My Life in Cats (Part I: 1975–1982)

Early years in Hastings, one cat, one crisis, and one bottle of milk at a time

1975, by my measure, was the most important year in the history of humankind. Two geeky-looking fellas found a company called Microsoft, Aston Villa win the league, West Spam the FA Cup, the Khmer Rouge embark on a genocide, Muhammad Ali beats Joe Frazier in the Thrilla in Manila, Iceland and the UK engage in the Cod War, the Americans get kicked out of Vietnam, Maggie Thatcher becomes the first female leader of a British political party, and a child is born.

A child is born. That’s the important event right there. The population of the world hovers around four billion, and I was reluctantly born into this world. I say reluctantly because it was a long labour. I was apparently dragged out with a suction cup that made my head a weird tit shape for the first few days. I’m glad that didn’t last.

As I entered into existence, the world said goodbye to King Faisal, Tim Buckley, the prime minister of Luxembourg, and a long list of people I have never heard of. Seems like slim pickings on the reincarnation front.

Born into a house with three cats. All cats are inherently beautiful, even the grumpiest, ugliest ones, but of those three cats, only one is truly legendary.

The three cats were Tiger, the first family pet, who eventually lost a fight with a badger; Tiffy, a cat my father bought as a surprise for my mother to calm her down after an argument; and Freddie, the hero of today’s story. Freddie was purchased by my father from the pet shop in Dursley on the understanding that it was a male cat. My mother, seeing Freddie for the first time, pointed out that she was a female on account of being a tortoiseshell. Freddie is the only one I remember, as the others died before my brain acquired the ability to make lasting memories..

Within two years or so, my family had landed in 60 Plynlimmon Road on the West Hill of Hastings, passing through Cambridge along the way. I’ve always considered myself a Hastonian, as it’s the only town I’ve known since I was very little, but in truth, I was born in Gloucestershire Royal Hospital.

Hastings is a fascinating place to grow up, especially on The West Hill, which overlooks the Old Town towards the east and the town centre towards the west. In many ways, a picturesque town and a popular tourist destination. Nestled on the coast, surrounded by countryside with the English Channel stretching off towards the horizon, a charming little town full of writers, painters, musicians, and all manner of quirky individuals.

At the same time, it’s also consistently quite deprived and blighted by all manner of social problems: homelessness, substance abuse, teenage pregnancies, domestic abuse, and a shockingly high suicide rate for decades. Despite all these things, or maybe because of them, it’s the town that shaped me, and it will always have a piece of my heart.

It’s in these early years at Plynlimmon that Freddie started to develop some interesting habits. The first one I remember being aware of was her insistence on being a part of the weekly journey to the supermarket.

This would be around 1980, I guess. This was before having a family car became the standard, and at the time, as far as I remember, Hastings only had one big supermarket. Once a week, my whole family would trudge down the hill, through the town centre and up to the Sainsbury’s on Cambridge Road (currently ESK, you can still see the Sainsbury’s colours on some of the floor tiles).

Both my parents, all four kids, each given a bag or two on the way back, allocated on the basis of weight and age. About a mile there and back, undertaken in whatever weather was occurring on the day. An absolutely unremarkable endeavour, and fairly normal in those times, apart from one curious addition, the cat.

The cat had taken up the peculiar habit of travelling with us on these family shopping outings. We would walk down the hill all together, unsuccessfully shooing her and telling her to go home. She would sit and stare, watching us, and then, when a certain distance opened up, trot along quickly to catch up.

This would frequently attract the attention of passers-by, especially once we were inside the supermarket, with half the other customers stopping to comment on or pet our eccentric cat.

It was around this age that I started at Blacklands Primary School, a place where I quickly acquired the ability not to fit in. School was challenging for me; I had a terrible lisp, which in turn caused a stutter. Not a useful quality in a school in England in those times. Kids can be cruel.

Back then, they used to give us a little bottle of milk in the mornings when we arrived. On hot, sticky summer days, the smell of it was overwhelming, seeming as if it was on the turn already. But sitting down quietly in the corner, poking the straw through the tin foil top, and emptying the creamy contents was one of life’s small pleasures. I guess the idea was good dental health and an end to rickets.

I wasn’t able to settle in. At playtime, I would spend a lot of time hanging out with the pigeons and nibbling on the crisps dropped by the other kids. Unfortunately, I had a ‘healthy’ apple rather than crisps in my lunchbox. The pigeons quickly accepted me as one of their own.

One year, after the holidays, I waited patiently for my morning milk. The teachers ushered all the students to sit down, and I waited stubbornly in the place where the milk crates were supposed to be. The teacher asked me to sit, and I managed to mumble a sentence asking where my milk was.

The teacher knelt down to my level, took me by the hand and said somewhat cruelly, “Margaret Thatcher said you can’t have milk anymore.”

Turns out that back in ’71 she had ended free school milk for seven- to eleven-year-olds, earning her the moniker Margaret Thatcher the Milk Snatcher. As a result, even that small pleasure was now closed to me.

The cat, of course, didn’t much care about the milk situation, but more of that later.

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

Next time: Hastings gets stranger, Freddie gets bolder, and I learn a few things about life and such.