who had kindly and innocently offered to feed him, Shipley and Ralph. But, having known him for a while, they were getting used to it, and I even felt I was doing The Bear a favour. There was always the chance they could put a word in for him with their ageing cat Biscuit, for whom he seemed to hold a candle even after seven years of stony rejection.
I remembered, a decade earlier, talking through the routine of cat feeding to Bob, my first ever next door neighbour as a home owner, and feeling very adult as I did so. ‘The kettle’s just here,’ I’d announced, ‘and feel free to have a sit-down and watch TV if you like.’ It only occurred to me later what a ridiculous thing it had been to say. Why on earth would Bob, a retired headmaster, want to have a cup of tea and watch TV in a virtual stranger’s house instead of his own, sixteen yards away? But suggesting such a thing to Deborah and David wouldn’t have been quite so preposterous. Not only were they happy to feed the cats, they were also happy to stick around and give them a cuddle, particularly Shipley, whose relationship with Deborah continued to be close – if somewhat foul-mouthed, on Shipley’s side.
After one visitto Devon I returned to find each of my cats’ names, and Biscuit’s, written on the kitchen blackboard, alongside an arcane set of measurements. I puzzled over these for a while. I knew Biscuit was a small cat, but I was sure she must be more than seven inches long. Only after an hour did I have a lightbulb moment and realise that the figures related to the cats’ tails. It said a lot about Ralph and Shipley’s relationship that Shipley’s pointy, slightly curly tail, even though it looked the longest, was actually only runner-up; coming in at ten and a half inches, it was a full half-inch behind Ralph’s. That said, I would not have put it past Ralph to add a bit of length with some crafty back combing. I hoped it would not intensify The Bear’s aura of melancholy that his came in second last, at nine inches. Shipley would probably be most troubled by the measurements, and this was arguably confirmed when I found him next to the blackboard, his tail in the air, seemingly trying to straighten out the kink at the end of it.
One day inNovember, heading inland to pick Gemma up from her day job in her dad’s shop, feeling battered and windswept from a rainy early-morning walk on a remote stretch of Devon coast, I found an answerphone message from Deborah. ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ she said. ‘But it’s Shipley. He’s been refusing to eat for the last day, and seems very lethargic. Every time I go to check on him, he’s just sitting on the beanbag in the same position, and he barely reacts when I touch him.’
Finding themselvesin a situation that all pet sitters dread, Deborah and David had faced a difficult decision. Considerately, they hadn’t wanted to worry me when I was so far from home, but they’d also not wanted to leave matters too late. After I’d called Deborah back and talked it through, she and David kindly rushed Shipley to see George, the Californian vet down the road, who seemed rather stumped as to exactly what the matter was, but gave him an injection of antibiotics, and said he should be brought back the following day if there’d been no improvement in his condition.
Later that afternoon, I called Deborah back to find out if Shipley had improved. ‘There’s no change,’ she said. ‘I’ve been sitting with him, but he seems very limp and sad. He’s not even swearing at me.’ With seven counties separating us, Gemma working two jobs, and my own weekly writing commitments to consider, it had already been difficult for Gemma and me to find time to see each other as much as we wanted to. Now here I was, doing the only thing I could do in the situation, and leaving, not much more than a day after I’d arrived.
I raced back across the country in record time, incurring a speeding ticket along the way
I remembered, a decade earlier, talking through the routine of cat feeding to Bob, my first ever next door neighbour as a home owner, and feeling very adult as I did so. ‘The kettle’s just here,’ I’d announced, ‘and feel free to have a sit-down and watch TV if you like.’ It only occurred to me later what a ridiculous thing it had been to say. Why on earth would Bob, a retired headmaster, want to have a cup of tea and watch TV in a virtual stranger’s house instead of his own, sixteen yards away? But suggesting such a thing to Deborah and David wouldn’t have been quite so preposterous. Not only were they happy to feed the cats, they were also happy to stick around and give them a cuddle, particularly Shipley, whose relationship with Deborah continued to be close – if somewhat foul-mouthed, on Shipley’s side.
After one visitto Devon I returned to find each of my cats’ names, and Biscuit’s, written on the kitchen blackboard, alongside an arcane set of measurements. I puzzled over these for a while. I knew Biscuit was a small cat, but I was sure she must be more than seven inches long. Only after an hour did I have a lightbulb moment and realise that the figures related to the cats’ tails. It said a lot about Ralph and Shipley’s relationship that Shipley’s pointy, slightly curly tail, even though it looked the longest, was actually only runner-up; coming in at ten and a half inches, it was a full half-inch behind Ralph’s. That said, I would not have put it past Ralph to add a bit of length with some crafty back combing. I hoped it would not intensify The Bear’s aura of melancholy that his came in second last, at nine inches. Shipley would probably be most troubled by the measurements, and this was arguably confirmed when I found him next to the blackboard, his tail in the air, seemingly trying to straighten out the kink at the end of it.
One day inNovember, heading inland to pick Gemma up from her day job in her dad’s shop, feeling battered and windswept from a rainy early-morning walk on a remote stretch of Devon coast, I found an answerphone message from Deborah. ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ she said. ‘But it’s Shipley. He’s been refusing to eat for the last day, and seems very lethargic. Every time I go to check on him, he’s just sitting on the beanbag in the same position, and he barely reacts when I touch him.’
Finding themselvesin a situation that all pet sitters dread, Deborah and David had faced a difficult decision. Considerately, they hadn’t wanted to worry me when I was so far from home, but they’d also not wanted to leave matters too late. After I’d called Deborah back and talked it through, she and David kindly rushed Shipley to see George, the Californian vet down the road, who seemed rather stumped as to exactly what the matter was, but gave him an injection of antibiotics, and said he should be brought back the following day if there’d been no improvement in his condition.
Later that afternoon, I called Deborah back to find out if Shipley had improved. ‘There’s no change,’ she said. ‘I’ve been sitting with him, but he seems very limp and sad. He’s not even swearing at me.’ With seven counties separating us, Gemma working two jobs, and my own weekly writing commitments to consider, it had already been difficult for Gemma and me to find time to see each other as much as we wanted to. Now here I was, doing the only thing I could do in the situation, and leaving, not much more than a day after I’d arrived.
I raced back across the country in record time, incurring a speeding ticket along the way
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