In Memoriam II

Debbie wandered into our life in 1987, a month or so after we moved from Brighton up to Scotland. We took her in as a wandering stray, although technically she was the kitten of Tibby, the cat from the farm across the road (the other kitten, pure white, got adopted by the postman) so she wasn’t as wandering as either of the other two other kittens that later claimed us.

And ironically, she outlasted them both (well, we don’t know with Squeak – he just left shortly after we moved house. May still be alive out there somewhere…who knows). But Debbie was put down last week – old age finally got too much for her, and by the time my mother took her to the vets she said nothing but the final three inches of tail was still paying attention to the world (that was vibrating back and forth in a pissed-off way – Debbie to the end). She had been deaf for the past few years (and it’s really amusing just how surprised a deaf cat can be when you creep up on it), and spent her days curled up under radiators (instead of bringing in all sorts of dead rodents, which she used to utterly excel at).

But Debbie…well, she was the cat of my childhood. She was named Debbie by 4-yr-old me after the human girl in the Mog books (because Mog was Mog, so we couldn’t call her that), and that expanded to Deborah whenever we felt like being formal (shouting her in from snowy fields for dinner, for example)…or Debdebs if we didn’t. She was very much your archetypal cat – aloof and unsociable but, if you caught her at the right moments, still a total silly kitten deep inside. She and Squeak had nothing in common, but were fairly friendly with each other – for a couple of years they shared the cat bed that eventually got appropriated by puppy Gigha, in front of the Aga. She and Geoff were sworn enemies but had neat little tricks (eg getting the other to leave food by being overly affectionate).

She was the cat I loved to torment as a child (because she was just so easy to annoy, and who doesn’t like those hot red welts that claw scratches give you?), but also the cat I ran to in tears when I couldn’t deal with people (she didn’t always appreciate that, but she was chubby and furry and comforting).

This photo was taken one Christmas (hence the decorations) at our current house. I lifted her up there, but it was just such a perfect position for her. Queen of the castle.

She would sit on the sofa next to you and watch every movement of your fork as it conveyed food from the plate to your mouth. She could be completely asleep and yet still twitch that tail-end to notify you of her annoyance that you’d just sat down in her sunshine. She would occasionally deign to curl up on laps. She loved to sit or sleep on stairs, where she could survey everything. She could be driven totally insane by running something along banister railings she was sat on the other side of. She totally disdained toys, catnip, purpose-made scratching posts and all other such things. She never, ever, talked to the cats next door. She had a little ‘mrrp!’ to say hello, a loud ‘mrrooww’ to express displeasure, a fearsome hiss and a wonderful purr. She liked to bump foreheads as a greeting (this got odd in her later life, when she developed a weird wart-blister thing on her forehead). She was proper tortoiseshell/tabby, with her white bib, wonderfully asymmetric face fur and mixed-y coloured skin on her paw pads which I always thought was cute. She enjoyed exploring dark musty spaces, and as a result got trapped in the garage and the loft several times. She always went in a huff for several days after a trip to the cattery or vet. She liked a saucer of milk in the mornings, and refused to eat any cat food of lower class than Whiskas or Felix. When asleep, she could end up in the weirdest positions, feet sprawled everywhere, looking utterly silly. She once entirely destroyed a wooden seat we bought from the Glasgow Garden Festival because it was too much fun to scratch it. Whenever my dad visited our old house, she left muddy pawprints all over his car. If you stroked her head and she was in a sufficiently good mood, she’d sit up meerkat-like.

She was Debbie.