Jack and Meg helped me recover.
It was like importing a comedy
double act into the house
awful. Partly
because we had
stolen him and partly
because I was afraid
that this girl
would take her cat
back. We kept Tiggs.
The girl explained that
Smudge was Tiggs’s aunt from
next door. I went round and
explained to the people there
that we had stolen Smudge.
They were Arsenal supporters
and said it was OK. I dread to
think what they would have said
if they had been Spurs.
In a moment that would take
too long to explain, I later found
myself standing next to the real
Alan “Smudger” Smith posing
for a wedding photo. As we
rehearsed our smiles, I said
out of the corner of my mouth:
“We named our cat after you.”
He replied:“Is it nippy?” I said:
“Not really.” He was
disappointed. He then said:
“I’ve heard of someone namingCome back in.” “No, you come
out and join me here.” I said to
Emma: “Why do they lick each
other?” She said: “Because
they’re brothers.” I said: “I don’t
lick my brother.”
In 2017 Benny died in the
utility room. Tony went into
mourning. He roamed round
the house on his own, looking
into rooms, giving out a low
throaty moan. In the end he
couldn’t stand it any more and
gave up. Emma couldn’t stand
it either. She put their ashes
into two cat-shaped, ginger-
coloured urns in the kitchen.went off and came back with
two. Two black and white
kittens. I stroked them as much
as I could. One got the point
straight away but the other one
was a scaredy cat. I said he could
be called Shpilkes. It means
“a nervy feeling” in Yiddish.
You have shpilkes before you
have to make a speech. The vet
said that one of them was a boy
and the other was a girl. It was
obvious: they were the White
Stripes, Jack and Meg.
They have helped me recover.
It was like importing a comedy
double act into the house and
laughter is a great relief from
worry. I love it that they
like me to run the side of
my thumb up their noses.
It’s much better than
thinking about nearly
dying, even if they steal
poppadoms, hang
from the pull for
the window
blinds, chew my Crocs
and sit on my head. It’s Jack
who has shpilkes, while Meg
agrees with me that I’m her
mother. Alvin, the neighbour’s
cat, sits on the window sill
and complains that it all proves
we didn’t love him anyway.
I read that many of us
infantilise cats, freezing their
ages at about three months.
They then expect us to do what
cat mothers do, grooming them
and nuzzling them. Strictly
speaking, it’s not me who is
their mother, it’s my hands.
They even sit on my lap
hunting for my hands, and then
head-butt them, in order to get
them to do what they’re
supposed to do.
I oblige. Of course nMany Different Kinds of Love:
A Story of Life, Death and the
NHS by Michael Rosen is
published by Penguin at £9.99beds by putting our knees up.
He was called Sherpa. Another
one had markings on his side,
like a division sign. We called it
Share. They went to other
people. We kept one. My
parents had some joke about a
cockroach that writes poems
and talks to a cat in New York,
involving characters called
Archy and Mehitabel. “Let’s call
it Archy,” they said.
Simpkin got a lump on his
back and started smelling of
something other than fish,
so Mum took her off and we
didn’t see her again. Archy was
friendly and didn’t see demons.
Years later I read Archy and
Mehitabel. I thought it was
brilliant and tried to read it to
people in my very bad New
York accent. Not only did they
not want me to, but I found out
that it’s Mehitabel who’s the
cat and Archy is the cockroach.
I’ve never figured out whether
it was my parents’ mistake or
their joke. By the way,
Mehitabel is a cat of easy virtue.
In my forties I discovered it’s
quite easy to kidnap a cat. Or
two. Especially if you have
children. Confession time: the
old cat died. That was Mikki. My
four-year-old once said of her:
“Does Mikki know she’s a cat?”
I couldn’t answer that one. The
children were sad Mikki had
died. Then a cat turned up in the
garden. My stepdaughter said
that this cat was sad and wanted
to be stroked. She stroked it and
gave it milk. She called it Tiggs.
He stayed. Full-time. For ever.
Then another cat turned up and
she said this cat was sad too and
wanted to be stroked. She
stroked it and gave it milk. She
stayed. Full-time. For ever. The
other children said that we
should name her after
the Arsenal striker Alan
Smith — “Smudge”.
One of the children
said that Smudge had a
Hitler moustache and
this put me off her but
my stepdaughter
adored her. I adored
Tiggs. A couple of
years later my
stepdaughter struck
up a friendship with
the girl down the
road. She came
over and saw
Tiggs and said:
“That’s Billy.” I felttheir goldfish after me but
never a cat.” I felt proud to have
shared that moment with one
of Arsenal’s greats.
Years later, after a rough time
in my life, two more cats
arrived. This was in 2000. They
were a dowry resulting from a
workplace meeting at the BBC.
It worked out like this: I married
Emma, a radio
producer, and two
ginger brothers who
were named after
gangsters, Tony
Soprano and Benny
Blanco from the Bronx.
They were inseparable:
eating together, roaming
round the house
together, grooming
each other and sleeping
together. When one
went out, the other
would talk to him
through the patio doors:
“Why are you out there?Two old gangsters have never
had such decent memorials.
I put my foot down and said
that as it was always me who got
up first and it was always me
who emptied the litter tray, that
was quite enough cat poo for a
lifetime. No more cats.
Then I got ill with Covid.
I was in ICU for 47 days or so,
40 of which I was in a coma. It
was three months in all before
I got home. I was very confused
and weak. A neighbour’s cat
(called Alvin) paid visits and
walked round the house
complaining if his favourite
chair was occupied. He seemed
to me to be pretty aristocratic,
so I was worried that if we fed
him, we would end up repeating
the Tiggs-Smudge crime but
my form of long Covid was to
worry about everything anyway.
Emma and our daughter Elsie
said that having a cat would be
DAVE STELFOX, GETTY IMAGES helpful for my recovery. They