Spitalfields Life

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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So Long, Mr Pussy

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