Nero at Home. The life of a black cat

 

Nero at Home.

 

The life of a black cat

 

Nero at Home.

 

The life of a black cat

Alec Hyatt King

Copyright © 1984 Alec Hyatt King

 

Contents

Preface by Edmund M. B. King

Foreword

Nero’s arrival

Springtime and summer

Autumn

The traveller

Envoi

 

Preface

My father, Alec Hyatt King, wrote this memoir many years ago. He was nearly seventy when he created these recollections. He was gifted with near total recall, and as you will read, created scenes describing Nero’s cat life in the most minute detail. His was a generation largely without colour photography, so words had to set the scene for the reader. Reminding me as it does of my own youth, the intention is to bring this memoir to a wider audience than my father would ever have thought possible. If you (as I do) like cats, I hope you will find Nero's life as enjoyable as I did.

Copyright © 2024  Edmund M. B. King

 

Foreword

 

Early in September 1962, somewhere near Epsom in Surrey, cat gave birth to a litter of kittens, one of which was almost entirely black. In these pages, I have tried to tell how this little animal came to enter my life, and how, as he grew up, he gradually exercised an increasing fascination over myself, my family and many others who knew him, for more than seventeen years.

I have relied for this narrative on my memory, aided by some notes that I made from 1977 onwards. This cat was not highly bred, and his life was unadventurous, by any feline standard: indeed, until he was over fifteen, he only knew the inner suburbs of London. In describing the places where he lived, I have only given such details as seemed to me essential to show how the of a cat’s character and intelligence can be affected by his surroundings. I trust I have succeeded in conveying something of the long, happy companionship which he gave to his owners, and which, in his later years, he sought from them in return.

Southwold

Spring 1980

 

 

Earlier cats

I had great expectations of Nero (as he was to be called in the middle of 1962, even before he was born. This is true, and though perhaps it sounds presumptuous, I hope it will seem less so if I may digress to give a brief account of his predecessors.

In my parents’ house, there was a succession of cats throughout my childhood and youth. But those creatures are now part of a shadowy past and I recall none of them. The first cat of my own was Gus, a pretty little black and white, who lived, alas, for less than three years, and was run over in 1938. The war years made the ownership of pets quite impracticable, but in 1946 I took over Simon, a pleasant, affectionate tabby of about eight or nine, from my mother who was then no longer able to look after home. Here again, I was unlucky. For in the next year or two, when my wife and I went away for a holiday, we left Simon in the care of our domestic helper, who was much attached to him. But he grew restless and escaped from her flat in Kentish Town on to a large bomb site. Long searching on our return failed to find him.

Just when I was thinking about a successor, fate intervened again. The staff lunch-club at my place of work had been adopted by a stray cat, a big, rangy animal, with strong yellow and white marking, who enjoyed both the food and the company of his refuge.  But his presence roused strong passions, and the staff was split between those who welcomed his presence and those who detested him. In the end a special meeting had to be held and a a vote taken. A majority of the cat-haters prevailed and it was clear that unless he could be found a home, h e would have to be destroyed. It is curious how often pressing cat-lovers are are reluctant to act in a crisis. Many of them found reasons why they could not accept this animal, and in the end I took him on myself.

Meeting a cat occasionally in a large public room is a very different thing from having him under one’s own roof, as I soon found out. This one, when I adopted him, seemed to be about five or six [years old]. I knew that his temper was uncertain, which was certainly due to unkind treatment in his early years. This had, alas, scarred him too deeply and he found it difficult to adapt to his new surroundings, however hard we, and he (as I believe he did), might try. He had to be given a name. At that time one of our elder son’s favourite books was Orlando, the Marmalade Cat, by Kathleen Hale. The pictures of the animal, with broad yellow and white stripes, bore some resemblance to our newly acquired pet. But ‘Orlando’ seemed too grand, and was certainly not easy to use to call him in [to the house].  Then I remembered   that famous renaissance musician, Orlando di Lasso. Why not use the last part of that name? So ‘Lasso’ he became and soon answered to this dissyllable. I think he enjoyed being part of a family, up to a point. He was certainly grateful for some home comforts, such as he had probably never enjoyed before. But though Lasso tried to show affection, he never really fitted in and found two young boisterous young children rather overwhelming. After a year or so, we noticed that he often went over the road, to the house of an elderly widow who knew him quite well. We suspected that she gave him richer food than we did. In the end she took lasso in, and made him happier, I think, than we could have done. He came a-visiting now ant then, but when she died a few years later, relatives took him to their home, and our Lasso episode was over.

Now we had a free choice, and turned to some friends who had a small farm near Basingstoke. One of their female cats was an enchanting animal, with a fine , silky fur and elegant grey and white markings. Her name, for some reason I never discovered, was Lady Rupert, which certainly suited her style and character as a cat of breeding. She was then about seven, and, as we knew from our visits to the farm, regularly had kittens twice a year. At lease one of each litter inherited her pretty markings, no matter which of the farm-cats was the father. So in the spring of 1951, we visited our friends to see the new litter, and chose the male which was most like his mother

A few weeks later, the kitten was brought to us in Hampstead. I must confess that after nearly twenty years my recollections of him are now a little hazy. He certainly inherited his mother’s elegance, and, as he grew up, always took great pride in his appearance. He was whimsical and playful, and had a quizzical look about him, as if rather astonished to find himself there. I called him Wooster, for no better reason than that I was then re-reading some Wodehouse, and found a resemblance between the immortal Bertie and this offspring of Lady Rupert. [See the photographs below of Wooster on a deck chair, and Wooster sitting on the window sill of the sink room.]

         

           

Wooster was not a cat of strong character. He was affectionate and unobtrusive and fitted easily into our domestic routine. But, as he grew older, a plaintive strain in his nature became more marked. He seemed to thrive on a melancholy acceptance of life, with little positive enjoyment of it.

Wooster’s end was sad, and rather extraordinary. Late one afternoon in the spring of 1962, when he was in his twelfth year, he failed to appear for his supper. I searched and found him upstairs crouched motionless under an armchair. He was rigid, staring straight in front and quivering slightly. As he was obviously ill, and didn’t respond to my voice or my hand, I decided to leave him where he was and try to get the vet, whose surgery I knew would begin in an hour. A little later, when it was getting dark, I was looking out of a front window, and to my astonishment saw Wooster walking very feebly down the other side of the road, about forty yards away. Without waiting to find out who had left the front door open, I went after him and, as I got to the front gate, saw him turning into a driftway behind some houses whose gardens ran up into the end of our road.

When I reached the driftway, which had a wall one side and ended in a low gate, he was nowhere to be seen. With a torch, I searched everywhere, and went on calling. Next day we looked in all the gardens, asked all round and put up notices, but in vain. His body was never found, although he was surely too weak to have gone far. Whether Wooster’s life could have been saved if he had not escaped through the open door, we could only speculate, with much self-reproach on my part. I have often since wondered if some strange surge of inner strength roused him from his coma – if that is the right term, and drove him to struggle out of doors, to find somewhere to die in solitude, as animals in extremis are sometimes known to do.

Nero’s arrival

A few days after we lost Wooster, we met a cat-loving friend who said ‘You must have another one, soon’.

This was sensible, but it seemed to me that there were two questions – what sort of ca\t did we want, and where was he to come from? Clearly, I had not been very lucky in the past. Gus had died prematurely. His two immediate successors came to me as adult cats. Wooster, though he lived to a fair age, lacked some of the qualities I had hoped for. So I felt uncertain, and decided to let things rest for a few weeks.

My daily bus journey down Hampstead Road took me past Mornington ?Crescent Underground station. Nearly opposite the station on the other side of the road, was a large building which had been converted to offices from its original use. One day as I Passed it, I remembered it had been built by Carreras, the manufacturers of Black Cat cigarettes, and that the whole building, vaguely Egyptian in style, had been decorated with images of cats – all over the railings, on the walls and other places. The new owners had removed all traces of this decoration, but on that morning, some weeks after the loss of Wooster, as I recalled these images, the idea suddenly struck me – why not try a black cat? They were after all, supposed to be lucky, and luck, I felt, was what I needed – just an ordinary black cat.

It is one thing to decide what kind of cat you want, and quite another to find him. In fact, the more ordinary your need, the harder is seems to fulfil. In the next month or so, I asked numerous friends and acquaintances, but no one knew of any cat who was likely to have a black kitten. Then I let my need be know in my office and a lady colleague said she though she might help. It turned out that she had a friend near Epsom whose neighbour owned a tabby cat which nearly always had one black kitten in a litter. This all seemed a bit remote, but she was said to be a good mother, and preferred this migrant black tom to her other suitors. This, I thought, might possible suggest a strain of loyalty and so I decided to chance my luck. My colleague said she would tell me how things were going on.

At the end of July, I learned the litter was due in September. Then came the news, as predicted, that it did include one black kitten. All I had to do now was to wait. I can remember, as if it were only yesterday, that dark afternoon some eight weeks later when I went to Victoria Station. From the barrier I saw my colleague get off the train carrying a small wicker cat-basket. As she passed the ticket collector there came from the beast a deep, raucous howl of complaint, which made everyone within earshot look round.

‘Here he is’, she said, ‘you take him now. He’s been going on like this all the way up’.

I took the basket and made my way to the 24 bus. It was now about four o’clock and getting on for the rush hour. So I went on the upper deck where it might be less crowded and sat near the front with the basket beside me. Through the window at the front, I could dimly see the kitten, half wrapped in a piece of blanket, and tried to reach him with my fingers. But he refused to be comforted and every two minutes or so howled dismally. As the bus filled up, people peered curiously in my direction and one or two sympathisers came forward to ask if he was all right. It was a relief when we got to the endo of the journey, although as I walked up the hill, the howls increased as he protested at the swaying of the basket – something that I could not prevent.

Once indoors, I put the basket on the ding room table and unfastened the window. It seemed incredible that the small object which emerged had the lung power to make such an extraordinary noise. But that was the voice which was to dominate our life for the next seventeen years. I picked him up to look at him. He had a few white hairs on his chest and a few more on his belly. But otherwise his coat and his whiskers were entirely black. What was equally striking was the air of self-confidence and the independence that seemed to blaze in his eyes. 

After a few days, the kitten recovered from his journey and began to settle down. Then we began to think what we were going to call him. As I had been so concerned to have a black cat, I felt that his name should relate to his colour. ‘Blackie’? or ‘Sooty’? I couldn’t think of anything of this kind in English which suited his character and his colouring. Then I cast round for possibilities in other languages. French and German equivalents did not offer much. But the Italian word for ‘black’ came to my mind – ‘Nero’. It used with a capital, it also recalled a Roman emperor – not, perhaps, one of the more admirable of those who had worn the imperial purple, but certainly a person of character. So ‘Nero’ our pet became, and he soon learned his name, for it was easy and effective to call. I was never able to find out exactly on what day he was born, but it was certainly early in September. As my wife’s birthday fell on the 2^nd of that month, we decided that this day should also be Nero’s ‘official’ birthday.

Springtime and Summer

Here I think I must digress to describe the house we lived in and its surroundings. We had been there since 1949 and so both Lasso and Wooster had enjoyed what it had to offer. But as neither of them was much affected by the place or became strongly associated with it, I have left this description until now. The road was Rudall Crescent (not so far from Hampstead High Street) and the house was at the top, the second from the fight of a small terrace of four, which were built in the mid-1880s. Each had a narrow frontage, with some thirty feet of a tapering garden at the front: our house had the longest back garden, some sixty feet. . All were on four floors, with no basement. As often in Victorian houses, all the rooms had very deep chimney recesses, ideal for cupboards and shelves. Our house also had large cupboards under the eaves in the attics and two bathrooms, one above the other, the upper one added in the 1920s. This too provided a maze of cupboards and shelves.

At the back, in the triangle formed by Gayton Road and the High Street, lay a wilderness, bounded by gardens and dominated by a huge black poplar and the derelict chimney of the old Hampstead Brewery, which then still owned the land. This wilderness, created by bushes and old, stunted fruit trees (all that remained of the garden of an early nineteenth century estate), was a paradise for cats. Wooster, being timid, had never really explored it, and was more attracted by what he found in the front of the house. But has Nero grew bigger and bolder, he revelled in the wilderness and everything in it.

The long, harsh winter of 1962 to 1963 began just after Christmas and seemed to go on fore ever. One snowfall succeeded another, and as our terrace faced east, the snow rarely lay less than six inches deep on the grass and flower beds. Whenever Nero tried to get out, it engulfed him, struggling and damp and miserable. He never forgot that experience: for the rest of his life he was suspicious of any fall of snow. In March, he caught cat ‘flu and for a week or so was very ill. But he responded well to treatment, which showed what a strong constitution he had. Confined by the weather to the house, he explored every corner of it and in his play became a living part of it.

Some games, like playing with string or dangling objects, clawing up curtains or chasing a ping-pong ball, are common to most kittens. Nero enjoyed them all and found peculiar pleasure in devising some new ones of his own. He loved to rush up and down any of the flights of stairs, on which he would stop suddenly to lie on his back and thrust his front paws through the n=bannisters, as an invitation to any one passing on the landing below to try to catch him. If no one was about, he just played by himself, curling his body through the bannisters to try to catch the tail he always seemed to be leaving behind. Another thing that fascinated him was any hollow space, especially in something which he could move. Large paper bags were irresistible for burrowing into and pushing about the floor in a sort of blind man’s buff. He loved a half-empty shopping bag: he would twist it onto its side, scatter the contents, and then use the bag as a punch-ball from the inside. Whenever he saw an open cardboard box or suitcase, he jumped in, scrabble round inside it till he had explored all the contents and pretended to go to sleep.

Nero was never able to distinguish a moving, or movable, solid object from a moving, intangible one. The best example of this was his shadow game. As the weather of 1963 gave way to the late spring, the morning sun shone strongly through our dining room window on to the back wall. Any shrub or tree in the front garden might cast a moving shadow on the wall. Whenever Nero saw them, he began jumping up wildly to try to catch them. He jumped, twisting and turning, with his front egs stretching up full length, often to a height of four feet or so. Shadows of all kinds, anywhere, fascinated him. We sometimes used to make them for him with our own hands, out of doors in the sunlight, indoors in artificial light. It gave him splendid exercise and even in his old age he went on trying to catch these moving exercises. As a kitten, he would suddenly get cross and lose all interest in this game or an other. He would then leap on a chair, wash furiously and curl up to sleep, purring with a deep vibration that shook his tiny body.

By the time Nero was a year old, he was almost fully grown. His fur was fine and lustrous, jet-black. But if you smoothed it the wrong way, you could see that near his skin, it shaded to a deep chestnut colour. He had a long nose, and a rather broad forehead surmounted by large pointed ears, each with a little nick at the top. (I flattered myself that his ears suggested the possibility of a Siamese strain among his ancestors.) He had magnificent eyes: from a distance, when the pupils were fully dilated, they glowed like gold, but a close view showed that the were flecked with green. They were always watchful and wary.

In repose, Nero was a cat of great natural dignity, which was enhanced by his size. Though not as big as some cats I have known, he measured when stretched out just under three feet from paw to tail. But his power lacked grace, for his hind legs were taller than his front ones and this imparted a lolloping movement to this run.

Like many cats of mixed ancestry, he was blessed with exceptionally good health. In infancy, as I have mentioned, alopecia affected a small part of his coat. When he was about three, alopecia affected a small part of his coat. (This was easily cured, om the vet’s advice, by giving him less fish.) Apart from these and treatment for a minor upset caused by a never-to-be-repeated stay in a cattery, Nero needed no more attention from a vet until his extreme old age. I had, of course, no fore-knowledge of al this in the mid-1960s. But even then it had begun to seem, just from his character, as if my own luck had turned when I decided to take a chance on the traditional luck of black cats.

Looking back from the time when I now write, I think that perhaps I and my family took Nero too much for granted, once he was established among us. Perhaps it was difficult to do otherwise, for those were very busy years and he matched himself so easily to our routine. But at the same time, he began to develop the strong pattern of his own life, to such effect that the details of it were always impressing themselves on my memory, far more vividly indeed that I realised at the time.

All over the house there were shelves, mantelpieces, tables, and other surfaces, with fragile objects on them. In his restless mood Nero liked to explore these surfaces incessantly. In spite of his size, he always walked delicately and picked his way with great care. This habit lasted, and I cannot remember him ever breaking anything, even when he became less sure-footed with age.

He ate and drank tidily and sensibly preferred small quantities. His range of tastes was astonishing. Besides fish and meat, he developed a taste for scrambled eggs, a little cereal with milk and sugar, cheese in any form and milk-pudding. His adventurousness in things gastronomic was show by a curious episode in the kitchen, one warm summer day. My wife had emptied her shopping bag on to a long work-top and went out into the garden for a cup of tea. Among the things she had bought was a packet of currant scones sealed in cellophane. Half an hour later she came in to find that Nero was so attracted by the scent of the scones trough their covering that he had dragged the packet down on to the floor and had torn it open. He had eaten one whole scone and was half-way through a second. After that, we realised that he loved anything with a sweet, floury flavour (including madeira cake) whether it had currants in it or not. Perhaps his varied diet contributed to his long life.

Nero took milk in moderation and developed a taste for water as he grew older. He found that he could get it when he wanted it, by sitting in the bath when a tap was dripping. If this proved too slow, he gave a mournful howl as a signal that he wished for a saucer of water to be brought to him in the bath. In our successive moves, first to a flat, and then to another house, he quickly found the bathroom and kept up the habit.

Nero liked people and their company, but for many years was suspicious of contact with them. Rather curiously, he would settle on the floor between a pair of feet, or even –rather uncomfortably – on them, and relax, or go to sleep. He would sit at one end of the sofa, but it was not until his last four years or so that he ever moved on to anyone’s lap. The sole exception was my wife’s mother, who,. Having had dogs all her life, was ‘’agin’ cats. Yet whenever she visited us, Nero jumped on her lap, no matter where she was sitting, and settled down, despite all her attempts to shoo him off. I think she secretly felt rather flattered.

Contact with human hand and bodies is of immense importance to a cat: it is a sensuous experience which becomes a type of communication. One measure of the confidence that a cat develops in his owners is the way he allows himself to be held. From his kittenhood  Nero always seemed to feel awkward when I lifted him with my hands supporting him under his chest (although this is what most cats refer). In this attitude he laid his ears back and tended to wriggle relentlessly. But he was quite happy When I supported his head and back with both my arms, like baby, so that he looked upwards towards me and not down to the ground. Huis whole body felt relaxed and comfortable. But he would not trust himself like this to anyone except myself.

It is not unusual for cats to develop a habit of associating people with rooms, and Nero did no quite early in his life. The one weekday meal at which all four members of the family were normally present together was breakfast. Nero was always in attendance, witting wither on the sideboard or one of the spare chairs near the table. If anyone did not come down, he waited for a few minutes and then went upstairs to find him. When I first noticed this, I watched him and fond that he never went to the wrong bedroom, If it was I who was absent, he came to look for me at once. Weekends, of course, were a different matter. If my wife was having a well-earned rest on Sunday, Nero always came up to the bedroom, jumped on to her pillow, settled down and nuzzled her neck with great affection. He never did this to anyone else.

He was attached to her in another rather unusual way. In the evenings, she was often busy at her typewriter on the dining room table. Nero liked to jump up and lie down stretched in front of the machine, amid a litter of papers, his back pressed against its carriage. Ignoring the clatter and the pinging of the bell, he seemed to enjoy the sensation of having his back scratched by the movement of the carriage, and his eyes closed in a blissful doze. Of all the chairs in the house, his favourite was certainly a small Parker-Knoll in my study. As it had fully padded sides, it supported him all round, however he lay on it.

Although Nero may have been sleepy in the day, his most active time –especially in winter – was often in the evening. He skittered all over the place, playing his games. Then he had something to eat, took a walk, and on coming in, settled down for a brief nap. But regularly, about 10 o’clock he woke up and left the room stealthily. He was off to find somewhere to hide for the night, hoping we would not trace him. Now this was all very well, and we did not begrudge him his nocturnal lair. But we learned from experience that he would not stay there until we got up next morning, as he was in the habit of coming out at daybreak- sometimes earlier and raising his voice for an early breakfast or a walk.

As I mentioned earlier, every floor in the house was well furnished with cupboards: there were especially deep ones in the upper bathroom, on which one whole side was fitted  as a linen cupboard. Nero sought his hiding place anywhere and everywhere. It was sometimes hard too find him behind boxes of discarded toys, or half-buried in a dark blanket. But found he generally was, and had to be brought our despite loud protests. He never went to the same place two nights running.

Sometimes by way of variety he crept into the ding room, where he jumped up on to one of the chairs that were thrust under the table. He preferred the chair placed at the point where the green baize under-cloth hung down lowest. He clawed the baize down further and wrapped it round his body. When we found him there, we left him and opened the door of the serving hatch so that he could get through to his box in the kitchen (and a ‘little something’) if he wanted to. When the kitchen door was closed he was safe until the next morning. Nero kept up this nightly routine for some years. It certainly started as a game, but I often wondered if underlying it there was some primitive need for safety and solitude at night.

Some cats are not averse to offering strangers of their own kind a friendly greeting, at least at first sight. But Nero was not one of them, at least until his old age. Born with a keen sense of territory, he harried all trespassers with unremitting hostility. This was a pity, because most of the neighbouring cats were amicable, interesting creatures, and it was pleasant to see them crossing the garden on their various errands. If Nero was there, he adopted one of two tactics. If the intruder was small and on the move, he rushed at him, sometimes howling, but more often not. This was usually enough to make him leave in a hurry, unpursued. But if it was a large cat, asleep perhaps, or crouching, in or near one of Nero’s favourite spots, he approached slowly and in silence, and stopped within a few paces. The, with his head partly down on one side, he began to emit a deep, unearthly scream, which wavered in pitch, and then sidled inch by inch, now with his head right down and his tail and spinal fur standing out in a large menacing bristle. Nero’s new opponent usually crouched howling and bristling in defiance, but I never heard a voice as threatening as his.

This alone was generally enough, after a few minutes of ghoulish duet, to make the intruder begin backing away. Once Nero had gained a yard or two, honour was satisfied and dominance asserted. The din subsided and he sat down to have a wash, as the other slunk off through a hole in the fence or over a wall. But occasionally the intruder stood his ground and all hell was let loose. The whirling mass of claws and fur dissolved into a chase and the pair disappeared into the wilderness where they crashed caterwauling through the bushes and briars. Nero usually cam back in half an hour or so, looking ruffled and in need of refreshment, but never, as far as I an recall, much damaged. He seemed mostly to win, but there were times when the intruder was a large, ferocious tom and then it was Nero who eased himself away to safety within his own back door.

Although encounters of this kind happened fairly often, especially in the summer months, the opponents were unpredictable. Beyond our back garden, however, lay one who was all too easily predictable, in the tawny and white person of the cat who lived next door in the house at the right hand end of our terrace. His name was Pusska and he had rather a sad history. He was about the same age as Nero, and had been born by a Caesarian operation, from which his mother had died. So Pusska had to be reared by hand and was deprived of maternal affection. His temper was, to say the least, uncertain, even with his devoted owners, who were good friends of ours.

Now when Nero was in his second summer he discovered that if he found himself in the back garden and the back doors and windows were all closed, there was a way round to the front, where he could attract our attention. He had to jump over our fence down into our neighbour’s garden and over their wall in to the garden next to the group of houses. From this it was but a few yards to our front gate. But anywhere on this journey, Nero was likely to meet Pusska, more probably in the front than in the back.

I think that their attitude to each other was based more on fear than on hostility, for they rarely met in close combat. Pusska had two favourite places in his front garden. One was on the bow of the boat which our neighbours parked in their patio. Nero often jumped on the stern of the boat as an easy short cut up the ridge of our half-height fence. If he reached the stern without noticing Puisska on the bow, there ensued a comical scene. Neither cat liked to approach the other through a tangle of the mast and tackle all over the seats, so they just sat glaring and hissing at each end of the boat. Another of Pusska’s favourite places was the window-sill of his dining room which was on a level with our own. When Nero jumped up here to catch our eye, he often found Pusska in parallel, so to speak. Again from a safe distance, they sat and growled and spat and swore, but rarely did either try to jump acorss the narrow gap.

Despite the lurking Pusska, I encourage Nero to go ‘round the house’, at least in good weather. I did so by simply taking him out just before his supper time, and persuading him to go up the fence, He soon learned that he would be let in at the front and then fed. I felt sure that the exercise was good for him, and I was concerned that, as a neuter, he shouldn’t put on weight when he grew older.

The first of his three jumps was hardest, because our fence was well over five feet high. But he had exceptionally powerful hind legs, he could leap at first bound on to the top arris rail where his claws gave him a safe grip, He prepared for his leap by crouching on his haunches, with his ears laid back in concentration and his tail in some agitation. This feat was a marvellous blend of strength and co-ordination and he kept it up until he was getting no for ten.

Many things out of doors absorbed a lot of Nero’s attention. Rather curiously, at the time, birds were not the main attraction: apart from an occasional pigeon, I never saw him try to catch one, and the pigeons always saw him coming. But he was fascinated by insects, especially bees. He spent hours watching them, attracted, I think, by the sound. Once he caught a large, sleepy bee, and miraculously avoided being stung. Butterflies he chased endlessly, but found them all-elusive. He feared wasps and left them alone.

There was a wasp’s nest in the front garden, near the foot of the two pollarded lime trees which stood one at each side of the gate. I think he must once have been stung, because he always avoided that tree. But he had no qualms about the other lime and sometimes in a fit of spring madness rushed up its trunk, which sloped slightly outwards. He levered himself higher, with his claws, spread eagled like a bat, unti1he reached the new shoots, eight or nine feet above the ground. Then he got into a terrible tangle, because they were too thick for him to turn round and find a safe way down. His distress calls summoned out someone - usually myself - with a ladder.

From the sight of bags in the hail Nero soon learned that a shopping expedition was near. In good weather he started out with us, but instead of walking along the pavement, he loved to play a game of hide and seek by racing ahead, darting in and out of the front gardens of the other houses. Dodging under the fences and hurdling over the low hedges, or peering out from the gates to see where we were, he reached the corner of the road first, and waited there. He wanted to come further, but as it was not safe nearer the High Street, we sent him back. On our return, he was waiting to greet us on the window sill. This place served as Nero's listening post, after we had our first car in 1966. It was an Austin 1100, then the only one of its kind in the road. He soon began to recognise the note of its engine, even as it changed gear at the end of the road and came round the corner up the slope. Though he was then rather frightened of cars, this sound always brought him down from the window sill to the front gate, where he waited to greet the driver.

By the time Nero was five or six, he was completely secure in the life of his family. He had his routine and his needs were simple. Whether he wished to go out or to be let in, he always gave an endearing chirrup of gratitude. If for some reason he felt neglected, he raised his voice and it was not usually very difficult to find out what he wanted. In the winter, he did not go out a great deal and gave us his company indoors. In the summer, too, if we were out, he was with us, under a deck chair or in the shade of a tree. For the family holiday, in August, he had to be left behind, but we always arranged a reliable rota of friends or neighbours to come in and feed him. So that he could go in and out at will, we left the kitchen window open a few inches at the bottom, secured above by acorn stops - a risk which now would be almost unthinkable. We always gave Nero the run of the house; those who fed him said that if they had to search, he was nearly always to be found on one of the beds. His joy when we all came home was most touching and for the first few days he hardly left our side.

Autumn

In the spring of 1974 Nero was well into his twelfth year, a serene and dignified animal, majestic in appearance and set in the ways he had chosen as an essential member of the household. But this was all about to change. For as our sons had both left home a, it was impracticable for two people no longer young to stay in a large, unconvertible house, with all that it entailed. We therefore decided to move, not far away, to a flat which comprised the whole of the top floor of a tall, Victorian house in East Heath Road.. It was sad to deprive Nero of his garden, but there were compensations.

The flat had central heating, which had been lacking in the house. It gave him great comfort, especially in the kitchen which had the radiator fitted along a cushioned bench. There was a large balcony where he could sit and sun himself in the mornings, watching the traffic far below. In the afternoons, he moved round to the south-facing windows through which the sun shone till late in the day. What fascinated Nero more than anything was the birds. The tops of many trees grew quite near the house, but did not come above the windows. So he could look down on the birds as they flew round and perched., only a few feet away from him. When they came nearer and settled on the lower slopes of the roof, he chattered with excitement, making a noise rather like a little monkey. Birds at this level were much more interesting than those on the ground in his earlier days. From the open kitchen window, he never tired of watching the comings and goings of two pairs of magpies which lived in the great plane trees and oaks just above the Vale of Health.

The more Nero sat in the sun, the more attention he paid to his person. He had always been a fastidious oat, who took great pride in his coat. Now he washed incessantly, and to minimise the danger of fur-balls, I groomed him more often. Though he liked this attention and purred contentedly at the feel of the comb and brush, I always had to be careful not to trespass on his more tender parts. He warned me by a squawk, or a playful bite. But from this time onwards, the physical trust between us grew, and at last he began to sit on my lap.

Even in the flat, he still kept up his love of hiding. The variety of places was smaller than in the house, but he used them fully. There were a big fitted wardrobe and a linen cupboard with sliding doors and a curious extension over the stairs, built to serve as a bar, with deep shelves which we used for general storage. It was quite extraordinary how he kept up his talent for self-concealment, with obvious enjoyment.

During our second year in the flat I retired, and spent more time at home. I think Nero appreciated my presence, for he was always with me, on my desk, in the nearest empty chair, or by my side at meal time. He had by now learned to take delicately, sitting up, any small pieces of meat that I offered him. He never snatched, or brought his teeth too near my fingers, but always gave me a grateful lick after he had the last piece. Even as he grew old, he never took kindness for granted.

In the summer of 1977, circumstances dictated a removal from the flat, and Hampstead, to a small house, with a compact, sunny garden, in between East Finchley and Muswell Hill. The removal was fraught by a last moment muddle of dates in the completion, which compelled us to store everything for a fortnight, and go into a flat in Hampstead which some friends kindly offered us during their own absence on holiday. Nero came too, and positively enjoyed the experience because the flat was on the ground floor and set in gardens, which he quickly explored. On an early outing, he met an innocent neighboring cat and uttered a menacing howl, which was enough to send him up the nearest tree. Obviously Nero's feeling for territorial rights had not deserted him. He was then nearly fifteen. [See pictures below of Nero lying in sunshine of the garden in East Finchley.]

 

Nero quickly adapted to the new house, which was the fourth of a terrace of six, with the benefit that the back of it had a clear view up all the gardens of the houses in a side road. Our own garden had a pleasant square of grass separated on one side from the flower beds by a red-brick path, which was reached by three steps up from a conservatory floor. All the beds were well stocked with roses and shrubs, which gave Nero ample shade when he found the sun too hot. The two fences differed in height, the right—hand one being over five feet, while that on the left was barely four, because of a slope in the road.

The back fence was surmounted by a trellis for climbing roses, and its continuity was broken by a gate, fitted with a strong spring, which led into a driftway. Nero inspected all these fences, and decided not to try to jump. In that sunny autumn of 1977 Nero spent a lot of time in the garden, taking in new sights and sounds. Here there were great birds such as he had never seen before - the rooks which lived in Highgate Woods and in the grassy expanse of the adjacent reservoir.

The rooks were always flying over to perch and squabble in the plane trees that overlooked our garden or on the TV aerials of the houses round. Here they performed their ritual bobbings and bowings of their courtship and then swooped off so that the metallic strips shook and clattered when they took off.

All this Nero watched every day, making excited little squeals when the birds flew cawing in procession above him. He was equally excited by the squirrels which scuttled down from the plane trees and thick hedges, jumped across the driftway on to our trellis. Rather oddly, there had been no squirrels in the garden at Rudall Crescent and now their regular comings and goings made Nero chatter anew with excitement.

Another novelty was ants. At the edge of the grass by the brick path, there were several nests, from which the ants swarmed in the warm weather. Nero did not know what to make of the scurrying mass, and unwisely tried to stop it with his paw. It took quite a time to comb out all the intruders. Thereafter, he watched but did not touch.

As to other cats, who used our garden in transit, there were not many of them. Regrettably, Nero remained his old unweloming self. But a strange visitation was near. My study window enjoyed a view right up the gardens of the houses in the side road. In several of them

stood sheds and on their roofs I could see a number of cats sunning themselves. As far as I could make out through the tangle of the hedge one of them, a grey cat, was larger than the others. He used several sheds, for his resting place, and I never found out which house owned him. One afternoon, I was sitting in the garden and Nero was asleep in the shade near the steps. I heard a scrabbling noise outside the gate and a large grey cat appeared on top of it. He jumped down and came towards me. It was the animal I had seen at a distance. He was a tom, with a huge head, a broad chest and rather a short tail. He sat beside me and purred as he let me stroke him. Then Nero woke up, came out of the shade and moved towards us. A few paces off, he stopped and crouched. 'Now', I thought, ‘there'll be -trouble'.

But a most astonishing thing happened. The grey cat turned round, facing Nero and sat down. Neither of them made a sound. Then Nero moved nearer, and uttered little chirrups of welcome and the other cat replied. Their noses almost touched. There was no fear or animosity on either side. If Nero recognised a stronger animal than himself, why did he not back away? The grey torn was years younger, and could have overwhelmed an old cat easily. Why did he not do so? I got them each a saucer of milk and they drank side by side. Then they lay down and went to sleep in the sun. The grey cat returned regularly, and they were always very glad to meet, whether there was milk or not. Nero had found a friend. We never discovered his name, so we simply called him 'Grey Tom'.

One of the things which Nero appreciated that winter was the central heating. As in the flat, his favourite place was in the kitchen, on the lower shelf of a serving trolley which stood in front of a radiator. Here he was away from any draught, and a cushion added to his comfort. Though he was in his sixteenth year, he still asked for his daily walks, and rather oddly went out at the front of the house, where the traffic seemed hardly to concern him, as much as at the back. But in wet weather he naturally got a lot of mud on his feet and though be allowed me to dry them, not all of it would come off. There was a small residue that hardened in between his pads and now defied his efforts to remove it. So he let me do this after I had groomed him.

I felt that the last physical barrier between us was now down, since hitherto the lower parts of his legs had been sacrosanct, his paws being one of the most sensitive parts of his body. He gave a little rumble of content as he spread the pads wide for my investigation, a sign of his complete trust. He enjoyed more physical contact in other ways. If I was reclining in an easy chair, he liked to jump up and stretch out full length with his paws extended on to my shoulder.

The Traveller

In 1966 I had the good fortune to acquire a four-roomed cottage in Southwold, on the Suffolk coast. In most years we spent a fortnight there in June and another in September. As I mentioned earlier, it had not been difficult to arrange for Nero to be cared for during any time when we were away, right up to the end of our years in the flat. But now the pattern had changed and Nero was older. We felt unhappy at the idea of leaving him with new neighbours, however kind, whom we did not really know, and we feared he might pine. So we had to take him with us. But as he had only been in a car twice in his life - over the short distances of our two moves - and did not seem to like it at all, he needed more experience of it. For by the most direct route Southwold is some 115 miles from north London, a journey of a good three and a half hours, including breaks, through heavy traffic for the first sixty miles or so.

Our car was a three-door hatchback, with ample space for luggage when the back seat was folded. down. Nero hated baskets and was always miserable in them. So we thought that the best place for him might be on the flat back space, on a cushion with coats and bags round him for his comfort and protection. We had noticed other cats travelling like this, but obviously some short trial runs were essential. From the quiet roads in our neighbourhood we graduated, so to speak, to the main roads where there was more traffic. Nero seemed to be crouching on the flat space, if not at ease at least without obvious discomfort. We were on our third outing when I looked round as we stopped at traffic lights, and he was not there. Then I glanced down, and there he was, perched in between the two front seats, on the raised transmission shaft. We drew into the kerb as soon as possible and stopped. All he wanted was to come and sit on my lap where he curled up contentedly - another touching show of his trust and confidence.

I bought a small padded collar and a lead, so that I could control in case he became restless, but on one or two more excursions he remained quite quiet. On the morning of our journey, we left Nero upstairs while we loaded the car. Then I brought him clown, got in with him, fastened my seat belt and made him comfortable. As we made our way northwards to the Al, he settled down and dozed with his head resting on my arm. He was quite oblivious of the roar and vibration of the lorries as we passed them, nor was he in the least worried when we had our two short breaks, for coffee and a snack lunch and left him in the well at the front with some fish paste in a saucer. We thought it unwise to give him any-thing more solid, in case the motion of the car upset him. Much of this may perhaps seem over anxious to anyone who has taken a oat regularly on long journeys from its early years. But to us, with a sensitive, aging pet in alien surroundings, it was a great relief that our plan for his comfort had not failed and that he arrived safely in Southwold, quite ready to explore his temporary house.

The cottage faces south in an enclosed courtyard, some 30 feet square, at the back of a large late Victorian house, to which originally it served as a store of some kind. The only access is by a tunnel at the side of the large house, which forms the eastern boundary. On the south is the low, flat-roofed side of the next house, and on the west is a wall about 10 feet high, with a flower bed along most of its length. Up this wall there is a stout trellis for climbing plants. Across the road is the towering lighthouse.

Nero was as safe in this courtyard as he could be anywhere, and he was soon sniffing round the walls and the tubs of flowers that were dotted about. After a drink of milk in the kitchen, he examined the sitting room, where there were three armchairs. Two I had bought locally in 1966 but the third was the small red Parker-Knoll, from my study in Rudall Crescent, which we had taken to Southwold early in 1967. Nero sniffed at all three chairs and paused in front of the red one which he had not seen for eleven years. He jumped up into it, settled down for a wash and then went to sleep. He showed no interest in any other chair during this - or any subsequent - visit to the cottage. Such was his power of association.

His other favourite place was the open window upstairs where he could sit in the sun on the end of a bed. At this level he had a fine view of the gulls, herring and black-backed, as they wheeled endlessly screaming and chasing each other over the pantiled roofs and round the chimneys. When several of them settled and continued their raucous squabbles on the flat roof opposite, Nero lashed his tail and growled as if in a frenzy; never before had he seen and heard such large birds making such a to do at close quarters.

During this first visit there was only one flicker of excitement. A few doors up the road there lived. Dougal, a young tawny oat whom I had known for some time. He was very athletic and notorious for climbing on the roofs of the little houses and cottages in our vicinity. Being a friendly creature, he used occasionally to drop (literally) into our courtyard for a saucer of milk. We were having tea there one sunny afternoon, and Nero was dozing in the shade behind one of the deck chairs.

Dougal appeared on top of the west wall and seeing us having tea jumped down on to the flower bed to join us. He had not seen Nero, but Nero heard the noise, woke up and spotted the intruder. He came out from behind the deck chair and lumbered towards the flower bed with an unwelcoming howl and a bristling tail. Poor Dougal had probably never seen anything like it and fled, clawing his way up the trellis. I have never seen a cat climb ten feet so quickly. In disliking his own kind wherever he was, Nero was at least true to himself.

Now, as on all his visits to Southwold, one of his great pleasures was the fish which we bought for him at the harbor. As it had only been out of the sea for a few hours, he found it vastly more tasty than London fish, which had been refrigerated for several weeks. Usually we got him whiting, but as a special treat for his 'birthday', in early September, a dab or a plaice. The last time Nero came with us to Southwold was in September 1979, when he turned seventeen. He travelled serenely, and enjoyed every moment of his stay. But he was getting old.

Envoi

Cats, like human beings, age in different ways. Sometimes their coat becomes dull and ragged, their eyes seem to shrink and their faculties deteriorate. If they are black, small patches of grey appear here and there. Patches had begun to appear some time ago on Nero's paws and flecks of grey marked his muzzle, which lost a little of its velvety softness. The fine fur at the edge of his ears became a little more sparse and from time to time he shed his claws, for much of their strength and sharpness had gone. From my chair he now jumped down cautiously and found the rather steep tread of the stairs difficult to manage. This, and some awkwardness in other movements, suggested that he had rheumatism in his front legs. But his sight and hearing were unimpaired, his teeth were excellent and his coat thick and glossy. Apart from a very slight flabbiness under his belly, his skin was taut and firm.

In that autumn Nero spent many hours in the garden, lying contentedly in the sun. At teatime he had his milk with us and welcomed 'grey Tom' whenever he came over the fence. It was indeed an Indian summer. He craved affection and gave his total devotion in return. As I groomed him he licked my hand and purred, increasingly grateful for whatever I did. If he was sitting on the sofa with either of us, he stretched his paws over an arm or leg as if to express his appreciation of being close.

Besides dependence, another change began to show itself. Nero had never been a cat who hesitated to make his wants known, but he did so by movement or posture, and if he used his voice, he generally kept it down. Nor was he usually in a great hurry. But now he became imperious, impatient and vociferous. If he were asleep upstairs, he came out on to the landing and summoned us with an extraordinary hoarse, scolding shriek. (If this coincided with someone being on the telephone, the caller often asked if we had a grand-child in the house.) It meant that he wanted something - food, drink, a walk, company, or just comfort. I had to go upstairs, carry him down and find out from his movements what he needed. The central heating went off at about ten, and if he happened then to be near his radiator in the kitchen, he let us know promptly that he was feeling cold.

More serious than such eccentricities was the worsening of something we had noticed at Southwold. There, in September, be had occasionally had an attack of vomiting just after his breakfast. Now, in mid-November, this weakness increased, though it was confined to the morning and did not affect his appetite later in the day. The vet said it might be due to hairballs and gave us some pills: having examined Nero, he said his heart and lungs were excellent and his coat quite remarkable for his age.

For a few weeks, the cat seemed to improve and at Christmas enjoyed seasonal food and company. But on the clay after Boxing Day, his condition deteriorated and his behaviour became very strange. He began to refuse nearly all food and drink: he could not be tempted to eat more than a tiny morsel of any-thing. The weather became cold, but by day it was sunny and he liked to go upstairs to the bedroom to get the warmth. At night, I wrapped him in a blanket and put him on his favourite chair in the sitting room. Whenever I went down to him, with a torch he was still sitting there, not curled up but crouching and looking straight ahead with his huge, luminous, unblinking eyes. He gave a little chirrup of welcome and licked my hand. But he did not complain at night, still knowing, perhaps, that darkness was the time for quiet.

In the daytime he slept on and off but more often wandered about miaouwing restlessly. When he stopped still, his tail twitched uneasily and he gave little jerky movements of his head, gulping and moistening his lips with his tongue, as if trying to clear his mouth of the bad taste that-1 noticed on his breath. For such a fastidious animal, it must have been most offensive. He let me groom him and stretched out relaxed, but he did not purr. In his restlessness, he was continually asking to go out and one evening he did something most extraordinary. It was cold, clamp and windy and the front door had blown ajar unnoticed. When I looked for Nero, I realised he had gone out. For a long time, I searched with a strong torch in all the front gardens up and down the road but there was no sign of him, and he did not answer my calls. I could not believe he had gone out to die, like Wooster. I came in for a rest and went into the kitchen about half an hour later.

There he was, sitting on the garden path, asking to come in. As ours was the fourth house in the terrace, Nero must have journied, in the dark and wet, right round to the back, either by way of the driftway at the left of the terrace - which ended one house on from ours - or through three gardens at the right. As neither our fence nor our neighbour's had any holes, be must have jumped nearly five feet over our back gate. It was set too close to the ground for him to crawl under. (My wife later told me that she realised Nero must have done the same thing one afternoon a day or so before, when I was out. Finding him in the back garden, she could not believe he had come right round, so she thought she could not have let him out in the front and supposed that he had gone out through the open back door, which she had then closed.)

The next day was Saturday: he went out at the back and. sat looking at the left hand fence (some four feet high.) I saw him sit with great concentration, and then bracing his body he sprang, clutching at the arris rail with his feeble claws. He heaved himself up, wobbling, and flopped down into our neighbour's garden. He made no attempt to move away, but let me go in and pick him up. On Sunday, he did exactly the same thing: there seemed no point in trying to stop him. For surely in his disturbed state, he must have been possessed by a sudden surge of his former will and strength, some recollection of the routine he had as a young cat in Rudall Crescent to leap and climb over the fences when he went 'round the house'. Was this renewed jumping a final defiance of his age and weakness - an assertion of will and instinct over his frailty?

That evening, compared with a few days before, he seemed in great distress. As he sat on my lap from time to time, with his head facing me, he looked gaunt and his eyes blazed out of a shrunken skull. He had a calm night and was grateful when I went down to him and adjusted his blanket at about two o'clock in the morning. After breakfast I telephoned the vet and described the symptoms. He came just after tea, with a lady assistant.

We carried Nero into the kitchen and put him on the table in the window, where the lady sat down and held him crouched like a sphinx. She caressed him gently as her partner asked a few questions. Nero never tried to move, for he had instinctively transferred to the kind hands of a stranger the same complete trust which he had long since reposed in us.

The vet took out of his 'bag a pair of broad scissors with blunt, upward-curving tips and out away a small patch of fur on the right front leg, so that the white skin was exposed. Explaining that he needed a blood sample for testing, he inserted a hypodermic syringe and drew in the sample so deftly that Nero's only reaction was a slight jerk of the head. The short test revealed that the old cat had no kidney function left: within a few days he would be in a coma. A painless injection of strong anaesthetic fluid would spare him great and prolonged misery. So we agreed.

Another deft snip of the scissors bared a small square of skin on Nero's left leg. Hardly had the needle entered than he slipped on to his side, peacefully and without a sound and lay stretched out unruffled as if he were welcoming the sun in the garden. He had kept his innate dignity to the end.

Earlier in the day after speaking to the vet, I had found a small box and a piece of tapestry discarded from a length we had used to cover a fire screen. It was patterned in purple, a colour which I felt was fitting for a cat of Nero's name and character. We laid his body curled up in the box and covered him with the tapestry. Then they carried him out in his purple shroud to their car. It was the seventh of January 1980. Only after his death did we gradually come to realise how much his life had enriched ours. Pax cineribus.

                                                ***********************

In the spring 'grey Tom' came over the fence at intervals and sat down to wait for his friend. But by the summer he seemed to know it was in vain and came no more.