Cat Game: points mean pussies!

Cats, for cat-people at least, tend to make life a little more bearable.

You may think that Mermaids, being of a somewhat pescarian nature, might not appreciate the feline form, but you'd be quite wrong. Many Mermedonians have catfish as pets, for example.

But back to the subject of this blog. Mr Mermaid and myself often play a game to make our perambulations a little more interesting.

It's called the Cat Game, and it goes like this.

Can you see this cat? 

Basically, if you see a cat, you call it and get a point. Even if the other person doesn't see it. But it is an honesty game so it has to be a real cat, and you have to be 100 per cent sure it's a cat, otherwise bad luck will befall you.

The person who has the most cat points at the end of the day wins.

If you falsely call a cat and it proves to be a black bin bag, for example, or it turns out to be a cat statue, then you lose a cat point.

In England, most cats are secretive, domesticated, indoor creatures, barely seen except in a glimpse in a window as they look wistfully down on plebeians strolling by. Or they're collared, cut and snipped, microchipped garden brooders, squatting like cat loaves on shed roofs or balancing on fences.

In Athens, however, cats are a whole different species: semi-feral, exceptionally fertile, un-neutered, un-chipped, homeless scavengers. These cats tend to be grubbier, thinner scaredy-cats, sneaking around bins en masse while embarking on shady crepuscular activities.

Cat Loaf  position 1

Those cats which are not skulking in corners, performing cat-loaf impressions in grassy areas, or shooting anxious, upward glances at passers-by, tend to be boisterous, bossy kitties, mouthing loud mews and coming up for grub and love. (Always happy to oblige with love).

As you can imagine, with the amount of stray cats wandering completely unchecked around Greece, there were many to count on our walkabouts. We also saw two dead strays lying in the road after being run over by cars.

Cats on food patrol near the Acropolis

There are speed restrictions, but my relatives claim few Greeks bother with these as the government cannot be bothered with enforcement.

(This also explains the horrendous amount of ugly graffiti everywhere - appalling!! Like something out of a 1980s London slum).

The suburbs have their own kitties to count, but the area around the Acropolis and the Agora - ah! That's the place to go to play the Cat Game.

While Mr Mermaid and I were walking around the Acropolis, we reached a bumper crop of cats. I had seen 46 and he had seen 42 (and stroked as many as wanted affection) so we decided to pool our resources and see if we could reach 100. It's a challenge never before attempted during the Cat Game

I can haz noms? 

Cat-o-flage

By 8pm we had got 90 cats under our metaphorical belts (do Merpeople wear belts?), and thought 'that's it, no more'.

But then on the way to the graffiti-infested Metro station, we saw a benevolent citizen had left a full bag of kitty food for the strays - and there were seven adult cats and three kittens nomming away (while giving us scared glances). A full 100!

Getting off the train we were met with Disney Bonus Cat.

In other words, a stray floofy-bummed kitteh ran in front of us, scratched a tree frantically like a wide-eyed furry weirdo, and then bounded off in a zig-zag across the road, with its ears flat back and its tail all puffed.

101. One hundred and one. Like the 101 Dalmations, only with cats.

And that's the story of our cat count game.

Cash in the attic? More like the car crash of my past

The other day I received a press release entitled: Cash In The Attic.

Apparently, British lofts are repositories of hidden treasures. The press release cited research that put the average worth of items left loitering in the loft at a rather peachy £1,922.

I remain to be convinced as to whether or not lucrative chattels do indeed lurk in hidden corners of England's lofts. They certainly don't rest in my mother's attic, which last time I was sent up there to 'clear it' had a princely treasury of half a table, an empty wooden container from a boxy TV from 1980s and a blue Princess Bike that I took apart when I was seven and could never put back together again.

But the good folk at Essex Rooms (a firm which builds loft conversions) who put the survey together, also discovered that Britons have a lot of really weird, dark scary stuff in their attics and to this, I can relate.

The most unusual items were, according to 2092 UK adults surveyed, dentures, dismembered dolls and urns containing ashes - both human and animal.

Source: Tumblr Strange Taxidermied Cat. Is there one in your loft?

There was also a taxidermied cat, a box of Victorian doll heads ... but no bodies ... and a tin can from the 1930s. No knowledge of what was in it. Probably Spam. I expect it was still good.

The majority of people have in their possession old Christmas decorations, baby clothes and furniture that was inherited from Great Aunt Gert and may be worth something but it is really damn ugly and you don't want it in your bedroom, in case you wake up at 3am to hear the chair creaking in the corner and your dead ancestor sitting in it, knitting a ghostly shawl. 'Don't mind me dearies, you continue with preserving the family line'.

To be honest, I would rather have a questionable-looking divan than a box of Victorian doll's heads, which is pretty creepy. I mean, I've seen those films. Even borrowing a neighbour's DVD of 'The Conjuring' made me  nervous. I became convinced that having it in our house would somehow open a portal to the Western shores of Hell, and I'd come downstairs in the night to see the Anabelle Doll sitting on the cat's cushion, staring at me. And there would be no cat ... taxidermied or otherwise.

How do you know if your parents hated you? Did they give one of these to you? They hated you

In fact, I deliberately spelled Anabelle wrong in case it's like the Candyman or like Bloody Mary or one of those monsters whose name you must not say three times while looking in a mirror, or they will leap out of the reflective surface and kill you.

You know, the sort of creepy tales that older girls delight in telling you, shortly before sneaking up behind you when you're in the school toilets, minding your own business while washing your hands and looking in the mirror, and then shouting 'Bloody Mary' at you three times and running away.

Then Mrs Smith or Mrs Bailey come in to ask why you're screaming and pummeling your wet hands on the mirror when you're alone in the toilet. And then the teachers inform your mother at Parents' Evening: "Your daughter is a little .. odd." Yeah. No kidding.

Where was I? Oh yes, in my attic. Now I have a nice attic. It has already been converted into a brand spanking new Master bedroom and, apart from those freaky-ass ravens jumping around the roof in the wee small hours and whooping like headless Victorian child dolls, it is a pretty un-scary place.

The cupboard space, however, is stuffed full of, well, stuff. Mostly it is Christmas Decorations, and Wedding Mementos. But it is also full of bags and tubs of papers from school and university, things that I do not need but which I don't really feel that I can part with, just yet. Notes, folders, boxes of my earliest literary endeavours - all of this is secreted into the corners of cupboards.

I also found a box load of Commando Comics. My mother gave them to me to 'throw out' as they had been at her house for aeons. I used to love those comics. I lent my favourite ones to my friend Will (WHO HAS NOT RETURNED THEM YET), but I still have dozens of them. I say still have, because I did not throw them out. I took them home and read them all over again.

I don't know why I got so wrapped up in Commando comics. I basically went straight from magazines like Twinkle, Judy and Just Seventeen, straight to NewsWeek, National Geographic and Commando Comics, from about 14 years old. Yes, I was 14 years old, talked like David Niven, obsessed by WWII and learning all about international diplomacy from reading "Dagger for a Nazi" and "Dive, Dive, Dive!". Two of my new favourites from my remaining, if depleted stack.

Commando Comic

Clever Tommy

I also became a polyglot, able to speak the dying words of Germans and Japanese Kamikaze pilots as the brave Tommies and Septics shot them down in a fiery battle.

"Achtung! Der Englander! Schweinhund!"

"Aieee! Tora! Tora!"

Yep, not racist at all.


Having just written all this, it probably does not take too far a stretch of the imagination to work out why my teachers thought I was weird.

So, that's what's in my loft.

The peculiar incident of the cat in the daytime

Monty Baggins the angelic (?) cat

It started off so well.

Actually, not so well. It started off with me cleaning the windowsill of a (then) empty study overlooking the back garden.

From there I could see our Rum-Tum-Tugger, aka Monty the Cat, perched insouciant on the border fence between our house and the neighbours' on the left.

He was making rude noises at something small and fluffy on their lawn.

It looked like a grey owl, but turned out to be a small kitten, all fur and eyes the colour of ripening pumpkins.

Before I could utter a warning, he had leaped into their garden and was saying very nasty things, dark things, irascible things for which there is thankfully no discernible human meaning. But not for long - as a sudden jet of water sprang out from a hosepipe and he bounded back into the sanctity of our home.

Of course, I laughed out loud, which prompted three ladies sitting in the garden to look up. These were our new neighbours. Correctly, we were their new neighbours, and Monty had just attempted to rough up their kitten. What a bully!

But this was nothing compared to what happened one terrible, sultry, summer afternoon, back in '14.

It happened thus. Monty and I were doing nuttin while sitting inside and saw Rowdy cat (the un-neutered black and white tomcat) prowl into a neighbour's garden and pick a fight with Flea (the fluffy black cat who lives up the way).

They were at it hammer and tongs, dancing the steps of death, hissing and spitting and kicking each other in the face. They leaped over the fence into our garden, then in a few bounds entered Left Hand Neighbours' garden.

There was their grey kitty, still too young to be speyed but old enough to be on heat, lying in the sunshine. Within a few seconds, the two randy males were chasing her round the garden, making those weird, angry sexual sounds that only cats can make.

The ladies next door managed to get their cat in, and the couple to the left had managed to spook the black cat with a gentle squirt to the behind, but Rowdy and the black cat were still circling each other - now in our yard. This catfight had been going on for hours. It was getting out of hand. I looked at Monty. He looked at me. This was now time for the professionals.

They were still spatting by our gazebo. Thinking the coast was clear, and with Monty definitely raring to go outside and show these rug muppets what a real bruising was (he grew up in Streatham), I decided it would be a reasonable, grown-up, adult thing to do to don a cape, put Monty on my shoulders, and gallop out of the back door towards the two spatting cats while singing the Feline version of Ride of the Valkyries.

I called it ..... Apocalypse Meow, and it goes like this.

"Meow Mi-mi MEOW Miaw, Mew mi-mi MEOW Miaw, Mew mi-mi MEOW Miaw, MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOOOOOWWW."

Just in case you were wondering.

Anyway the two caterwauling kitties froze mid-yawl and looked at us in horror: the caped pink, two-legged beast (me) and the Ginger cat sitting astride her shoulders like the Colossus of old. And then they scarpered.

"Yeah" I shouted at their retreating forms. "Monty brought a Human to a cat fight". I think I even did a gangland sign.

Just then, heard a male voice shout with laughter "Well done Mermaid" ... and looked round to see pretty much all neighbours, left and right, looking out of their windows at me.

I will never live this down.