wanted to sleep by the fire.
When I was alone here in the old house in Spitalfields at night, Mr Pussy became my sole companion, the perfect accomplice for a writer. When I took to my bed to keep warm while writing my stories, he was always there as the silent assistant, curled into a ball upon the sheepskin coverlet. As the years passed and Mr Pussy strayed less from the house, I grew accustomed to his constant presence. He taught me that, rather than fear for his well-being, I needed to embrace all the circumstances and seasons that life sends, just as he did.
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Mr Pussy sounded quite a character, as many of them are. Love the following pics of old London too, and just wanted to be wandering past, looking up in awe to the grandeur of some many wonderful buildings.
Is there a better and more empathetic way to describe a relationship with a cat? I only had the neighbour’s cat CHICO around me, who visited me every day. But my experiences and feelings with him were similar. I studied a cat psychology book at the time so that I could understand him better.
Two unforgettable anecdotes: he loved my 50s couch with its blue nubby fabric and the folded blanket on it from the same era. In an impressive ritual, he turned in circles on it, curled up and slept — for about 20 minutes. I read in the book: cats don’t need longer periods of rest. However, they do perform this ritual several times a day!
When I came home one day, CHICO was sitting in front of the letterboxes in an impressive sphinx pose — he had ‘caught’ a mouse and proudly presented it to me. In the book, it says: you MUST praise the cat for this ‘gift’ so that he doesn’t suffer any emotional distress… Oh, my beloved cat!
Love & Peace
ACHIM
Thank-you for this extract from the biography you wrote of Mr Pussy – it is indeed a a great read given it is indeed the time to be wrapped-up warm and cosy indoors.
Having read the piece I’d soon closed my eyes daydreaming of childhood times sat in front of the open coal fire, all four of us boys squirming a bit here and there to get as close as we could, to be warmed by and fascinated with that mesmerising dance of flames from the grate.
Oh how it seemed to glow even more, spitting out sparks every now and then not so long after mum or dad had dropped one of those tarred wooden blocks we’d rescued as a family from beneath the cobblestones being dug-up down there in the road.
Stirring myself out of this blissful moment I got thinking ‘how was I going to go about ordering a copy of The Life & Times of Mr Pussy’ given my wife had already gone ballistic with my recent purchase of David Hoffman’s Endurance & Joy in the East End 1971-1987 given the belt tightening we’re all having to reach for in our efforts to ward-off this impact of never-ending price rises on our life’s basics.
Nice one Gentle Author, nice one.
Thank you for inspiring me to write my blog post this week. Dear Mr Pussy could not have wished for a better human companion. Cat lovers know that we don’t own them and that they have the freedom to walk away if they choose. However, I am certain that Mr Pussy adored your company and the care that you lavished on him.
I cannot read “So long, Mr Pussy” again. It is too sad and a place I have visited too many times.
Instead, I will tell the stories of well beloved cats with a spectrum of personalities, from feral tigers tamed to playful, adorable kittens rescued from a perilous future.
Mr Pussy had life lessons for all who had a care to listen.
Have only been reading Spitalfields Life for a few weeks, but it is an absolute delight. I did my exploring of London – and particularly the Square Mile – in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, before departing for a more peaceful life across the sea.
Many of the old buildings in your photographs still stood in those postwar days, but alas, so many have been demolished since, to be replaced by towering glass, steel and concrete monstrosities. Thank you for re-awakening the memories….
I am a lucky one — a good friend of mine gifted me with a copy of “The Life and Times of Mr. Pussy”. It’s one of those books that never gets put away. We keep it on our coffee table in a big stack of other “keepers”, and we like glancing over seeing OUR two cats, Simon and Stringer Bell,
taking up the (of course) most comfortable seats in the room. They are nestled, snug and happy – and John and I are forced to perch on secondary seats, less comfy. Well — that’s how it is with cats.
You had me at……………Liberty. Even though each and every one of these shops looks intriguing, I would give anything to make a return trip to that incomparable emporium, Liberty. We planned to merely stop in, due to a very hectic “way too much” trip to London — but Liberty demanded that we linger and take in every nuance. The structure itself. The fine goods. The lovely backdrops and props. The staircase, winding its way through the heart of the building. The colors, patterns, motifs, historical references. I expected William Morris, that big burly genius, to come bustling through wearing a massive smock and trailing sheaves of drawings and color samples. I brought home a soft enveloping shawl in a Morris print, and matching oil cloth tote. Rust, deep purple, olive green, burgundy. Unlike me, it will never look old or out of fashion. A lifetime purchase, a wearable memory.
Such a beautiful, evocative pen portrait of Mr. Pussy.
Fabulous!