Too Narrow to Swing a Cat (eBook)

When I got her, she was very different to how I imagined she'd be. She wasn't the sleek and glossy red setter I'd pictured myself owning. Neither was she the wide-eyed spaniel I'd dreamed about. Or the fluffy Labrador pup I'd always coveted. She hadn't got great floppy ears, she didn't put both paws on my shoulders and lick me to death. She didn't have that warm and reassuring doggy smell about her. In fact, she wasn't a dog at all. She was a cat. Well, a kitten to be more precise. A ragged, long-haired ball of fur of indeterminate genealogy, black with a messy smudge of white down her back and with the hairiest, most pointed ears I'd seen on any living creature. They were like the ears of a lynx, sharpened to a paintbrush tip with hairs that seemed to be rooted inside her head. If this wasn't unusual enough for a domestic cat, she had a tail so long and bushy it suggested that among the varied strands of DNA that comprised her make-up a squirrel's had somehow managed to get in there at some stage. She sat in the palm of my hand, looking at the world with curiosity through her wide, yellow eyes. She was especially interested in that bit of the world called Em. She had already decided she did not like Em. Hardly surprising really, since it was evident that Em was hardly over the moon about her either. Which was understandable, I guess. It had taken Em long enough to dissuade me from getting a dog, she was hardly going to be enthusiastic about a smaller version of the same which would scratch the living room upholstery to shreds and dig up the garden bedding plants for a toilet. 'What on earth is that?' she asked eventually - though this, as I should have realised, was more of a demand for an explanation than a simple question. After all, Em is a woman who knows a thing or two about the world. Among the things she knows is what a cat is. So it didn't help when I said, 'It's a cat.' 'I know it's a sodding cat,' she snapped. 'What I want to know is how it got here. And what are you doing with it?' This one was a bit trickier. The truth is I wasn't certain how it had happened either. The last I knew I was lying in bed planning another of the canal boat journeys I take when I become bored, or when life in London becomes too stressful. I was staring at the ceiling wondering how Em would handle the idea of me being away from home for most of the summer while she'd have to go to work, mixing it on the tube twice a day in the rush-hour. I wondered how I'd handle it myself, too. We've had a narrowboat for years but it's not all long, lazy days basking in the sunshine, I can tell you. Especially if you're boating on your own. Travelling week after week through lost parts of the English countryside so beautiful it makes you want to weep can be an exhausting business. Drinking on your own in pubs every night can get you down too, believe me. A man needs company when he's on the move. What was I supposed to do if I couldn't get a dog? I must have mentioned the problem to my mate Dave. The idea of a cat must have come up. One way or another, I found myself not long afterwards knocking on the door of a suburban house in Eltham, a few miles from where we live in south-east London. There, a fearsome Irish woman from Cats Protection started firing so many searching questions at me I wondered if I'd stumbled into social services and she was vetting me for adoption. Eventually, after she'd given me the third-degree on my living arrangements, my domestic status and my annual income, I managed to change the subject by talking about the trip I was thinking of making. For some reason this seemed to irritate her. 'What do you mean, 'lost parts of England'?' she snapped. 'The land we now know as...