Sophie doesn’t do well in the heat and is feeling sorry for herself and a bit grumpy. So is the cat. It brings back memories.
Writing this week has been taking place between the hours of 5.30 and 8.00am. After that it is just too damn hot in London. During working hours I find I am either suffering or snoozing involuntarily. The head has actually hit the desk at least once a day.
If I sit down for a refreshing glass of cool, cool water, straight from the fridge, I’m quite likely to fall asleep before I start.
Which, of course, means that I’ve not been sleeping properly during the dark and steamy nights. And oh boy, have they been steamy. My room runs the width of my house so I can have two windows open, allowing a refreshing breeze to flow through. At least theoretically.
No breeze has obliged, so far.
Result: I get up sleep-deprived and then try to apply myself to writing.
It comes out over-cooked and distinctly stodgy. This does not surprise me. It adds to the accumulated sum of unwellbeing. General grumpiness ensues.
So then I look at the Met Office weather forecast and see that tomorrow will be cooler. Lovely. Except that was what they said yesterday. And it isn’t. At least, It doesn’t feel like it. My thermometer agrees with me.
So does my cat, Perdita.
Cat Communicator
As I’ve had occasion to remark on this blog before, Perdita, though private to the point of secrecy and not generally a pushy person, has absolutely no trouble with making herself understood. She has a way of sitting right in front of where you’re going and giving you the Death Stare.
It works.
She has been doing that a lot in this weather, for which she clearly blames me. I cannot blame her. She is actually in a rather worse way than I am.
She is very, very furry and highly sensitive. No, make that paranoid. She hears the front door bell, knows that means a stranger might well enter the house, and dashes for her safe place. That is the cupboard under the stairs, right at the back, whence no one could possibly drag her out.
In this temperature, of course, it is also an oven.
She wants me to turn the heat down. “I would if I could,” I tell her.
But that is not good enough. She also has a Reproachful Reminders program. That means she prowls in circles behind my chair as I sit at the desk and Yowls at me from alternating sides.
I should explain that my house, most fortunately, has a half-basement. It is blessedly cooler than the rest of the house. Positively pleasant, indeed, if you keep calm, sit fairly still and keep sipping water.
Prowling and yowling is really counter-productive.
But can I convince Perdita of that?
Can I fly to the moon?
Cat on A Hot Night
Worst of all is the night time ritual. Before the heatwave she had started to spend a couple of hours in my room at night. I don’t object. She will announce herself, snuggle for a polite interval, then retire to the end of the bed for the rest of the night.
But, as I say, I currently have lots of windows open. I don’t want Perdita, a timid house cat and rather dim, to go wandering out over strange rooftops in pursuit of the wind through her floof. So I’ve been closing my bedroom door at night.
Around 2.30, she tries to tunnel in.
I hear her. Sympathise. I get up. Close the relevant exits, or reduce the air access so that she can’t squeeze out.
And let her in.
She prowls and yowls. I suggest she leave. She resists.
I get up, wash out my soap dish. Pour her some water from the bottle I have brought upstairs with me. It is no longer cool. We sit side by side on the end of the bed. Both topping up our water table.
We are disappointed with each other but putting a brave face on it.
The Cat Before Last
At this stage, you are probably saying to yourself what an idiot! Why didn’t I let the poor cat come into my room and enjoy whatever air there was coming through the open windows?
Well, you see. I’ve done that before. It did not turn out well.
My friends know that I have lived with a number of cats, all very different characters, and adjusted to their foibles with ease. But until the cat before last, they were all dustbin moggies. James Bond was a bon viveur and streetwise to his whiskers’ ends. Little Pickle, by contrast was a bundle of mischief who didn’t get out much but knew how to make herself comfortable – preferably in a gentleman’s discarded slippers. They were all basically pretty streetwise.
The cat before last was the first pedigree cat I’d ever had. He was a Maine Coon and gorgeous. Also, the runt of the litter, jumpy as a flea and a Panicker.
He was also a very good friend, who went through some very bad stuff for me. The Met Police broke into my house and kept me out of it for 4 days, after a shooting incident. I rescued Tom on the second day, but it did not help his panic reflex.
He had the biggest paws you’ve ever seen, a very wide turning circle, bags of personality and absolutely no judgement at all. Not even the most basic instinct for survival. And where he led, I followed perforce.
First Night with a Hot Cat
It was several years ago, another hot night. I had all my windows open, along with the door to my small balcony. Tom was hot and restless. He wandered out onto the balcony. I didn’t think anything of it. He wasn’t a stay-at-home cat and he’d been round the block a few times. I reckoned if he went wandering, he would find his way home the way he went.
I went back to sleep.
At around 5.30 I woke up to the Yowl. Only it wasn’t coming from anywhere in the house. It was echoing queerly and sounded like it was broadcast from the Albert Hall. I should explain here that I live in a Victorian terrace that backs onto another Victorian terrace. The space between them forms an excellent echo chamber. He was going to wake the neighbourhood.
I shot out onto the balcony and looked round wildly. He was actually quite easy to spot. He had managed to maroon himself on the roof of the first floor extension to a neighbour’s house. Basically he had jumped out of an open window but wasn’t savvy or athletic enough to jump back. So he yelled for me. (This was standard.)
Writer to the Rescue
Most fortunately, it was a house to which I had the keys. The neighbour in question also had cats and when he went away I fed them. I was not entirely sure whether he was in residence at that particular moment. Yikes!
Still there was no alternative, not with the volume of Tom’s SOS. I tiptoed (no, I don’t know why, but I did) down the deserted street and let myself in. Stood and listened inside the front door. No sound. I slipped up the stairs to the half landing where the window onto the bathroom roof was wide open.
Tom was still staring reproachfully at my balcony and yowling his head off. He didn’t even turn when I hissed at him. He was actually about three feet below me.
I leaned as far out of the window as I dared and grabbed the only bit of him I could get, which was his tail. DId he turn round then ? No.
I hauled him in, hand over hand, like a fisherman at the nets, swearing (in a whisper) as I did so. When I got a better hold on him, I stuffed his stupid head under my armpit, mostly to shut him up, lowered my feet thankfully to the floor…
And ran.
Catastrophe Averted but…
DId I forgive him? Of course I did. He was a cat of very little brain and a dear sweet soul with only the best of intentions.
Did I forget? No, as you can see. Has it marked me? Well, I still cringe to think of what I would have said if my neighbour had been there and come out of his room to find me bottom up, three quarters out of his staircase window. I confessed afterwards and he was very nice about it.
But the possibilities for embarrassment were pretty much endless.
An editor once said to me that it would make an interesting meet cute for a novel. “Not one I could write,” I said, shuddering.
But if anyone else wants to give it a go, feel free.
Sophie
The picture you painted made me grin, Sophie, though I can see why it makes you shudder. Meet cute, not.
I also have fond memories of Tom Kyd who did, eventually, agree to talk to me though never for long. Perdita, on the other hand, is a completely unknown quantity. I’ve never seen so much as a hair of her hot and furry coat. One day, maybe? If I live that long…
Sorry about the feline brush-off, Joanna. Perdita’s a lot better than she was when I first brought her home. But I’m afraid it’s the broom cupboard every time she senses someone at the door. I do wonder whether she suffered a home invasion when before she came to me.
She hasn’t even got used to her lovely cat-sitter who provides food and water when I’m away and sends me a text whenever she sights Perdita — usually speeding away; occasionally hissing.
Makes me laugh. She is beautiful but not, I fear, the brightest of creatures. I will resign myself to never meeting her since I’m in your house a lot less often these days, and certainly less than your cat-sitter.