My Life in Cats (Part II: Freddie and the Streets 1983-1986)

Growing up, getting into trouble, and learning from the fiercest teacher on the street: my cat Freddie.

Missed Part I? Read My Life in Cats (Part I) before diving in.

The street is my whole life. Back in the days when everyone knew each other.

1983, I turned eight, ZX81 evolves into ZX Spectrum 48k, the Falklands War gifts Thatcher a second term, first mobile phones, the war on drugs, and Michael Jackson’s Thriller. None of this is relevant. We have the A Team, Return of the Jedi and Scarface. Obviously, I am too young to watch Scarface. But I did watch Alien (1979) through a crack in the door whilst my big brothers and cousins sat in comfort, in a house in Ilkley. I gave them all headlice on that trip. We used to keep our eyes peeled because, apparently, famous TV celebrity Jimmy Savile occasionally jogged in that area.

Our hero, Cat Fred, has developed an interesting new habit. I guess she has some burning resentment towards dogs that brings out her aggressive side. She sits outside the house on the wall, proudly waiting for challengers. Which is any dog that walks past our house, Doberman, Poodle, Alsatian, Pitbull, Pug, she’s gonna make a mess of all of them. At the time, there used to be a poodle parlour just down the street on Vicarage Road. She’d jump in the middle and destroy the lot. It seems even the cat has Anglo-Saxon blood. Occasionally, people would come asking for vet bills to be paid, but my dad wasn’t having any of it.

Blacklands School continues. There are huts on legs that you can crawl under. I dig a hole underneath one of them. It’s a place I can curl up in and hide in Playtime. Escape from the animosity of other children. If they drag me out, I bite and spit. One day, I am dragged to the headmaster’s office (Mr Fuller, his son Simon famously managed The Spice Girls) and continue to fight in front of him. We are free in these times. The world is crawling with children like lice. We play everywhere, without parental supervision. On the swings, sometimes the flashers come in their dirty macs, masturbating at us and shit. When we are in a decent-sized group, we throw anything available at them. If it’s just me and another, we run towards the safety of Plynlimmonn. The world is a strange and hostile environment. Dangers lurk everywhere; as a result, we quickly learn our way forward.

The world is crawling with children like lice. We play everywhere, without parental supervision.

Freddie is a perfect family cat. Despite her eccentric behaviour, in the house she is a lap cat, loud purrs, affectionate and cuddly. She has a habit of stretching out and sunbathing on the tarmac in the middle of the road.

My mother, as mothers do, finds another mother with an awkward kid to be a friend for me. His house is in the sticks on the A21. We play in the woods there. One time, we found porno mags that some dirty old man left in the woods; the pictures were exciting, and forever burned into my memory. There is a pond there, I’m told from a WW2 doodlebug that exploded. Coincidentally, it exploded when a kid played with it decades before. His name was D.P. Franks, although I called him Dennis the Menace. He owned the store opposite our house. He had a glass eye and a prosthetic hand. In an odd way, that connection was cool. But in another way, he seemed lonely and old.

Why would you think I have an opinion about anything that happened in 1983? Put your expectations in a pair of old jeans, an uninspiring woollen jumper that needs throwing away. Fill it all with old newspapers. Fashion the shape of a man. Sit on a pavement for a few hours begging ‘penny for the guy’. Then throw your bargain basement effigy on a fire and celebrate that Guy Fawkes was hung, drawn, and quartered 369 years before you were born.

Every Sunday, I’d go to Sunday school at the vicarage along the road. Afterwards, back home for Sunday roast. The cars have smiley face stickers that say Nuclear Power, no thanks, the milkman delivers milk every morning, sometimes birds chip through the tin foil cap to get the cream. The cream is the best at breakfast. There is no central heating or double glazing, winters are hot water bottles and blankets, and ice on the wrong side of the window. After bathtime, we dry in front of the heater in the living room. On rainy autumnal days, we collect wood from down Croft Road, and my parents make papier-mache logs to burn in the fireplace in the dining room. We ride bikes a lot. In every way, the world is beautiful.

The street is my whole life. Back in the days when everyone knew each other. Threats to the community are not tolerated. It’s a safe place. But the kids from different streets and neighbourhoods fight each other for fun. But no one ever really gets hurt.

Cat Fred is Our Hero

The local paper takes an interest in our cat. This eccentric ball of love that fights dogs, follows us in supermarkets, and sleeps on the road. Back then, the world was covered in dog shit, dog shit everywhere, every pavement, every blade of grass. So the Hastings Observer wrote it up as ‘Cat Fred is Our Hero’, framing her psychotic violence as a crusade against dog shit on the pavements. Her photo appears on the front page, sitting proudly outside our house. I get the feeling she’s enjoying her celebrity status.

One day, around 1986, I’m walking to the corner shop with Vivian from across the road, and Freddie is sunbathing on the tarmac. I pick her up from the road and put her on the pavement, because roads are dangerous. We get our ice pops, or chocolate, or whatever it was we went for. A car speeds down the road, boy racer style. Too fast. Didn’t think anything of it in the moment. There is a bloody mess on the road. Vivian says, Isn’t that your cat? I guess I learnt the concept of denial at this moment. As we stand over the decimated body of my cat, whilst I explain to my friend that this is a dead seagull. Even touching the wing (cat leg) and showing it’s a bird, not a cat. Not my cat. I obviously was incorrect in this appraisal of the situation. I told my father, ‘There’s a dead seagull outside, but Vivian says it’s our cat.’ He went to look, and then came and got a shuffle and a black plastic sack. I don’t remember after, I guess I cried.

That day is vivid in my mind, as if an invisible barrier was crossed, a milestone along the way.

My Life in Cats is a series, part memoir, part observation, part nostalgia, told alongside the stories of the cats I have lived with.

In the next instalment, we welcome a new cat into our home, and I learn the terrors of secondary school.