A feline cynic who exploits his coterie of admirers

“Cats are connoisseurs of comfort,” according James Herriot, probably the world’s most famous vet and the author the animals classic, All Creatures Great and Small. And he is right on the money if Charlotte’s cats are anything to go by.

Charlotte likes dogs well enough, but cats are by far her favorites. She is very fond of our Scottish terriers, Casey and Chloe, but that is because, as a breed, they are most feline-like members of the canine species.

“Just like cats, they are not in the least bit interested in asking human beings for advice,” Charlotte explained. That was certainly true of her cats.

When I first met Charlotte, she had a garden apartment on Cathcart Road, a leafy thoroughfare lined by cherry trees in the London borough of Chelsea. Her housemate at the time was a large, exceedingly self- indulgent, Persian, named Thomas Gray.

Thomas had the makings of an extraordinarily handsome cat. His coat was a particularly attractive shade of gray and his eyes were a slightly darker shade of the same color and appealingly soulful.

The trouble was that he always looked as though he had been dragged through a hedge backwards. Far from being smooth and svelte, his coat looked, for all the world, as though he’d spent six months sleeping rough with the drunks in Green Park, a stone’s throw from London’s famous Ritz Hotel.

His whiskers, though unusually long, were never sleek and straight. Rather, they always looked frazzled—like those of the Looney Toons’ pussy after he had just been fed dynamite by the cartoon canary.

Charlotte would spend hours trying make Thomas Gray look presentable—brushing a sheen into his coat and teasing out the knotted clumps of hair. After the grooming session, he would stalk haughtily out into the yard, returning an hour later as disheveled as before.

Worse than his studiedly scruffy appearance was habit of disappearing for two or three days at a time. He always came back, his coat invariably wildly awry, whiskers frizzed and with the same “lean and hungry” look as Cassius in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

Charlotte would find him crouched by her front door, yowling resentfully. Back in the house, he would wolf down a vast meal and slump on the rug in front of the electric fire. A couple of days later, after a few hearty meals and the inevitable—and utterly pointless—grooming session, he would be off on his travels again.

Thomas Gray’s cynical exploitation of Charlotte’s generous nature came to end a couple of months or so after I met her. I’d invited her to a picnic in Hyde Park. However she gently rejected my proposed menu of Spam sandwiches.

“You provide the wine,” she said, firmly, “I’ll make the sandwiches—just as a matter of self-defense.” This entailed a visit to the deli on the corner,. No sooner had we crossed the threshold, than we spied Thomas Gray snoozing on a cushion behind the counter. “What are you doing here, Thomas Gray?” asked Charlotte.

“I think you’ve made a mistake, miss,” said the woman behind the counter, “That’s our Fluffy. He always sleeps there, except when he’s out on the prowl.

“Actually, it’s my Coddles,” countered another woman, who had just entered the store. “He’s very friendly. He visits people up and down the street.”

Thomas Gray didn’t even have the decency look embarrassed. He yawned, opened one eye and went back to sleep while the three women debated his future.

It turned out that Thomas regarded himself as his own master and clearly intended to live life on his own terms. He had accumulated a coterie of admirers that he visited in rotation for substantial meals and warm beds.

Charlotte reluctantly retired from the fray. As a busy foreign correspondent, she couldn’t compete for Thomas’ affections with a deli owner able to offer him large quantities of tasty scraps or retirees keen to lavish affection on him 24/7.

Thus I found myself scouring the small ads to console her. Finally, I came across a couple who needed to find a new home for a cross between a delicate Burmese mother and a big burly English tabby father. He had the poise of Bast, the ancient Egyptian cat god, the gorgeous brindle coat of his Burmese mother and a lithe, muscular frame inherited from his father —. the sort of cat one encounters i in fashion magazines

This presumably explains why his owners acquired him to grace their spacious and fashionable apartment—the elegance of which also explains why they were so eager to get rid of him. Like most cats, he tended to shed large quantities of fur.

“They were a bit pretentious,” I told Charlotte as I introduced him to he, “They called him Tiger Moth.”

“No wonder he looks so uncomfortable,” she replied, “The poor chap doesn’t look anything like a Tiger Moth.“ Gravely, she looked into his eyes. He stared equally gravely back. “What’s your real name?” she asked. The cat stared back for a moment.

“Mao,” he replied, emphatically.

That is how Chairman Mao Tse-tung came into our lives. There was nothing ideological about the title. Chairman was his job description. For 21 years Mao was the undisputed boss of our household. GPH✠