Glob-a-log

And so, it was that time again that all men good and true picked up their swords and cross-bows and went to (re)conquer the Holy Land – or more to the point: time for me to throw a few T-shirts in a bag and hop on a plane to Prague.

Every calendar year I spend at least three (sometimes four) months in that most majestic and beautiful of cities. I used to live there, many years ago – I met the girlfriend there – and, through an old friend, I still have two rooms in the Žižkov area that are mine whenever I want to come to Prague.

Prague has always been good to me. I like its relaxed attitude, its beautiful, old stones, its many parks and countless little bars and restaurants, its suicidal trams and cabs, its wonderful beer and incredibly beautiful women. The only drawback I could think of would be the millions of tourists that also flock to Prague but then, they stick mostly to the centre, so you hardly ever see that many of them anyway.

Of course, one of the most wonderful aspects of life in my Prague rooms is a complete absence of a certain animal. I pay my Dutch neighbour’s early teen daughter a minor king’s ransom to feed the bloody cat in my absence. She claims the job is even harder than it would be to baby-sit Calvin (of Calvin & Hobbes fame) and I know that that’s most likely true, so I pay her without complaining all that much. Any options other than killing the little pest would be much, much worse.

So, I suffered through the indignities of modern travel. Paying through the nose to get a ticket on the plane, with less free legroom that galley slaves enjoyed – after hanging around for almost two hours at Schiphol airport for security reasons. Then a rattling Prague bus, a boring underground journey and one tram stop later I was back home again.

To the right of me football stadium FK Viktoria Žižkov and one of this city’s many parks; to the left of me a pub with a very nice, enclosed back garden - what rested of the journey just a two minutes’ walk to my apartment, taking me past two other bars, three restaurants, one wine cellar and two small evening shops. I was back in Prague indeed.

On the third step of the four-step entry of the building where I lived sat something unspeakably vile. It was cleaning its nails and looked at me with an air of proprietorial disgust:

“What took you so bloody long?” it asked.

(To be continued.)

Due to circumstances beyond our control, there will be no entry in the diary today.

“Are you done yet?”

(Picture yourself a cat miming Queen’s We are the champions)

It started with posters – and it progressed with flyers. The message being:

Have you seen this cat?

In fact, it started in the car park of our local supermarket, in the early hours of a mundane Monday morn.

In the deepest secrecy a meeting was planned. We’re not talking an other international and ever-so-helpful conference about Iraq, nothing as easily concocted as an IRA or ETA meet would have been in de eighties – in fact, the whole thing was more complicated than explaining the rules of cricket to a gathering of mentally challenged & visually impaired gibbons.

We’re talking hush hush with a bloody vengeance – but it was done. A time and a place had been set.

“Will you just stop it?! I swear; you’re about as much use as a fat man in a crematorium”

(The cat dancing to the Rocky lll soundtrack, I’m afraid.)

‘We’ had promised not to shoot at them and keep things quiet. ‘They’ … Well, to use that stupid, well-worn but never really put to much use cliché: they came in peace.

Ah yes: they’d also sent some proof that on their arrival they would sort out some stuff for us – small matters as cold fusion, world peace, an end to hunger and most of human illnesses.

So, to avoid the world’s press and the world’s various other imbeciles, irritants and malcontents, the first meeting would take place while the early bird still had its curlers in, in the fore-mentioned car park.

They came, they landed, their cute little green leader started on a, no doubt, cute little green speech, when that bloody cat of mine appeared and abducted and then, as its personal you’re-ever-so-welcome message, dismembered the cute little green fellow right on the bonnet of a brightly red Mazda – in full view of the security camera, alas.

Have you seen this cat indeed…

“Will you stop that…??!!”

(The cat doing one of its Darth Vader imitations.)

So, nothing from me today. As they say: gotta run.

“Yeah… I will… Love you too…Bye now.”

“That was the girlfriend.” I said, putting down the phone.

The cat yawned.

“She sends her regards.”

The cat looked at me.

“Okay. She gave me a recipe for cat casserole.”

The cat yawned again. Then it started to wash itself. If more cars would do the same, maybe then I’d buy one. What’s more, most cars didn’t bite the hand that poured the petrol – unlike cats, or crocs.

Like the old Jewish Resistance Movement, I mused what the Romans – or in my specific case: my cat – had ever done for us. Unlike the hapless Jewish Resistance Movement I found it hard to come up with anything, except abuse, hairballs and vomit with interesting bits in it.

Why do people take cats?

It’s not as if they are highly desirable assets. People steal cars, houses, jewelry, bikes, library books, babies and, God help us, even mobile phones. I couldn’t remember ever having read anything about people getting angry about the rising theft of cats.

If only I had a car… Then I could lock the cat inside each day, when I got up, and hope someone would have stolen the car by the time I’d go to bed again.

Hell, I’d even be willing to buy a mobile phone, if tying the cat to it meant that both would get nicked. Though one could only hope the thieves would know better what to do with the stolen ware than other mobile muggers in the past had done.

Or maybe I should just do as the girlfriend suggested.

“You want something from town?” I asked the cat.

The cat looked at me.

“I need something larger in the oven-ware department. So, you got any last requests?”

“Go boil your head.” the cat said, before leaving the room through the huff side of the cat flap.

“Better be careful out there.” I said – but the cat, like Elvis, had left the building.

Unlike the late, lamented lard-arse, the cat probably would not be worth a king’s ransom, if there were any cat-nappers around.

“And more’s the pity.” I mumbled, before entering a daydream, that featured the girlfriend and me (and a cast of no clothes) in one of those outdoors Japanese baths.

High above, stars twinkled at us and sang old Elvis songs (almost inaudibly, praise the Lord of Song) before one of them morphed into an honest to God spaceship that descended like a mighty sparrow and then flew off with the cat (hopefully to do all kinds of interesting and painful experiments on the little monster moggie.)

The last thing the girlfriend and I heard – before we lost ourselves in yet another breath-defying kiss, was the fading scream of the cat:

You baaasssstaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrds……!!!!!!

Ah, well. One can dream…

The house was very, very quiet. The girlfriend had left for Tokyo four days earlier – and the cat had vanished around the same time.

There was only one serious suspect, so I called her:

“It’s what?”

“Buggered off.”

“Good!”

“You didn’t kill it?

“No – though I should have. He ruined that coat!”

“True. You never get all of the shredded sparrow out of suede.”

“You should have killed it.”

“Yeah, years ago. Listen… The bloody animal didn’t hitch a ride with you?”

“To Tokyo…?! Are you mad?!”

“It likes raw fish.”

“Believe me: I would have noticed.”

“True.”

“Are you telling me you’re missing that damn cat?”

“Well…”

One tip: if you have a conversation with your girlfriend – one you’ve just put on a plane, after protracted & teary goodbyes, and many assurances of never-ending lust, devotion and what have you…

… and she plays the ‘Do you miss…?’ gambit…

…don’t you ever even think of hesitating.

Don’t let a coat-molesting, evil if absent cat come between the moment she brings up the ‘missing’ bit and your immediate and only correct answer:

“I miss you!”

I missed my cue.

The girlfriend hung up. The cat was still gone.

Could I have killed it in my sleep? Dreaming of the girlfriend while I hacked the little brute to pieces and, still snoring, put its evil remains in the bin? A happy thought but a somewhat unlikely scenario, on the whole.

(I checked anyway: Nope, not there either.)

Well, it would probably return in its own good time – and more’s the pity. Did I miss it though?

Well, you get used to things. You know; looming volcanoes, radio talk shows, crocs in the river, TV’s Political Question Time – evil cats. They do become part of the daily cursed landscape.

Bugger.

The idea that I could actually miss that animal – even as some kind of phantom limb irritant – was deeply annoying. Hell, even in its absence it proved to be a bloody nuisance.

Ah well. Time to do some shopping.

Maybe buy some sturdy nails as well – to immobilize the cat flap? Nah. Even a drawbridge and a moat wouldn’t keep the cat out, when it finally decided it wanted to come and annoy me again. It would be much easier to lick all the barnacles off the Marie Celeste, hoover up Marley’s ghost or parcel-post the Eiffel tower to the Dalai Lama than to get rid of that nuisance of a cat.

I put on my coat, checked for my keys, picked up a very…heavy???… shopping bag…

Prrrt…

Shit.

Prrrt!!!

“So – you’re back…”

“Missed me?”

Busy, busy, busy.

“You! Out of the way!”

Chchchch…! went the cat – but it also buggered off to the kitchen.

Now, where was that damn thermos flask? I wanted to take the girlfriend to the park – and I wanted to bring cocktails, so I needed something to keep them cold…

I also needed to put on another rain song. When you want to go on a picnic, you need to play or sing lots of rain songs. You don’t want the Gods to suspect you’ve actually planned for something outdoors. Gods are like cats: you can’t trust Them. They think only of Themselves, They’re fickle and They like to torture smaller creatures. (And yeah, we are indeed very much built in Their own image. Don’t beat it: sometimes it helps sussing Them out.)

Ah, perfect: that old song. And there was the thermos, cowering among the books on my shelves.

“Gotcha!”

“Fuck.” said the thermos.

It doesn’t like cold drinks. It claims ice-cubes hurt its linings. Tough. Now what? Yes. Feed the cat. I had to keep the little monster happy for at least another day. Then the girlfriend would go back to Tokyo again. Till that dreaded moment I wanted peace and quiet. Afterwards, I probably wouldn’t care much, one way or the other, for quite a while. So, time to feed the brute.

Chchchchch…! went the cat, when I entered the kitchen, still annoyed that I’d chased it out of the living-room.

“Oh, get over it.” I said, “What do you want: fish or liver?”

“Don’t care. I’ll get you for all of this! See if I don’t.”

“Or I can swap you for two goldfish, a talking elephant, or a cute, little rat…”

I put the cat’s dinner in its bowl. When it started to do unspeakable things to the food, I went back to the living-room.

Right: got cocktails, got food; got the blanket, two cushions; got plates and glasses… Okay. Time to relax a bit, till the girlfriend came back from yet another cultural round-up. After a while the cat came back into the living-room and sat down on my newspaper.

“You, sir, are a nuisance.”

Prrrt.

“I was reading that…”

Prrrt…

“Some story about a girl writing with George Harrison’s mum. Can you imagine: here she is – hot for some Beatle. She sends him locks of pubic hair, or underwear or some such and then his bloody mum writes back to her… ”

Prrrt…!!!

The cat couldn’t care less. It wanted to be stroked, and scratched behind its ears. So, I stroked the cat, and scratched it behind its ears. It was a very peaceful period, enjoyed by all. Till the cat spotted some invisible adversary somewhere in the room. It used me as its launching pad, drawing some blood and hurled itself at the curtains, destroying two flower pots. Then it ran through the room for a few minutes, hissing like mad, its fur a-blazing, before sitting down again (on my newspaper), where it calmly started to lick its left paw.

“That hurts” I complained, licking my own bloody paw.

“Johnny Cash hurts” the cat said; “You are a sissy.”

After that, another spell of peace and quiet.

I told myself again that, after the girlfriend had left, I might very well book myself a room, for a week, in a certain hotel. To do a bit of self-indulgent grieving, to be sure, but mostly to get away from the cat. It was either that or a midnight visit to the nearest canal, with a sack and a few stones – for the cat or for me.

Home alone again, and I was reading an article about depression, whilst humming a Muppets song.

Schizophrenic, nous..?

The girlfriend was on one of her solo expeditions, hunting for souvenirs or face cream…, I think. I couldn’t remember precisely, since I had been watching the cat, while she was talking about her plans for the first part of the day.

The cat had been stalking the neighbour’s new Mazda - again. No idea why. To me the Mazda looked perfectly inoffensive but the cat had developed a passionate hatred for the poor car.

So, while the girlfriend had been talking about Dutch chocolate (or aromatic bath salts or something) I’d sipped my tea, looking out of the window, to where the Mazda had been behaving stereotypically inscrutable, ignoring the cat’s angry hisses.

I’d been hoping the car would kick the cat’s arrogant arse but it had not been in any hurry to oblige me in this respect.

Which was rather a pity, since the cat already had a very warped view of the world and its own place in it. The cat was, to put it very mildly, not exactly a stranger to feelings of grandeur – or grandiose delusions.

Anyway, done with the newspaper’s take on depression I took old misery guts Burton’s hefty tome from the shelf and opened it blindly – which is what I always do with that book.

Like Neil Gaiman’s Oracle, Burton talks to me in random fragments that almost always seem to make sense on some deeply solipsistic level. Again, Burton didn’t disappoint:

…and what proportion is fit for all calling, because private professors are many times idiots, ill husbands, oppressors, covetous, and know not how to improve their own, or else wholly respect their own, and not public good.

Right. I looked through the window: the Mazda was still in one piece but the cat was no longer in sight.

Prrrt…

Well, that explained why I didn’t see it outside anymore.

Prrrt…!!!

“Yes…?”

Ah, how cute: yet another partly dissected bird. If at cars you don’t succeed, and all of that.

Prrrt.

You want me to cook that for you?

Prrrt

Then you better go find yourself another chef. I’m not going to pluck or cook some damn, fat sparrow.”

“It’s a blue tit, you idiot.” said the cat, “Don’t you know birds?”

“I know the difference between a live and a dead bird – and that’s all I need to know. Now, if you haven’t come to bury the damn thing, go praise it - somewhere else.”

“Yes, boss.”

When cat and bird had left the stage through the huff side of the cat flap, I murmured:

“For every bird there is this last migration:
Once more the cooling year kindles her heart;
With a warm passage to the summer station
Love pricks the course in lights across the chart.”

Now, to take a shower or wait for the girlfriend and then take a shower together? Decisions, decisions…

Putting on the kettle for yet another pot of tea I looked outside. There the Mazda was peacefully washing itself (and looking almost cute in its florid shower cap) whilst singing Gloria Gaynor’s I will survive.

Nope, for the life of me I couldn’t see what the poor car had done to offend the cat…

Ah well, the ways of my cat were even more mysterious than those of Keith Richards in his wildest, drugs-fermented years.

Now, if only the girlfriend would return, then maybe we could forget about cats, Mazdas, dead birds or the sorry fact that there were only two more days of her visit left – and go play doctor and nurse for the rest of the day.

The cat had been behaving itself – so far. Okay, the little pest had run off with my tea-cosy earlier in the day and wouldn’t say where it had left the bloody thing but, as abductions go, this was one that could be easily shrugged off, unlike others one could mention or obsess about.

For now though, the beast had boldly buggered off to wherever felines go who’d just destroyed another breakfast - no doubt to do other unspeakable things of a pathologically anatomical nature. It is a cat thing: to be nature’s cordless, battery free shredder.

If mankind could tap into the boundless energy resources cats use for their petty acts of wanton cruelty, murder and dissection, Al Gore would have to find yet another job.

The girlfriend, in the meantime, had gone off to do some touristy things, involving the climbing of long-suffering towers, watching bad cases of eczema craquelé on worthy if slightly senile paintings and doing other cultural  things I tend to avoid like deserts avoid rain.

Not that I had had to do anything special to be excused from the girlfriend’s cultural city tour. Ever since I’d got us kicked out of Prague’s National Theatre (something to do with a defunct cat carrier, a half-eaten bacon & egg sandwich and a hair-trigger cloakroom attendant – don’t ask…) I’d received a universal pass card on all future expeditions of a cultural nature.

She had left me a little something to remember her by, while she was gone: a scribbled note, explaining why she’d left so early this morning – and the advice to read a certain Times online article, which introduced fifteen new reasons not to marry.

Then again, she’d also left me with another internet link, accompanied with a nicely smudged lipstick heart, three sprawling X’s and the words ‘There’s always hope.’  Talk about mixed messages…

Ah well, like Neruda wrote:

But I hear only your voice, your voice
soars with the zing and precision of an arrow,
it drops with the gravity of rain,

your voice scatters the highest swords
and returns with its cargo of violets:
it accompanies me through the sky.

Anyway, it was quite nice to have the place to myself again for a bit. Like the cat, I am a solitary creature at heart.

Unlike the cat though, I do like my peace and quiet without much bloodshed or the tortured wailing of all creatures, great and small - and unlike the cat…

Prrrt...

Oh, bugger.

Prrrt…!!!

“What do you want?” I asked.

Prrrt went the cat, who’d dropped a vaguely familiar looking piece of cloth on the floor, before it started to wash itself in a none too vague, disgustingly self-satisfied manner.

“What…?!” I asked again.

Then I picked up the piece of cloth, inspected it real close and sighed.

“Please tell me you didn’t…” I said.

Prrrt did the cat.

“If someone followed you back,” I warned, “you are on your own. I don’t know you; I haven’t seen you before – and besides, I’m allergic to cats.”

Prrrt.

“Some cats just catch the occasional, average spider, you know - the little ones; the normal ones…”

“Boring.” spoke the cat and then left through the huff side of the cat flap, to go and annoy the shit out of the rest of the world again.

“Bloody Hell.” I whispered, still holding the piece of cloth – which was, I now saw, alarmingly bloodied.

It had most definitely been in the wars.

“I do hope they managed to wrap up most of the movie before that bloody cat arrived to mangle poor Spidey,” I spoke to a mostly deeply uncaring world.

Ah well, it was something to tell the girlfriend, when she came back from great cultural height.

As news items go, it wasn’t quite up there with the death of monarchs, minor wars or the devastation of cash crop harvests but it would serve well enough as a topic to raise and digest over our tea and biscuits.

Still, my world - and the world at large - might become a much more peaceful place, if I had my next tea-cosy made out of very domestic material indeed.

Right: wallet, keys, flowers – no, no flowers: the cat had done something unspeakable to the flowers. Which reminded me…

“Oy…!”

“Yes, master”, the cat said, not even bothering to take its snout out of its favourite food.

“I’m going to pick up the girlfriend from the airport now…”

Even from this distance I could hear the cat rolling its eyes.

“So you told me – twenty times already. What is this: Hell?!”

Bloody animal.

“What I mean is: I will pick her up, and then we go somewhere to eat, then to some bar – and then we come home.”

“So…? You’re taking her out. Big step for mankind: you’ve invented the date. What’s that to me?”

“Nothing - I sincerely hope. You’re not coming.”

The cat returned to its meal.

“Not that I trust you to behave when I’m gone…”

The cat was done eating. It started to lick its paws: left, right, left, right, left again.

“But I’m not going to hire a baby-sitter. So…”

“You’re not gone yet?” the cat asked - and then it yawned.

“So if you need me for something – anything bad happens – with the house … or to you…”

“Yes?”

“Then you can always call me.”

“You don’t have a mobile, you idiot.”

“Ah yes, you’re right. It was something else, of course. I remember now…”

“Yesss…?”

“When we come back, I do not want to hear you, or see you or even suspect you’re around.”

“Or I could just lock the two of you out.” the cat said.

“No, no.” I said; “You do not want to do that.”

“Oh?”

“Think ‘very scary man’, think ax, think ‘Heeeere’s JOHNNY…!’ Believe me, you do not want to go there.”

The cat yawned.

I pointed at it and said:

“You! Even the sainted Ms Gonick couldn’t love you! Now, I will see you – and I repeat: I will see you T O M O R R O W !!!”

“Yes, boss.” the cat said, and saluted.

I shook my head, put on my coat.

Wallet, check. Keys, check. Flowers… Oh, bugger.

Ah, the joys of having a cat…

Well, the next few hours – and hopefully the rest of the night – would be gloriously girlfriend-filled and conspicuously cat-free. I closed the door behind me, whistling an old Leonard Cohen song (by way of Jeff Buckley).

I think I heard the cat say ‘Wanker’ but decided to ignore it: It’s bad luck to interrupt a good whistle.

(Well, someone has to invent those old sayings.)

Only one day to go till the girlfriend arrived – and the cat was getting restless. It doesn’t like company. In fact, it already hates sharing this place with me, let alone with someone else.

Right now it was trying for a state of denial – or blissful ignorance – but failing. You could almost see its nerves slowly unravelling.

“Have you ever thought of donating to a sperm bank?” I asked.

“What?!”

“Well, you’re certainly vain enough and you don’t have a girlfriend who comes to visit you.”

“Oh, go boil a frog!”

“Or maybe I should try and find a nice lady cat for you. Then me and the girlfriend could take the two of you dancing or something. You would look so cute, doing the donkey.”

“Shut up!”

“Then we could dress you up nicely, like one of those doggies American pop stars keep dragging around. Such fun.”

The cat screamed and ran out of the room, nearly dislodging the cat flap. It really was becoming a nervous wreck.

Which reminded me…

“What you need is a holiday!’ I shouted in the general direction of the kitchen; “Maybe some relaxing cruise.”

“Bastard!” shouted the cat.

Then silence ruled again – and all was well in my world.

One more day, till the girlfriend arrived.

My thoughts went this way and that way, meandering like a happy brook, through a landscape filled with all kinds of pleasant distractions – none of them looking even remotely like a sperm bank, I might add.

Life was good.

Then more cat’s curses coming from the kitchen, the sound of breaking glass, more curses and more glasses swept from a shelf. The poor little brute really was cracking up.

So, I put on the head-phones, grabbed an old Leonard Cohen CD and closed my eyes.

Yup, no more cat noises. Just Leonard’s slow, low voice, singing Hallelujah.

Ah yesss: life was very good indeed.

Just two more days to go, before the girlfriend would arrive. I’d been busy putting up photos of parrots. The cat had been busy taking them down and shredding them.

It knew better though than taking down the photos of the girlfriend that I’d taped against the wardrobe - but it had been very loud and disapproving of my reading poetry aloud:

“So, love, it will be with us, both
lion and prey - our mouths so deep in richness
only the wild scent of earth will be left
to tremble, after.”

The cat yawned.

“More of that stupid Neruda?”

“Jane Hirshfield, actually. And she is still alive and well and quite able to kick you into six impossible shapes before breakfast.”

Not mightily impressed with any Jane that wasn’t moonlighting as a demonic parrot, the cat yawned again, stretched its back, yawned, stretched and then started to lick its left foreleg.

“Do cats worry about their sex appeal?” I asked.

“Now what?”

“Just this article I read.”

“So now you’re worried that stupid woman won’t have sex with you? Humans!”

“Go figure; cats don’t do poetry, don’t start a band to impress the girls… You’re such boring beasts.”

The cat held up its paw and did that cushion-to-daggers thing.

“See these?”

“Yup.”

“One more poem, one more word about that woman and these claws will make sure sex will not be an option for a very, very long time.”

Then the cat stretched its back one last time, got up and strode out of the room – or tried to: cat flaps are not particularly stride-friendly contraptions.

“And however sharply
you are tested -
this sorrow, that great love -
it too will leave on that clean knife.”

“I heard that” spoke the cat, from the kitchen.

My time to yawn.

The cat had its arsenal of retractable filet knives; I had the imaginary shadow of Suleiman, the psychotic parrot, looking over the cat’s shoulder.

So, the threat of mutually assured dissection would help to keep things nice and quiet around here – for now.