The Unadulterated Cat
Terry Pratchett
The Unadulterated Cat
Terry Pratchett
Gray Joliffe
The Unadulterated Cat is becoming an endangered species as more and more of us settle for those boring mass-produced cats the ad-men sell us—the pussies that purr into their gold-plated food bowls on the telly. But the Campaign for Real Cats sets out to change all that by helping us to recognise a true, unadulterated cat when we see one.
For example: real cats have ears that look like they've been trimmed with pinking shears; real cats never wear flea collars… or appear on Christmas cards… or chase anything with a bell in it; real cats do eat quiche. And giblets. And butter. And anything else left on the table, if they think they can get away with it. Real cats can hear a fridge door opening two rooms away…
Terry Pratchett
THE UNADULTERATED CAT
DEDICATION All right, all right. Time to come clean. Despite the fact that this book clearly states that cats should have short names you don't mind yelling to the neighbourhood at midnight, The Unadulterated Cat is dedicated to: Oedipuss They don't come much realer.
A Campaign for Real Cats
Far too many people these days have grown used to boring, mass-produced cats, which may bounce with health and nourishing vitamins but aren't a patch on the good old cats you used to get. The Campaign for Real Cats wants to change all that by helping people recognise Real Cats when they see them. Hence this book.
The Campaign for Real Cats is against fizzy keg cats.
All right, How can I recognise a Real cat?
Simple. Nature has done a lot of the work for you. Many Real cats are instantly recognisable. For example, all cats with faces that look as though they had been put in a vice and hit repeatedly by a hammer with a sock round it are Real cats. Cats with ears that look as though they have been trimmed with pinking shears are Real cats. Almost every non-pedigree unneutered tom is not only Real, but as it hangs around the house it gets Realer and Realer until one of you is left in absolutely no doubt as to its Realness.
Fluffy cats are not necessarily unReal, but if they persist in putting on expressions of affronted dignity for the camera while advertising anything with the word “purr-fect” in the associated copy they are definitely bringing their Realness into question.
Ah. So cats in adverts aren't Real?
Actually being in adverts doesn't make a cat unReal—it can't help it if someone plonks it down in some weird pyramid made of carpet and takes pictures of it peeping anxiously out of the hole—but its demeanour once there counts for a lot.
For example, if you put an unReal cat down in front of a row of bowls of catfood it will obediently choose the one made by the sponsors of the ad even if all the others haven't got sump oil on them. A Real cat, on the other hand, will head for the most expensive regardless, pull it out onto the studio floor, eat it with great pleasure, try some of the others, trip up the cameraman and then get stuck behind the newsreaders' podium. Where it will be sick. And then, when its owners buy several large tins of the wretched stuff, it'll refuse to touch it again.
Real cats never wear bows (but sometimes they do wear bow-ties; see “Cartoon Cats”).
Or appear on Christmas cards.
Or chase anything with a bell on it.
Real cats don't wear collars. But Real cats often do wear dolls' clothes, and sit there also wearing an expression of furry imbecility while their brains do a complex radar scan of their surroundings and then they take a special kind of leap that gets them out of the mob cap, dress, apron and doll's pram all in one move.
Real cats are not simply self-possessed. Nor are they simply neurotic. They are both, at the same time, just like real people.
Real cats do eat quiche. And giblets. And butter. And anything else left on the table, if they think they can get away with it. Real cats can hear a fridge door opening two rooms away.
There is some dispute about this, but some of the hardliners in the CRC say that Real cats don't go to catteries when their owners go on holiday, but are fed by a simple arrangement of bowls and neighbours. It is also held that Real cats don't go anywhere in neat wicker Nissen huts with dinky little bars on the front. Now look. Schism and debate are of course the lifeblood of democracy, but I would just like to remind some of our more enthusiastic members of the great damage to the Campaign caused by the Flea Collar Discussion
(1985), the Proprietary Cat Litter Row (1986) and what became rather disgracefully reported as the Great Bowl With Your Name On It Fracas (1987). As I said at the time, while of course the ideal Real cat eats its meals off an elderly saucer with remnants of the last meal still crusting the edge or, more typically, eats it off the floor just beside it, a Real cat is what you are, not what is done to you. Some of us may very well feel happier carting our cats around in a cardboard box with the name of a breakfast food on the side, but Real cats have an inbuilt distrust of white coats, can tell instantly when the vet is in prospect, and can erupt from even the stoutest cardboard box like a ICBM. This generally happens in dense traffic or crowded waiting rooms.
Despite the bad feeling caused by the Great Bowl With Your Name On It Fracas mentioned above, we should make it clear that Real cats do eat out of bowls with PUSSY written on the side. They'd eat out of them if they had the word ARSENIC written on the side. They eat out of anything.
Real cats catch things.
Real cats eat nearly all of everything they catch. A Real cat's aim is to get through life peacefully, with as little interference from human beings as possible. Very much like real humans, in fact.
Can I be pedigree and a Real cat too?
Of course you can't. You're a human.
The cat, I mean.
Ah. A thorny one, this. Logically, simply knowing your great-granddad's name should not be a bar to enjoying the full rich life, but some of the Campaign's more committed members believe that a true Real cat should be in some doubt as to its own existence, let alone that of its parents.
We feel that this is an extreme view. It is true that many of us feel the quintessential Real cat looks like the survivor of a bad mincer accident, but if people are really going to go around judging a cat's Realness by looks and fur colour alone, then they must see that what they are working towards is a Breed in its own right (“And this Year's Supreme Champion is Sooty, by ‘Thatdamngreythingfromnextdoorsonthebirdtableagain’ out of ‘We just Call Her Puss’ of Bedwellty”).
The point is that cats are different from dogs.
A certain amount of breeding was necessary to refine dogs from the rough, tough, original stock to the smelly, fawning, dribbling morons1 of uncertain temper that we see today.
As they were turned into anything that society felt at the time that it really wanted—self-powered earth-moving machines, for example, or sleeve ornaments—so the basic dogness was gradually diluted.
Thus, your Real dog is far more likely to be a mongrel, except that the word is probably illegal these days, whereas all cats are, well, cats. More or less the same size, various colours, some fat, some thin, but still recognisably cats. Since the only thing they showed any inclination to do was catch things and sleep, no one ever bothered to tinker with them to make them do anything else. It's interesting to speculate on what they might have become had history worked out differently, though (see “The cats we missed”). All that cats were bred for, in fact, was general catness. All cats are potentially Real. It's a way of life…
What has the Campaign for Real Cats got against dogs, then?
Nothing.
Oh, come on.
No, there are perfectly good, well-trained, well-behaved dogs who do not bark like a stuck record, or crap in the middle of footpaths,
sniff groins, act like everyone's favourite on mere assumption, and generally whine, steal and grovel in a way that would put a 14th century professional mendicant to shame. We recognise this.
Good.
There are also forgiving traffic wardens, tarts with hearts of gold, and solicitors who do not go on holiday in the middle of your complicated house purchase. You just don't meet them every day.
Getting started
We got a cat because we didn't like them much.
Our garden was debated territory between five local cats, and we'd heard that the best way to keep other cats out of the garden was to have one yourself.
A moment's rational thought here will spot the slight flaw in this reasoning. However, if you're predisposed to keep cats, rational thought has nothing to do with it. We've never met anyone who recalls waking up one day and thinking: “This morning I will go shopping and buy some sprouts, one of those blue things for the lavatory, some baking foil—and, oh yes, a cat would be nice.”
Cats have a way of always having been there even if they've only just arrived. They move in their own personal time. They act as if the human world is one they just happened to have stopped off in, on their way to somewhere that is possibly a whole lot more interesting.
And what, when you come right down to it, do we know about them? Where did they come from? People say, well, evolution, it stands to reason. Why? Look at dogs. Dogs descended from wolves. You can tell. Some dogs are alsatians, which is just a wolf in a collar, biding its time. And then there's all these smaller dogs, going down in size until you get the weird little ones with lots of Zs in their name which squeak and can get into pint mugs. The point is, you can see the evolution happening, all the way from hairy semi-wolves to bald yappy things bred to go up Emperor's sleeves or whatever.
You know that if civilisation suddenly stopped, if great clanking things from Alpha Centauri suddenly lurched out of the sky and spirited mankind away, the dogs would be about two meals away from becoming wolves.
Or look at us. Some of the details might be a bit fiddly, but we—bright, civilised us, who know all about mortgages and non-stick saucepans and Verdi—can look back over our genetic shoulders and see a queue of stumbling figures going all the way back to little crouching shapes with hairy chests, no forehead and the intelligence of a gameshow audience.
Cats are different. On the one hand we have these great tawny brutes that sit yawning under the hot veldt sun or burning bright in jungles, and on the other there's these little things that know how to sleep on top of off-peak heaters and use cat doors. Not much in between. is there? A whole species divided, basically, between 500lbs of striped muscle that can bring down a gnu, and ten pounds of purr. Nowhere do we find the Piltdown Cat, the missing lynx.
All right, there's the wild cat, but that just looks like your average domestic tabby who's been hit on the head with a brick and got angry about it. No, we must face it. Cats just turned up. One minute nothing, next minute Egyptians worshipping them, mummifying them, building tombs for them. No messing around with a spade in the sad bit of the garden behind the toolshed for your Pharaohs, not when 20,000 men and a load of log rollers were standing around idle.
Scientists working for the Campaign for Real Cats believe that, because of the Schrodinger experiments (qv), the whole question of where cats come from, and how, is now totally meaningless, since there appear to be some cats that can travel quite painlessly across time and space, and therefore this means that the only place/time we can be sure cats come from is now.
How to get a cat
1. Adverts in the Post Office
Five adorable tabby kittens, Just ready to leave Mum, Free to Good Home, Please Phone…
Yes. Please, Please Phone, because they're all big and fighting with one another and some of the males are beginning to take a sophisticated interest in Mum. Do not be fooled into believing that you will need to turn up bearing evidence of regular church-going and sober habits; good home in this case means anyone who doesn't actually arrive in a van marked
J Torquemada and Sons, Furriers.
if you answer the ad you'll find there's one kitten left.
There's always one kitten left. You spend ages trying to figure out what it was that made the previous four purchasers leave it behind.
Eventually you will find out.
Nevertheless, Adverts in the Post Office are a good way of acquiring your basic cat.
2. Adverts in posh cat magazines
Pretty much like (1.) except that the word “adorable” probably won't be used and the word “free” certainly won't be used. Not to be contemplated by anyone on a normal income.
The cats acquired in this way are often very decorative, but if that's all you want a cat for then a trip to the nearest urban motorway with a paint scraper will do the business.
Pedigree cats talk a lot—catownerspeak for yowling softly—and tend to rip curtains. Being so highly bred, some of them are mentally unstable. A friend had an Arch-Villains' cat (qv) which thought it was a saucepan. But, because it was very expensive and more highly bred than Queen Victoria, it thought it was a saucepan with style.
3. Buying a house in the Country
A very reliable way of acquiring a cat. It'll normally turn up within the first year, with a smug expression that suggests it is a little surprised to see you here. It doesn't belong to the previous occupants, none of the neighbours recognise it, but it seems perfectly at home. Why? It is very probably a Schrodinger Cat (qv).
4. The Cats' Home
Another very popular source, especially just after Christmas and the summer holiday period, when their sales are on. Despite the fact that you can barely hear her on the phone for the background of yowling, the harassed young lady will probably take rather more pains than the average Post Office Advert cat seller to ensure you haven't actually got skinning knives in your pocket. Often no payment, just a voluntary donation—made at pistol point. You will be offered a variety of furry kittens, but the cat for you is the one-year-old spayed female lurking at the back of the cage with a worried expression who will show her appreciation by piddling in the car all the way home.
5. Inheritance
These cats come with a selection of bowls, half a tin of the most expensive cat food on the market, a basket and a small woolly thing with a bell in it. They will then spend two weeks under the bed in the spare room. Try to get it out and it could be you in the hospital having skin from your buttocks grafted onto your arm.
Cats are not always inherited from dead people. If the previous owner is still alive, the Real cat will probably be accompanied by a list of its likes and dislikes. Throw it away. They're just fads anyway.
Try to avoid inheriting cats unless they come with a five-figure legacy, or at least the expectation of one.
6. Joint ownership
Do you know where your cat spends its time when it's not at home? It's worth checking with more distant neighbours that they don't have a cat with the same size and colouring. It can happen. We once knew two households who for years both thought they owned the same cat, which spent its time commuting between food bowls. A sort of menagerie à trois.
An interesting fact about acquiring cats is that the things are, by and large, either virtually free or very expensive. It's as if the motor industry had nothing between the moped and the porsche.
Types of cat
Forget all the business about Blue Points and Persians. Real cats are likely to be:
1. Farm Cats
A dying breed. Once upon a time every decent barn supported a thriving, incestuous colony of them, depositing small nests of mewling kittens amongst the hay-bales, and there's still a few around. Worth getting if you can. They often look like flat-headed maniacs, but they've generally got a bit of sense. Not usually found on the kind of farms that are apparently made of extruded aluminium, but still scratching a living here and there.
2. Black Cats with White Paws
There must be a
breed of these. Most Sub-Post Office cats (qv) are black cats with white paws. They are always called Sooty.
3. Neighbours' Cats
Usually grey, and often seen in the newly seeded bit of the garden with a strained expression on their faces. Normally called Yaargeroffoutofityarbarstard (see “Naming cats”).
4. Boot-faced Cats
They have fangs, crossed eyes, enough scars to play a noughts and crosses championship on, and ears like old bus tickets. They're invariably male. Boot-faced cats aren't born but made, often because they've tried to outstare or occasionally rape a speeding car and have been repaired by a vet who just pulled all the bits together and stuck the stitches in where there was room. Most Boot-faced cats are black. Strange but true.
5. Sort of Tabby Cats with a Bit of Ginger, But Sometimes In the Right Light You Could Swear There's a Hint of Siamese There
Your basic Real cat. Backbone of the country cat population.
6. Factory Cats
Like farm cats, now ambling their way into history. They were once kept because they did a useful job of work, but now they're often the subject of friction between management, who want them out because they don't fit in with the new streamlined image of United Holdings (Holdings) plc, and staff, who don't. Usually someone called Nobby or Dotinthecanteen smuggles in food for them. Some factory cats get to be quite famous and have their pictures in the staff newspaper when they retire. The picture always shows Nobby or Dotinthecanteen holding a saggy black-and-white cat which is staring at the camera with quiet, self-satisfied malevolence.
