Boo, life and the real meaning of love

I remember the conversation I had prior to getting Boo. I was working on my community placement in Camden, and was working with Emma. She was a little bit ditzy but fun to work with. She told me that her cat had given birth to 6 kittens and would I like one. I was living in a flat at the time, but it did have a garden, so I said I would talk it through with my girlfriend. She wasn’t overly keen, but we eventually decided to take him, the last cat I had was a family cat, and he disappeared without trace. He was about 16 years old, not unwell, and moody enough not to be taken easily, but one day he was gone and never came back, the last cat before that was Mischa, a docile Siamese that succumbed to cancer at a relatively young age.

Sometimes, it takes you a while to get over the loss of a cat, and replacing your pet does not always work out well, but it just felt like the right time. So, I agreed to pick him up. When I met him, he was tiny and scrawny, and looked dwarfed by the huge cat basket that he now only just about fits in. Apparently the runt of the litter, bullied off mothers milk by the rest of the brood. Emma wanted to sell the other cats for £100 a piece but gave him to me. I didn’t find out if she sold any more, but she lost two kittens when she left the back door open, and they ran away, scooting over her garden fence never to be seen again, a bit like my rabbit who was released into the wild by my parents when he got too big, he gave one quick look of reproach before scampering away, me being too young to know he had no real chance of surviving in the wild.

And sometimes you find a name for your pet that just fits. He had a habit of jumping sideways as a kitten, hiding behind doors, then bounding out to climb up my leg, then running off again. So Boo seemed right and the older he got, the more he grew into his name. And I don’t know whether it was the fact that he wasn’t nurtured by his mother, or possibly that he got left alone for periods at a time when he was a kitten, but he became very people attached, always looking to jump up onto my lap and would stay there for hours on an end, and would more than often share the bed as well, curling up where there was a divot between my legs and staying there until morning, until he woke me with several well timed paw splats to my head to tell me it was either feeding time, or that he just wanted me up, so he could sit with me in the living room.

And he rapidly grew into a big alpha male, but retaining some of the timidness and nervousness he had as a kitten. Then my girlfriend decided she didn’t want to live in London anymore and went up to live in Wiltshire to be near her parents, occasionally visiting me and Boo at weekends. By now, I’d just qualified as a staff nurse and was working in the community, but it wasn’t going well, so I made a life changing decision to leave my job (without having another one), to be closer to my girlfriend. I was able to stay with a friend, Boo was unable to stay with me so he stayed with my girlfriends parents, they agreed he could stay there for a short period of time, but as they did not get on with me, they would not let me see him, so began my first period of separation from Boo.

After about six months, I was able to find a private rental, and me, Boo and my girlfriend were reunited. The worry I had was that Boo wouldn’t recognise me, but once he got over his change of scenery, it took him about a day, bounding back out of the bedroom straight back up onto my lap again. Such a Daddy’s Boy, my girlfriend said when she came home from work, and I guess she is right, he always seemed to come over to me, to sit on top of the computer, or to sit on a pile of papers if I was working. And even when we moved into separate rooms when the relationship went wrong, 9 out of 10 times he chose to sleep with me.

And I remember when he got sick and I thought he was certain to die. Cats, for whatever reason, tend to hide illness very well, and there were no signs before. Despite being a house cat, he was always very active and liked to play. This day, when I got home, at first I thought he had picked up a cold as he was sneezing, which was odd as he had never been ill before, he had a penchant for vomiting the worlds largest furballs and occasionally got a bit grumpy if he wanted to bring one up. But his behaviour was odd, he was hiding under a chair, trying to shrink away from contact, and mewling when being picked up. He wouldn’t eat and drink, and hadn’t urinated, though he wanted to go. It was evident that something was wrong. Seriously wrong.

I especially remember the vets, because she was seriously blunt, which isn’t actually a bad quality. His breathing had deteriorated so she put Boo on oxygen, told me that he had a blood clot near his heart, and that he had a incurable cardiac condition, apparently very common in Persian cats. She gave him an injection to take some fluid off his back legs, and to help him go to the toilet, prescribed aspirin to try and thin out the blood clot, and told me to take him home over the weekend as that was where he was going to be most comfortable. She didn’t utter the words, “Boo is going to die”, but she meant it, if the veiled words didn’t convey it, the look on her face did. Being a nurse didn’t help, it’s what you call the conversation of death, I’ve had to give it enough times. Things looked bleak.

I wasn’t sure that Boo would last the day, never mind the weekend. He wouldn’t eat or drink, he still wouldn’t urinate. And he kept hiding himself under the bed. So I stayed in the bedroom for 72 hours, everytime he went under the bed I picked him up, stroking him and feeding him yoghurt off my finger, the only thing he would take, when drifting off to sleep, horribly waking up an hour later, looking under the bed expecting to find him dead, picking him up and undertaking the whole process again. I was 90% sure he was going to die. But he didn’t, he made it through the weekend, and the vet was almost flabbergasted that I brought a very sick but alive cat to her on the Monday, again she reiterated that there was nothing I could do, he could go on atenalol (to slow his heart rate down), and stay on aspirin (to help prevent blood clots), but he could go at any time and that his life span would be significantly reduced.

But slowly, he got better, he passed his 6 month check, then his next one. He seemed, however, to get even more dependent, and was always on my lap or on my bed, and gets tired a lot, and seemed distinctly unimpressed that his food was being rationed as the vet said that might help his condition. And, as my relationship with my girlfriend deteriorated, I came home one day after being at work to find an empty flat and Boo gone.

And now I occasionally see him, for maybe two hours at a time every fortnight, and though he seems well enough, his behaviour has changed, he’s a lot more moody, and he bites and scratches more than he used to, he’s always liked the rough side of play and hunting, I feel there is more to it than that, it’s almost as if he is questioning why I left him again.

And whilst the ex-girlfriend now chases the white picket fence ideal, where financial rewards are more important and material well-being has been confused with happiness. Real love was nurturing Boo through his sickness, though it appeared futile at the time, his life was saved through love, its the guilt about leaving him the first time and for the same thing to happen again, its why he is not just a cat, how he can’t just be simply replaced by another one, its the reason why money is irrelevant, it’s the reason why I find myself in tears most nights, and it’s the reason when I look into those eyes, that I see him asking me to take him away, to be like it used to be. And I miss him so much, I miss him snuggling up to me, and I wish I knew the right thing to do. But I don’t. And I hope I don’t make the wrong one. Because if I do, those questioning eyes looking into mine will never forgive. Ever.

Tragic Life Stories

So, I’m walking down the aisle of the book section in WHSmiths, and up looms a section called Tragic Life Stories, two whole bookshelves of this insanity. I hadn’t actually realised that this had actually become a genre, and it’s origins can probably be traced back to Dave Pelzer’s A Child Called It, a story of childhood abuse so chronically badly written, that you actually felt like taking the book and hitting him constantly over the head with it just to make him stop. But he, didn’t, three more came.

And now, it’s an industry. Whatever tragic event you want to write about, you can. Anorexia, bulimia, and especially, how hard life is, especially growing up in a northern town. And we know it’s harder growing up there than anywhere else in the world. But guys, life is supposed to be hard, we don’t live in some fluffy utopia that is portrayed on our TV screens, the real world is like this, your white picket fence ideal does not exist.

But now, if possible, it’s got worse. It’s moved on from humans to animals. Usually in the form of I got a cat for little Johnny/Sophie before they died from (*horriffic disease/drunk drivers/crazed axemen/acts of god *delete where appropriate), I wanted to get rid of it, but kept the cat and he helped me how to love and live again. The schmaltz, the schmaltz.

And I pick one up. This one is about Norton the cat (who for gods sake calls their cat Norton – has he never had a virus or something), and this is a sequel. But different to the others, this is a tragic life story without any tragic life events, it seems to be about some loser singleton bloke who lives with Norton the cat for company. Unable to reach his life ideals in the land of hope that is the United Kingdom he goes to France with his cat, he seems to have got there without any rabies checks as well.

Picking up a random chapter near the start I read on. He has just got to France and decides to go to a restaurant to have a meal. So he brings the cat with him as you do. The restaurant staff don’t want the cat in the restaurant so take him out to the kitchen. I’m actually surprised they don’t cook and eat the fucker, but no they feed him ice cream because we know all cats like ice cream. Norton refuses.

Of course, the staff are all conversant in English, and every other word is zis and ze because we know all French people talk like that all the time. Zis is a very rude cat you have there, he will not eat ze ice cream. Interspered with this dialogue is how he thinks for his cat like it is a human, he talks how he is disappointed in his cat in the third person in his thoughts, you kind of have to read it.

Anyway, his meal comes to an end, suddenly a waitress bursts out of the kitchen. Meeester, Meeester, your cat iz a geeeenius, the ice cream was off, that why he didn’t eat it, you have saved us. The author picks up his cat, looks into his eyes and says “Norton, I didn’t doubt you for a minute”. I think you will find you did, you hypocritical fucker.

I didn’t read any more.

Not all of our heroes fail us

The Quireboys burst onto the music scene in the 1980′s with their unique bluesy sound, a combination of The Small Faces, The Rolling Stones, Primal Scream and The Black Crowes, and their lead singer Spike often seen out leading the high life, in fact he tended to mirror Bobby Gillespie. Their debut album, A Little Bit Of What You Fancy, was a cracking album, full of guitar and piano based blues anthems that more than stand the test of time today, Spike’s gravelly voice probably only comparable to an early Rod Stewart.

However, it took them a long time to produce a second album, which, whilst decent enough, lacked the punch of the first one, and by this time The Black Crowes had got a foothold in this genre as music, though, truthfully, they weren’t as good. Then the 90′s came and grunge took over and no-one wanted to know anymore about piano based blues music, and like others The Quireboys simply seemed to disappear into the wilderness.

And now they are back, and are promoting their new acoustic album, Halfpenny Dancer, which is a combination of covers and some of their older tracks re-recorded, and it’s billed as an acoustic show. And they are late on. Everything points to a disaster, think of acoustic, and you think of Eric Clapton almost comatosing you to death with Tears from Heaven or a stripped down Nirvana having nothing to show without the bluster of their electric guitars. And you have just received a dose of vitriol from your soon to be ex-girlfriend over the telephone, and you are wondering why you are here to end up disappointed again.

So we shuffle into a small room and wait for the support band to finish (who did an admirable job doing an acoustic set when they clearly weren’t set up for it). And then Spike appears out of a side door and gets up onto the stage, a drink in hand. He’s older and bigger but still recognisable, dressed in the gypsy/pirate look that he was wearing long before Johnny Depp made it fashionable – and this is the moment where you find out what kind of night you are in for. And they start off with a note perfect There She Goes Again, there’s no difference with Spike’s vocals, the gravelly voice is still there, in fact you kind of expect chunks of tarmac to come flying out of his mouth and embed themselves in your skin. It’s unique and there’s not another singer who sounds like this.

And it continues in the same vein. All the worries about it being an acoustic show fade away, in fact, they appear suited by it, the piano comes more out to the fore, though Spike has a lot of trouble actually sitting still, and completely abandons the idea halfway through. He continues to drink throughout the performance and engages with the crowd after every song. They talk about front men, such as Liam Gallagher and Mick Jagger, and whilst these two either scowl or pout, Spike is the real front man, wants to interact with the audience, enjoys his music and you can tell the rapport with the band and the audience is strong.

And when he sings King of New York, which wasn’t a stand out from the second album, but dedicates it to his father and says that he hasn’t been ready to sing this for some time, the song takes on a whole new meaning. Spike is not ready to sing this, and for the first time since the night began, the gravelly voice begins to crack. But this is not a night for moroseness. “What time is it?”, Spike enquires. “7 o’clock,” is the reply from the crowd as another thumping slice of guitar and piano blues fills the room. And the evening ends with an outstanding version of I Don’t Love You Anymore, where the whole room sings in unison as one, beer glasses raised high in the air. And even the final irony of the song doesn’t detract from what has been a remarkable evening.

And when it is over, and I step out into the cold Swindon air, even if it is just for a minute, everything is alright with the world once again.