I've written about Perdy, probably the nicest dog I've ever known, with the exception of Rowan: today I thought I'd pay tribute to our nicest cat.
If I'd only ever known my aunt's horrible Burmese, who used to bite and scratch without warning or provocation, I'd never have considered getting one. But Pushka, who belonged to my friend Maureen, changed my mind. I had her granddaughter, Bastis, a chunky brown cat with attitude in spades, who came for walks with us and terrorised the dog. Amongst her numerous sons and (rather fewer) daughters, her third litter stands out. There were five of them: the blue boys Monet and Merlin: Suko, the intelligent, gentle chocolate girl: Mogwai (so called because of his weird ears), who was always a bit of a loser and lost his second fight with a car: and Frost.
Frost was the eldest, a big lilac boy with buckets of charisma. Like Perdy, he was always getting into trouble. As a kitten, he and Suko climbed to the very top of the tallest tree in the garden and had to be rescued. He tried to walk on the waterlilies on the pond, with inevitable consequences. He jumped onto the top of a half-empty bag of compost, thinking it was solid: the expression on his face when I peered down into the depths, seeing him covered in peat, was priceless. We used to joke about plant pots that were labelled 'frost-proof' - no, they weren't! And mention of 'widespread heavy frost' on the weather forecast always raised a smile, especially if he was widespread heavily on a lap at the time.
For fun, Maureen and I decided to show Frost and Suko (who had gone to be a companion to her great-granny Pushka). Suko was a wow in the cage - she played, she purred, she posed - but the judges didn't like her. Frost, by comparison, hid under the blanket but got stacks of rosettes. I entered him for three shows, he did really well in all of them, and qualified for the Supreme (the feline equivalent of Crufts). There, of course, he came up against serious show cats, and finished last in his class. The judge's comment was, 'A lovely-natured boy who needs time to mature.' To which my response was, 'If he matures much more we won't be able to lift him!' By that time he was a year old and weighed nearly a stone.
I should have hung a notice on his cage at the shows saying 'I'd much rather be out catching rabbits!' Frost, like all his family, was a notable hunter and preferred big game. He worked his way through the white doves which we'd inherited with the house, had a couple of racing pigeons in passing, and then decided to roam further afield in search of prey. We had a call from a farm half a mile away: 'Is that your big grey cat sitting on an old nest in our barn?' It was. He was presumably waiting for the birds to return, a trick he'd also tried (to no effect) with the doves' nest box. Then he turned his attention to rabbits, of which there were huge numbers down by the little branch line that ran to Melksham. Once I went down to the bridge over the railway and called him. To my astonishment, he answered from almost under my feet, in the grass beside the road. For an instant I feared he might have been run over, but he was fine: he had just made a cosy nest in the undergrowth, quite unfazed by the traffic passing a few inches away.
We moved from Broughton Gifford to our present house in July, 1991. About a fortnight before we were due to go, Frost went AWOL. I visited all his usual haunts, but there was no sign. In desperation I printed out a 'lost' notice and delivered it to all the houses within a two mile radius. A man called to say he'd seen him a few days previously, very early in the morning, down on the main road between Melksham and Holt: he'd thought it was some kind of fox in the dawn light. Then to my utter relief, there was a call from the chicken farm down on that same road, about a mile away from us. He'd been hanging round their outbuildings for some time. I went down and called him: no reply. But a couple of days later it was raining hard, and we tried again. Bingo! He emerged from the barn looking superb: heavyweight, muscular, fighting fit and absolutely covered in rabbit fleas. Thankfully we bundled him into the basket, thanked the farmer, and took him home. He wasn't allowed out again until we moved, and it took an hour or more to get the fleas off his ears and paws with a pair of tweezers. We'd had plenty of practice during his show career: I kept thinking of him as the subject of a Ralph Bateman cartoon. 'The cat ejected from the Supreme Show for having fleas!'
Frost quickly settled into his new home and never wandered off again. Probably he found ample prey close enough to hand: our chickens soon attracted rats, and he was kept busy earning his Iams. Once I opened the front door in the morning to collect the milk, and found a dead rat laid out on its back beside the bottles, stiff and stark: I often wonder what the milkman must have thought (funny kind of Christmas box!). He did catch the occasional rabbit, and my mother-in-law on one memorable occasion went up for a bath and found a pair of 'rabbit trousers' in the bathroom. I speculated that the local wildlife called him 'The Grey Death'. But to people he was gentleness itself. You could hold him in your arms on his back like a baby, and he had the loudest purr in the world. When they had a pet day at Hugh's nursery school, I took him along. Twenty small children sat down in a circle on the carpet, and Frost strolled round, quite at home, pleased to be stroked and patted. I can't remember him ever scratching or biting. He was the perfect all-rounder - a success on the show bench, a loving, laid-back family pet, and an efficient hunter of vermin. Everyone loved him, and he repaid our love with ample interest, over sixteen glorious years.
Eventually, of course, middle age turned to old age. Aged fourteen, he caught a liver complaint, probably from one of his rats, and was badly jaundiced: even his fur had a yellowish tinge, poor boy. He did recover, but he was never the same again. He caught his last prey the following year, climbing onto the ivy-clad roof of the old barn next door, and taking a succession of pigeon squabs out of their nests: easy pickings, and delicious! His last illness happened quickly, and he died at home in his sleep, before we could get him to the vet. Like all the cats, he was buried under one of the trees in the garden, and I made a pottery model of him to go on his grave, but it did not do justice to his looks, nor to his personality. All our cats are special, but our darling Frostle was the most special of all, and remembered with much love by all who knew him. This is the couplet I put at the end of his mother's obituary in the Burmese Cat Club News, but it will serve for his epitaph as well, and for all our cats:
'A kind hand and a warm fire
Is all the Heaven I desire'.
If I'd only ever known my aunt's horrible Burmese, who used to bite and scratch without warning or provocation, I'd never have considered getting one. But Pushka, who belonged to my friend Maureen, changed my mind. I had her granddaughter, Bastis, a chunky brown cat with attitude in spades, who came for walks with us and terrorised the dog. Amongst her numerous sons and (rather fewer) daughters, her third litter stands out. There were five of them: the blue boys Monet and Merlin: Suko, the intelligent, gentle chocolate girl: Mogwai (so called because of his weird ears), who was always a bit of a loser and lost his second fight with a car: and Frost.
Frost was the eldest, a big lilac boy with buckets of charisma. Like Perdy, he was always getting into trouble. As a kitten, he and Suko climbed to the very top of the tallest tree in the garden and had to be rescued. He tried to walk on the waterlilies on the pond, with inevitable consequences. He jumped onto the top of a half-empty bag of compost, thinking it was solid: the expression on his face when I peered down into the depths, seeing him covered in peat, was priceless. We used to joke about plant pots that were labelled 'frost-proof' - no, they weren't! And mention of 'widespread heavy frost' on the weather forecast always raised a smile, especially if he was widespread heavily on a lap at the time.
For fun, Maureen and I decided to show Frost and Suko (who had gone to be a companion to her great-granny Pushka). Suko was a wow in the cage - she played, she purred, she posed - but the judges didn't like her. Frost, by comparison, hid under the blanket but got stacks of rosettes. I entered him for three shows, he did really well in all of them, and qualified for the Supreme (the feline equivalent of Crufts). There, of course, he came up against serious show cats, and finished last in his class. The judge's comment was, 'A lovely-natured boy who needs time to mature.' To which my response was, 'If he matures much more we won't be able to lift him!' By that time he was a year old and weighed nearly a stone.
I should have hung a notice on his cage at the shows saying 'I'd much rather be out catching rabbits!' Frost, like all his family, was a notable hunter and preferred big game. He worked his way through the white doves which we'd inherited with the house, had a couple of racing pigeons in passing, and then decided to roam further afield in search of prey. We had a call from a farm half a mile away: 'Is that your big grey cat sitting on an old nest in our barn?' It was. He was presumably waiting for the birds to return, a trick he'd also tried (to no effect) with the doves' nest box. Then he turned his attention to rabbits, of which there were huge numbers down by the little branch line that ran to Melksham. Once I went down to the bridge over the railway and called him. To my astonishment, he answered from almost under my feet, in the grass beside the road. For an instant I feared he might have been run over, but he was fine: he had just made a cosy nest in the undergrowth, quite unfazed by the traffic passing a few inches away.
We moved from Broughton Gifford to our present house in July, 1991. About a fortnight before we were due to go, Frost went AWOL. I visited all his usual haunts, but there was no sign. In desperation I printed out a 'lost' notice and delivered it to all the houses within a two mile radius. A man called to say he'd seen him a few days previously, very early in the morning, down on the main road between Melksham and Holt: he'd thought it was some kind of fox in the dawn light. Then to my utter relief, there was a call from the chicken farm down on that same road, about a mile away from us. He'd been hanging round their outbuildings for some time. I went down and called him: no reply. But a couple of days later it was raining hard, and we tried again. Bingo! He emerged from the barn looking superb: heavyweight, muscular, fighting fit and absolutely covered in rabbit fleas. Thankfully we bundled him into the basket, thanked the farmer, and took him home. He wasn't allowed out again until we moved, and it took an hour or more to get the fleas off his ears and paws with a pair of tweezers. We'd had plenty of practice during his show career: I kept thinking of him as the subject of a Ralph Bateman cartoon. 'The cat ejected from the Supreme Show for having fleas!'
Frost quickly settled into his new home and never wandered off again. Probably he found ample prey close enough to hand: our chickens soon attracted rats, and he was kept busy earning his Iams. Once I opened the front door in the morning to collect the milk, and found a dead rat laid out on its back beside the bottles, stiff and stark: I often wonder what the milkman must have thought (funny kind of Christmas box!). He did catch the occasional rabbit, and my mother-in-law on one memorable occasion went up for a bath and found a pair of 'rabbit trousers' in the bathroom. I speculated that the local wildlife called him 'The Grey Death'. But to people he was gentleness itself. You could hold him in your arms on his back like a baby, and he had the loudest purr in the world. When they had a pet day at Hugh's nursery school, I took him along. Twenty small children sat down in a circle on the carpet, and Frost strolled round, quite at home, pleased to be stroked and patted. I can't remember him ever scratching or biting. He was the perfect all-rounder - a success on the show bench, a loving, laid-back family pet, and an efficient hunter of vermin. Everyone loved him, and he repaid our love with ample interest, over sixteen glorious years.
Eventually, of course, middle age turned to old age. Aged fourteen, he caught a liver complaint, probably from one of his rats, and was badly jaundiced: even his fur had a yellowish tinge, poor boy. He did recover, but he was never the same again. He caught his last prey the following year, climbing onto the ivy-clad roof of the old barn next door, and taking a succession of pigeon squabs out of their nests: easy pickings, and delicious! His last illness happened quickly, and he died at home in his sleep, before we could get him to the vet. Like all the cats, he was buried under one of the trees in the garden, and I made a pottery model of him to go on his grave, but it did not do justice to his looks, nor to his personality. All our cats are special, but our darling Frostle was the most special of all, and remembered with much love by all who knew him. This is the couplet I put at the end of his mother's obituary in the Burmese Cat Club News, but it will serve for his epitaph as well, and for all our cats:
'A kind hand and a warm fire
Is all the Heaven I desire'.
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