Archie

Animals have a special place in my heart. I will admit to being a ‘cat’ man. I don’t mind dogs but I prefer cats.

As a small child I can remember pulling a piece of string, with a little fold of paper tied to the end, around the dining room table and being chased by our neighbour’s cat ‘Tiger’ (I can still remember his name after all these years!). I seemed to be able to do it for hours. I learned that cats are magnificent ‘time wasters’. They will do anything in their considerable powers to distract one’s attention from the important things.

Be that as it may, I have been the servant of many cats but four, in particular, stand out in my memory. From long ago to the most recent: ‘Lady Grey’ - when I was about nine or ten years old; ‘Early’ (one of three born ‘Early’, ‘Sunday’, ‘Morning’ under my mother’s bed) – in my late teens; then ‘Tanita’ – just after we came to Australia; last but not least was ‘Archie’ – my subject today.

Archie was one of a kind. We acquired two long haired tabbies – supposedly a mixture of some moggie and a Norwegian Farm Cat. The male we called Archie and his sister, Bella. Now as I say, Archie was one of a kind. From the beginning he was the most amazingly playful cat and he was the only cat I have ever known to fetch a toy. If he was bored you could hear him scrabbling away in his toy basket (full of corks, ping pong balls and little rattly things) and he would bring you something that he wanted to play with – more often than not it would be a wine bottle cork - carried in his mouth. He loved corks; he could hold them in his mouth and they had a satisfactorily erratic trajectory when thrown or patted with a paw. Archie would play with it for a bit then bring it back, with the expectation that you would oblige by playing with him again.

And talk! I have never known such a talkative cat. He had an amazing vocabulary, from little chirrups of welcome to the usual purring and all sorts of meows, varying in sound and intensity and a ferocious growl when angry. He would also answer when called and come running with his most beautiful plume of a tail held high.

But his most endearing characteristic was when he wanted my full attention. He would actually stop me walking, by entangling himself between my feet. Once I had stopped he would move in front of me and with a special little movement of his head wait expectantly for me to make the next move which was to form a cradle with my arms close to my chest. He would then leap gracefully into my arms, sit in the ‘cradle’ and cuddle up, purring thunderously all the while. If he was feeling really affectionate he would stretch up and rub his head against my chin. Archie would do this to me even though he was more attracted to my wife and was really ‘her’ cat.

Archie was also the gentlest cat I have ever known. He never, ever, used his claws when he was with us. If for some reason he felt himself slipping from my wife’s lap or from my arms, he would just fall then jump up again. He never, ever, dug his claws in to stop himself from falling. If, when playing with him, or teasing him and he became tired of the game or irritated with my teasing, he would either pat my hand with his paw as if to say ‘that’s it – enough’ or he would hold my finger in his teeth for a moment to two, as if to say ‘if I really wanted to I could hurt you with a bite – now stop!’

He completely overshadowed his sister Bella. I use the past tense, because, even though he was a neutered tom cat, he used to travel a bit to neighbours houses and across the road. At that time we had as neighbours, in the block of town houses we live in, a group of girls who were really neighbours from hell. Anyway, one evening Archie did not come home for his dinner. I called and called but he never came.

The next morning I went to look for him and found him across the road neatly laid out in a fruit tray – dead. He was only about three years old – in his prime. Someone obviously felt enough for him to place his little body in the tray, for which I was grateful. We all missed him terribly – he was a little friend, in good times and bad. My wife was inconsolable because he used to keep her company when she rested on our bed after she came back from her dialysis. And his sister Bella seemed lost without him and refused to eat for days, in her grief for her brother. I admit that I felt his death very personally.

I have my suspicions that it was a boyfriend of one of our neighbours from hell, who always drove too quickly up our common driveway, who hit and killed Archie. If it had been someone driving on the road, they would have driven on and left him there – they certainly would not have gone to the trouble of finding a box to put him in.

So there we are. Bella, bless her little furry soul, is still with us – she is about ten years old. She is not so playful and certainly not as affectionate, nor does she talk so much and is rather an introverted little thing. But she is not Archie.