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~ Ilan Lerman: Dark Fiction

DREAMWEAVING

Tag Archives: Cats

Boris the Cat

03 Saturday Sep 2016

Posted by Ilan Lerman in Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Boris, Cats, Edinburgh, Memorial, Writing

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Boris started life in the most desperate of circumstances. Stuffed in a bin bag with his brothers and sisters as a new-born kitten and left by the bins at the bottom of a Glasgow tenement garden.

Thanks to the brother of my then work-colleague, whose garden it was, he was rescued, nursed to health and eventually landed on my doorstep, tiny and black and curious. I knew there was something quite special about him from that first day, when he fell asleep under my bed and snored with that wheezy snort he always had.

He lived with me for the best part of five years in two far-too-small flats, but it wasn’t until I moved into the Stockbridge Colonies in Edinburgh with Alexis that he really was able to be his true, happiest self. We had a little garden, and the street was quiet so he was finally able to enjoy and explore the outdoors, even though the flat was still pretty damn small. He sunned himself on the bench in front of our bay window, sat amongst the daffodil leaves and ferns sniffing the air, watching blue tits and robins, hoverflies and bumblebees. He was a pacifist. He never really hunted, preferring to watch the birds flit from the laburnum tree to the bride tree and back again. He occasionally toyed with a beetle or a cranefly in that cute, slightly obsessive way cats have, but seemed to just enjoy following their crazy progress with his huge expressive eyes.

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Everyone thinks their cat is the best in the world, or is the most eccentric character and truly the greatest cat by far. That says so much about the special bond that can exist between a human and a cat. It’s a relationship of mutual benefit. Boris was never shy about expressing his opinions. I’ve never met another cat with such a large vocabulary. From the tiniest little half-meows and throaty grunts and snorts, to his multi-syllabic meow-screams, telling you off for not doing what he wanted you to do, thoroughly putting you in your place. I’ve never known a cat to express indignation quite so pointedly as Boris could when you weren’t quite living up to your part of the bargain as human-owner.

He loved his fuss, his food (particular favourites – olives, cheese, tuna and ham) his catnip mouse, scratching post, sunbeams, eating grass (even though it made him sick nearly every time) and most of all, preening his shiny, immaculate midnight-black fur to perfection. He loved to sleep buried under blankets where he would leave an indentation coated in that fur. His hairs would follow us around the country. It wouldn’t be unusual to be 300 miles away and suddenly find a Boris hair in your eyeball.

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He would tap you on the arm if he wanted fuss, or if you stopped with the fuss too soon. It wouldn’t be unusual to be lying in bed and have a paw stretch up from below and touch your arm. He would headbutt you, violently rub his cheek on your laptop screen, knock the book you were reading out of the way so you paid him the attention he deserved. He loved having his belly rubbed, would purr like an engine, loved having the bridge of his nose stroked with the tip of a finger, would get the hiccups when he became too excited and the fuss was just too much.

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He had an uncanny ability to tell the time. His concept of routine was quite something to behold. He knew when I was coming home, would wake from his afternoon slumber about ten minutes or so before I got in and would be sat on the arm of the sofa waiting for me with a feed me meow. Sometimes we were like E.T. and Elliot. If he was feeling a bit under the weather, so would I. If I was nervous or upset, he would always pick up on it.

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Like many cats, he inherited many names. Some cute, some cuddly, some profane, some ridiculous, some whose meaning would take far too long to explain…

He was: Fluffyhead, Fluffmonster, Fuzzyhead, Little Pal, Supercat (because of the way he stretched his front legs straight out past his face when he slept on his stomach). He was: Jobby-ferret, Spunk-badger, Shit-weasel, Captain Dingleberry, Spaghetti-head, Fluffbum, Dude and many many others. But most of all he was my Buddy.

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Nearly three months ago we left Edinburgh. Through various miracles we managed to buy a beautiful house surrounded by woodland in a hidden valley, deep in the Ochil Hills. I had hoped it might be a fabulous retirement home for Boris, approaching his 14th birthday.

He enjoyed his time here, while he could: chasing his favourite treats up the long hallway, watching the pheasants and chaffinches from the many large windows, snoozing on the sofa, stretching out in sunbeams on the wood floors, tentatively exploring the garden and a house bigger than he’d ever seen.

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He had been losing weight, and starting to go off his food little by little, electing to sleep under the blanket on the sofa more and more. I thought his poor old teeth were giving him trouble so took him for some dental work at the vet. They found something more troubling, and over the last couple of weeks the liver disease ate away at him, taking away the things that made him Boris.

On Friday 2nd September, one day after his 14th birthday, and after the most difficult and heart-breaking decision I’ve ever had to make, the vet came to the house and helped him find some final peace.

I had hoped he would get to experience life here in the new house for much longer. To enjoy the heat of the wood-burner in winter; to explore the bushes and pine trees and fields of ferns. Still, what a way to come from the bottom of a Glasgow garden, dumped ignominiously by some callous bastard to a home where he was loved and cherished and had all the space in the world to be Boris.

We buried him in a small glade, between two vast old pine trees, with a handsome stone cairn to mark his spot. He can sleep peacefully now in the place he began to love.

Night night, Buddy. X

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Thinking in images

22 Sunday May 2011

Posted by Ilan Lerman in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Cats, Creativity, Inspiration, Short Stories, speculative fiction, Writing

When conceiving ideas for stories, I always think in images. Either montages of scenes from the imagined story, or even how the writing will look laid out on the page. It’s rare that words themselves appear first. I’m sure this is not a rare condition or even unusual,  but it does strike me that as a writer, words should be my mind-clay over and above images.

Perhaps it stems from a fascination with film from an early age. I even wanted to write screenplays seriously before I embarked upon prose in earnest.

This might explain a tendency to stare; to daydream about randomly spliced images that are happening around me; to invest huge significance into dream imagery and why said imagery finds its way regularly into my writing.

A random assortment; early Sunday evening –  Boris the Cat perched on top of the duvet, cleaning himself with languorous licks of his tongue. The clanking, hoarse breaths of a manual lawnmower in the garden opposite. Yellow flowers dripping from the laburnum tree.  The melee of coins, sad lottery tickets, pens, notebooks, an egg-timer, headphones, plectrums on my computer desk. Chess pieces knocked aside in some unseen catastrophe, no doubt orchestrated by a certain curious feline.

The key is converting the images into words, and then remembering to order the chaos and tell a story. That’s what people want to read after all, isn’t it?

Searching for inspiration

02 Saturday May 2009

Posted by Ilan Lerman in Uncategorized

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Tags

Cats, Inspiration, Jehovah's Witnesses, news, Panic, Swine Flu, Writing

My cat is hopping from one narrow windowsill to another with all the grace of a wombat. I’m peeking out of my ground floor bay window, anticipating the arrival of the two Jehovah’s Witnesses in their cream coloured macs at my door, although they seem to have disappeared somewhere towards the bottom of the street. Perhaps some diligent neighbour has cast them into the Water of Leith to be eaten alive by midgies.

If I hear the phrase ‘Swine Flu’ one more time…

The only killer virus sweeping the world at the moment is the dubious entity that calls itself ‘News’. It spreads with alarming speed and infects entire populations in the time it takes to click on a news story hyperlink. You click the mouse button, read the words and, despite your cynical mind rubbishing the blatant panic-mongering, a tiny particle of that mind-virus finds its way into the back of your thoughts and slowly eats away at your logic. Before long you are entertaining scenarios of living in the cellar and hoarding cans of baked beans and bottled water.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses came and were sent on their way. They thoroughly freaked out my cat, who came scuttling into the house growling. I’m guessing he doesn’t want a copy of the Watchtower…

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