I want to thank everybody who has been
so very kind, and very patient with me for the last few weeks.
I'm
back at work now, having taken some time, and am very slowly starting
to get organised. In the meantime, I wrote this last week, in memory
of my boy.
Magnus Cat, berator of cabinet
ministers, flooder of bathrooms, jumper from roofs, and the cat who
saved my life, has gone.
Mags wandered into our lives one day
in early summer of 2006.
He appeared in the back garden,
healthy, but skinny. And hungry. We fed him in the garden for a few
months – he'd appear twice a day, and we'd give him food, and off
he'd go on his way.
Eventually, the weather started to get a
bit chillier, and we started to worry about what might happen to this
sweet wee 'Friend' when winter set in. So I convinced him to come
and eat inside, and then one day, I shut the back door on him. We
did all the stuff you're meant to do – asking around if anybody had
lost a cat, putting a note on a collar we put on him, checking local
ads, etc.
The vet said he was about 10 months old, and that
he'd likely been dumped because he was 'no longer cute and kitteny'.
Also he was also a bit of a handful. Actually, a lot of a handful.
Think a base jumper but without a parachute, and in cat form.
A 5.5 kilo black and white tornado.
He would jump from
the top of the wardrobe onto the bed in the middle of the night –
usually onto my stomach.
He regularly jumped onto the kitchen
roof, because he worked out I could hear his meows from the top
floor, and that I'd come and let him in and give him food.
He
jumped onto next door's kitchen roof, just cos he could, and so
panicked our neighbours that they pulled him in through their window
and let him out the back door (I saw the whole thing – he could get
back the way he went, he was just being dramatic).
He would
balance along the tops of doors, and give me a near heart attack by
suddenly meowing at me when I didn't know he was up there.
He'd
come and wake me up in the morning by walking on my head, and somehow
always putting his foot in my eye socket (it was a perfect fit).
If
that didn't get me up, he'd pull my eyelid open with one paw, and
peer at me.
He knew how to turn on our taps in the bathroom –
he also once flooded the bathroom and the dining room below it by
doing so while we were out.
He shouted at a cabinet minister
during lockdown (via teams).
When the other cats were freaking out
about fireworks, he'd open one eye, as if to say 'oh will you shut
up, children', then go back to sleep.
From that day I
kidnapped him, he came home every single night except one. That was
because he was at the emergency vet, having a 3” blade of grass
extracted from his nose.
Mags did everything on his terms.
He liked people, but he would not take any of their crap.
You wanted to pick him up – fine, but you'd pay for it.
If he
didn't want to do something, he wasn't doing it – and he was strong
enough and determined enough to make sure you couldn't make him. To
be able to handle Mags, you had to have a stubborn streak wider than
his.
Even when he was dying, he had very firm ideas about
whether you'd be handling him or not (I still have the scratches to
prove it).
He loved other cats, but didn't take any of their crap
– they stepped out of line, they got their ears boxed, but then
he'd curl up and snuggle with them every night.
Learning that my Mags was dying was the
worst news possible, and it was very hard. I nursed him almost round
the clock for the weeks he had left, and he left us last week.
On
his last day, he had chicken parfait and real cream for brunch, and
went out in the garden one last time, and felt the sun on his
fur.
Then in the afternoon, he went to sleep in my arms, in front
of the fire, listening to the sound of bird song.
He's been
my best friend for 17 years. My heart is broken.
Magnus.
2005 – 15.02.2023, 4pm
Thank you my wee boy. Thank you.
