Oscar's 2,000 Mile Purr-fect Trip says the heading in the local paper. Or something like that. At least once every year. In every local paper. It's a regular, like “Row Over Civic Site” or “Storm As Schools Probe Looms”.
So many stories like this have turned up that researchers from the Campaign for Real Cats have been, well, researching. The initial suspicion was that here was a hitherto unknown breed of Real cat, possibly a sideshoot of the now almost extinct Railway cat. It'd be nice to think that there was today an Airline cat, although perhaps not, because warming though the idea is, the thought is bound to occur to you at 30,000 feet that it's probably got a favourite sleeping area somewhere on the plane and it is possibly somewhere in the wiring. Or perhaps there is now a Lorry cat undreamed of by T. S. Eliot. Felis Freubaf, an international creature, loitering in the cabs of the world and growing fat on Yorkie Bars. Or it could be further proof of the Schrodinger theory, since from a quantum point of view distance cannot be said to exist and all this apparent space between things is just the result of random fluctuations in the matter matrix and shouldn't be taken seriously.
The astonishing truth has not been suspected, possibly because not many people in this country have more than one local paper. But, from hundreds of cuttings sent in by Campaign members, it finally emerged.
They're all the same cat. Not the same type of cat. The same cat.
It's a smallish black and white tom. Never mind about the variety of names, which are only of significance to humans, although interestingly the name Oscar does seem to crop up rather a lot. Careful analysis of dozens of pictures of the Travelling cat blinking in the flashlight's glare have proved it.
It appeared to do a minimum of 15,000 miles last year, much of it in car engine compartments, where only its piteous mewling alerts the driver when he stops off for a coffee. Confirmation will not be achieved until Oscar has been tracked down by researchers armed with a truckload of painful equipment, but the current, rather interesting, theory is that what initially appears to be this piteous mewling is in fact a stream of directions on the lines of “left here I said left, left you twerp, all right, keep going until we get to the trading estate and then you can pick up the A370…”
Oscar is, in fact, trying to get somewhere.
The process is a bit hit and miss, and possibly he has underestimated the size of the country and the number of vehicles in it, but he's keeping at it. Certainly, in the best tradition of Real cats everywhere, he's doing anything rather than get out and walk.
Incidentally, some recent press cuttings suggest that Oscar has given birth to kittens in a car engine compartment. This makes a tiny hole in part of the theory—nothing that a reasonable grant couldn't plug—but leads to the intriguing thought that perhaps there will be a new race of Travelling cats after all. And all growing up believing that home is something that you can only get to by climbing inside noisy tin things that move at 70 mph.
Perhaps lemmings started out like this.
In the course of this work one researcher did turn up a fascinating anecdote about St Eric, the 4th-century Bishop of Smyrna, believed by many to be the true patron saint of Real cats. While on his way to deliver an epistle he is said to have tripped over a cat and shouted, “In faith, I wysh that Damned Mogge wode Goe Awae and Never Come Backe!” It was a small black and white tom, according to contemporary accounts.
This type has been around since the Sixties at least. You may recall stories about cats fed on sweetcorn and avocados (no, really; a local pet shop sells vegetarian dog food). And, indeed, if the rest of the household is on the path of inner wholeness it rather lets the whole holistic business down to have tins of minced innards in the fridge.
We had vegan4 friends who handled the cat food tin in the same way that people at Sellafield handle something that's started to tick. In the end, they worked out a vegetarian diet with the occasional treat of fish. Their cat was a young Siamese. It thrived on the stuff. Of course it did. It used to go out and hang around the organic goat shed, and ate more rats and mice than its owners had hot dinners, which wasn't hard. But it was very understanding about it, and never let them know. We occasionally saw it trotting over the garden with something fluffy in its mouth, and it used to give us looks of conspiratorial embarrassment, like a Methodist minister caught enjoying a pint.
In fact cats are naturally Green animals. After alclass="underline"
a) No cats have ever used aerosol sprays. Sprays, maybe, but not aerosol ones. The ozone layer is perfectly safe from cats.
b) Cats don't hunt seals. They would if they knew what they were and where to find them. but they don't, so that's all right.
c) The same with whales. People might have fed whales to cats, but the cats didn't know. They'd have been just as happy with minced harpooner.
d) Antarctica? Cats are quite happy to leave it alone.
Of course, they have their negative points:
a) All cats insist on wearing real fur coats…
Naming cats
All cats, we know, have several names. T. S. Eliot came nowhere near to exhausting the list, though. A perfectly ordinary cat is likely to be given different names for when:
a) you tread on it
b) it's the only animal apparently able to help you in your enquiries as to the mysterious damp patch on the carpet and the distressing pungency around the place
c) your offspring is giving it a third degree cuddle
d) it climbed up the loft ladder Because it Was There and then, for some reason, decided to skulk right at the back of all the old boxes, carpets, derelict Barbie houses, etc, and won't be coaxed out, and then when you finally drag it out by the scruff of its neck it scratches your arm in a friendly way and takes a beautiful leap which drops it through the open hatchway and onto the stepladder, which then falls over, leaving you poised above a deep stairwell on a winter's afternoon while the rest of the family are out.5
It's an interesting fact that fewer than 17% of Real cats end their lives with the same name they started with. Much family effort goes into selecting one at the start (“She looks like a Winifred to me”), and then as the years roll by it suddenly finds itself being called Meepo or Ratbag.
4. If you meet a vegan it's bad form to give them the famous four-fingered V sign and say “Live long and prosper”. That's for vulcans. Vegans are the ones with the paler complexions who can't disable people by touching them gently on the neck.
5. All right, not perhaps a name you'd use every, day, but best to have one ready, just in case, because when you're leaning against the freezing cold water tank trying to staunch the blood with a priceless antique copy of