Basil

Our current cat-in-residence is a black and white moggie who goes by the name of Basil, or Baz for short. His sleek coat is mostly jet-black with a gorgeous snowy white shirt fluffing up under his proud chin. His paws, usually slightly grubby after an evening out on the tear, are returned to their pristine state with ten minutes frantic washing before he settles down, exhausted, in a heap on his blanket. He wears this fine furry tuxedo with the air of a fellow always prepared to eat a decent meal were I to be so good as to put it in front of him.

Like most of our cats he arrived uninvited, after the demise of our previous tenant. We watched his antics as he scaled the ten-foot wall out back, clinging to the trunk of the beech trees, hiking his way up until he reached a bird’s nest to steal their eggs. Someone had dumped him (probably in a plastic bag ‘cause whenever he heard the rustle of a bin bag, he’d vanish, scared to death of the noise) and he ended up thin and scrawny, scavenging for food, and desperate to come and live with us. "You can feed him, but he’s definitely not coming inside" were my immortal words to my soft-hearted daughters who could never resist an appealing meow. About three days later, Basil moved in to rule the roost for the rest of his natural life. He’s been with us for about six years and he’s hale and hearty, his legs strong, his eyes clear and his heart completely devoted to all of us. When my two sons ring home from abroad it’s, "How’s Basil doing?" I’ve even been known to swivel the camera so they can view him on Skype to assure them that the feline Master of our Universe is being properly looked after. When daughter Jessica drops in to visit she swoops him up in her arms, kissing him, telling him he’s lovely, then spends time brushing his fur furiously as he swoons, splayed out beside her, senseless with pleasure, purrrrrrrrring his head off.

Of the many cats that wandered through my life I remember one in particular who loved to sleep close to me at night. Marmalade must have been near her time and around three in the morning she began the business of producing her litter. I woke up to the strangest huffing sounds emanating from the warm bundle on my stomach, quickly decided that this was something I did not want to witness, slid out of bed and went down to the harbour to look at the boats until it was light. Back in my room sat puss, proud as any young mother, five tiny bodies curled up beside her, no evidence of what had happened in the dead of night.

When Hugh Leonard left Manchester to return to live in Ireland there was the small matter of a beloved cat, Honey, who couldn’t possibly be left behind, nor could she be put in quarantine, so instead, this moggie was smuggled across the Irish Sea, doped up to the eyeballs, turning her owners into possible criminals prepared to do time if absolutely necessary. Rover and Other Cats is about all the cats that dominated Hugh Leonard’s household: Rover the star of the show; Honey the Siamese; Priscilla who turned out to be a he; Tinkle, the amorous feline; Dubh the beloved; The Pooka, Panache (the first cat to have his obituary in a broadsheet) and last but not least, P.S.

Once you’ve read Rover’s introduction into the family you’ll just have to get the book to find out what happened next: "He was an orange blob no bigger than Paule’s hand when he came to us in a shoebox that could have held six of him. A friend of a friend of ours urgently wanted a home for a male kitten; when we protested that he was not yet weaned, we were given to understand that his alternative home would be a weighted sack thrown over the sea wall. And so that shoe box changed hands."

This memoir will make you laugh, cry, and delight in this author’s obvious love of cats.