This is the story of how stroking a cat can change your world. You have been warned...
I first met Greebo the cat (indeed named after his Discworld alter-ego) on August 10th 1998. He was laid on the grass outside the house of the girl I had met two days earlier. I approached, he rolled over, I stroked his tummy...“Is that my cat?” asked the girl stood in the door. At this moment, Greebo, who had enough of my attention, bit me. “Yup, that’s my cat,” the girl stood in the door confirmed.I bid my farewells, with no intent of seeing girl or her cat again...Ha! Little did I know that Greebo wasn’t nice to anybody, voluntarily offering his tummy was tantamount to a proxy proposal of marriage. Despite living almost 300 miles apart, I saw quite a lot of that girl, Vee, (and her cat) and by November of that year, I had offered Vee a place to stay while she looked for work in London.It would transpire that the girl and the cat came as a package deal. “Love me, love my cat,” she said. And since it turned out I loved the girl, this wheezy, allergic-to-cats, tenancy-agreement-says-no-cats-and-besides-I-don’t-do-cats fool of a man agreed to this odd two-for-one offer.
Of course, we hadn’t checked with Greebie (as he was affectionately known) if this was acceptable. Turns out, that being hand weaned from the age of 3 weeks old gives a cat a certain belief in ownership and he had no intention of sharing. He was the ultimate “jealous puss”.Shortly after Vee and Greebie moved in I found myself in A&E, with a towel wrapped round my arm that was turning steadily red.It was explained to the nurse that I had been attacked by a cat. The nurse was horrified and I think, suspecting some panther-like escapee from a zoo or circus, demanded to know the size of the cat. “Just a small domestic cat,” I replied sheepishly.Pumped full of antihistamines and antibiotics the two four inch gashes on my forearm stopped swelling up, the bleeding stopped and I went home. I still have two beautiful tram-line scars as a constant reminder of that particular disagreement.Oddly enough we got on much better after that and we moved from a flat to a house and we all had more room things improved dramatically and Greebie had pigeons to hunt and embarrassingly, on occasions, other families pets, such a couple of baby rabbits, but that’s another story for a different day.By the summer of 1999 Vee was now my wife and by Christmas 2000 we discovered we were going to be parents (She opened a WonderBra from me, I opened a positive pregnancy test from her. Vee never did wear that bra...)Given Greebie’s reaction to sharing Vee with me, we weren’t sure how he’d take sharing her with a baby, so, on the recommendation of a vet, we acquired another cat, Knut, to keep Greebie busy. She did, but that again, is a tale for another day.Romilly was born in September 2001, just a few days after 9/11 and we worried about what kind of world we’d be bringing a child up in, as I guess a lot of us did at the time.
As Milly grew, Greebie became her constant companion and interactive play-thing, they were inseparable. So when Yvie came along in 2007 as the ultimate April Fool’s Day gag (two weeks early) we wondered how Greebie, now 11, would fare...Admirably, it turned out, almost kitten like in his enthusiasm to play, he had the full attention of an almost six year old and a new baby and he loved it. As Yvie grew into a toddler he was often found being half carried, half dragged from one room to another, completely content with his new role in life.
Turns out Yvie was born with a hole in her heart (now healed) and Greebie became our early warning mechanism, refusing to leave Yvie’s side twenty-four hours before an inevitable turn for the worse and another emergency admission to hospital.So, in early 2012 when Vee started to feel unwell and lost her voice for seven weeks and Greebie refused to be budged from her side, save to eat and for comfort breaks, we knew something was up, even if then, we didn’t know what. The “something” would turn out to be a tumour in Vee’s Thyroid and in the weeks between diagnosis and the operation I would often wake in the middle of the night to find Greebie lying atop Vee, head tucked under her chin, purring for all he was worth. It was oddly comforting to know that he was doing his best.
Vee is still recovering from the long-term effects of her Thyroidectomy and Greebie has been a feline drill in the darkness of the night, purring away still.Then, a week go, it was clear that Greebie himself wasn’t well, so Vee took him to the vets, expecting the usual, “it’s his age, he’s getting old. Give him two of these a day and he’ll be fine.” Alas, this was not to be. After a couple of days in the feline equivalent of Intensive Care, tests indicated that Greebie was very unwell. Kidney failure and, ironically, hyper-thyroidism, meant Greebie, Vee’s baby of 17 and a half years didn’t have very long.The vet boosted him up so he could come home for the weekend, so the family could love him, in the flesh one last time, so our beautiful two girls, who have never known a house without a Greebie could say goodbye. There have been many, many tears.
Today, Tuesday, 11th June, 2013, as we lay cuddled in bed dreading the alarm, Greebie heaved himself out from underneath the bed, scrabbled up the duvet and dropped himself heavily onto the arm I had round Vee. A jealous puss to the very last...So, in a cold, wet, rainy and cliche ridden day we dressed slowly and with heavy hearts and glistening eyes took Greebie back to the vet. We held his paw and stroked his head and told him how much we loved him, how much he meant to us, how much he will always mean to us and after an injection by the vet waited for him to go to sleep. It didn’t take very long. It was awful, heart-wrenching and it was absolutely the right thing to do.It turns out I am a cat person. I will miss Greebie in ways I did not think possible until just a few hours ago. I will cuddle my girls and remind myself constantly that if that little black and white cat hadn’t rolled over and let me stroke him 15 years ago, I wouldn’t have any of this.Thank-you Greebie cat. I owe you everything.RIP my little friend.loveDad. x