I map my neighbourhood in cats, and the map has changed
I’m aware of all the cats in my immediate neighbourhood—out the large communal back court of my tenement block and in the surrounding streets—if not on head-patting terms. The first cat I knew in this way was Zozo, an elderly black and white cat who sat in the corner bay window one block away. On warm days, one window would be propped open with a cushion. A low, weatherbeaten table, like an old-fashioned school desk, stood by the outer wall to allow him to exit in two stages. Zozo no longer had enough feline spring to do it in one.
In the strange, empty days of COVID, Zozo went missing. This is how I know his name: posters appeared on lampposts, one on the wooden fence of his garden. Despite knowing Zozo only as a small furry shape in the window, one who paid me scant attention, his disappearance pierced me. One more tiny loss of the everyday in a world faded to a shadow of its former richness.
Cats go missing all the time. They roam where they will, and too often they are hit by cars or attacked by foxes or simply end up in a drain or in a rubbish heap where they’ve crawled to die for whatever reason, a small furry body that once contained an indomitable spirit, a large personality, lying like a discarded soft toy dribbling its filling.
Seeing missing cat notices is unbearably sad, because mostly they never come back.
The thought of old Zozo as one of these anonymous little corpses, all knowledge of him lost, was painful to me. When the notices came down, I made the negative assumption, which is usually true. When I saw his owner, an elderly lady, sitting out in the corner garden one evening, I crossed the invisible line between strangers and asked, what happened to Zozo?
‘Oh, we found him,’ she said, matter-of-factly. ‘He was locked in someone else’s garden.’
My relief was all out of proportion for a cat who’d never so much as blinked in my direction.
After this, I stopped to chat to the woman a couple of times, although she didn’t sit out very often. At a local fete, held in the community garden across the road, she presided over a table of cat pictures. I said hello, but I don’t think she remembered me.
Over a period of months, the garden became overgrown. One section of the wooden paling fence sagged heavily. Zozo no longer appeared at the window. Eventually, the blinds came down. Now it was the turn of Zozo’s owner to disappear. Had she gone travelling? Perhaps she had a second home in Italy or France, or was studying yoga in Bali. This was my most positive speculation. I did not expect it to be true.
The other day, I saw a young man walking a russet spaniel in the garden. The grass, having reached its maximum height, had suddenly become dry and flattened, as if stomped by a giant foot overnight.
Glasgow is a place where strangers talk to each other. I asked about the old lady, and Zozo.
The young man replied that the woman—the first time I’d heard her name—had sadly developed Alzheimer’s and been moved into care by her daughter. She’d not been well for a while.
‘She had such an interesting life! She was born in’ —he named a country—‘and she was an artist. Her flat is full of cat paintings.’
By this measure, my life could also be deemed interesting, although perhaps young men have low standards for old ladies, who are often congratulated for having done anything at all.
He recounted a time he’d taken her and Zozo to the vet, and the vet, hearing a garbled, semi-demented story of what might be wrong with Zozo, had suggested expensive tests.
‘To exploit an old person in that way!’ The young man was disgusted, and so was I.
Zozo is now being cared for by the daughter while a final home is sought. I see adverts all the time on Facebook from various cat shelters, seeking final owners for beloved senior cats, their eyes misty, their fur tatty. It breaks my heart. But who wants to pay the vet bills for an old cat, if they haven’t had the joy of its kittenhood?
The daughter was very kindly allowing the young man to use the L-shaped garden to walk the dog. The park across the road, the usual toilet run, was locked because of rats; the council had put down poison a few months back and notices still warned people off.
Another young man let himself in the little gate, apparently the co-daddy of the little dog, which was very young and excitable, darting about the garden. We talked about the rats, which are also a problem in my back court. The second young man said that heavy rains a little while back had swept all the rats from the northern suburbs of Glasgow to the West End. I imagined a plague of yellow-eyed rodents surfing a biblical flood-tide from Hamilton, Possilpark and Summerston. (Had the northern suburbs been flushed free of rats altogether? Had the rats tried to return ‘home’ or had they happily accepted their forced relocation, rejoicing in the overflowing bins of the West End?)
The two young men lived in the flat directly above Zozo, and yet I’d never seen them before, or at least not noticed them.
The puppy finally squatted, unsteadily, for a poo. One of the young men extracted a plastic bag from a nylon dispenser that dog-parents routinely wear like lanyards or money belts. We chatted for a little longer, and they told me their names, which I immediately forgot.
I walk past that corner most days. I’ll never see Zozo or the elderly woman again, but I’ll probably see the two young men, walking their dog, now that I know to see them. In the next while, the L-shaped garden will be tamed, the fence mended, and one day, the blinds will go up and someone else will live in the corner flat. There may even be a new cat in the window, perhaps a younger one, who can jump up in one go.
In the meantime, two gingers have taken possession of my back court. I don’t know what flat they issue from, or even if they live together, but they slope around in perfect confidence, oblivious to the rats in the bin shed, the dogs on toilet walks or anyone who might object to their presence.
I will notice if they go missing, and there are several people I could ask.
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