It’s Official! Summer is Here.

For the past 20 years, Mrs A and I have had the dubious privilege of sharing our home with our cat, Gin. She was one of two cats we acquired in 1987. The other, hold your sides to prevent them splitting, we called Tonic.

Tonic was a character. She was intelligent (by cat standards), great fun to have around and always wanting to play. Gin was, from the very first day, frankly, not very nice. When she wanted to be affectionate, she was always just too cloying. When she didn’t want to be affectionate, which mercifully was most of the time, she was just plain bad-tempered. She was always very greedy and prone to yelling loudly when she wanted food, or to be let in or out. She was also a bit thick.

Unfortunately Tonic, being an adventurous creature, decided that playing on the far side of the busy road outside our house of the time was much more fun than staying in our (large) garden. The consequences were as inevitable as they were sad and she was pushing up the daisies before she was 5 years old.

Gin, on the other hand, appears to be indestructible, despite her tendency to walk behind the car when we’re reversing. She is now the human equivalent of about 92 years and, apart from being a bit stiff and wobbly (for which we have to give her tablets: cue much wailing, struggling etc.), deaf and even more stupid than ever, is in fine health. However, her personality has not changed over the years. She now has two modes, ‘bad-tempered’ and ‘asleep’ (and for all we know, she’s bad-tempered while she’s asleep). She has taken to waking us up with loud wailing in the early hours. She can’t really wash herself properly so apart from being a bit sticky and smelly, she can’t rasp out the dead hair in her coat so she looks a bit like a charity shop fur coat. We, of course, have to brush out her coat for her (cue much wailing, struggling etc.). Because she doesn’t move much, and gave up hunting a couple of years ago, her claws never get worn down and we have to cut them (cue much wailing, struggling etc.). All of this means that she’s pretty high maintenance. Whoever reckoned that cats lower your blood pressure obviously never encountered Gin.

Gin can be seen mostly in the three poses in the photographs. First is ‘waiting to be fed’. This takes up about two hours of her day and usually involves quite a lot of prowling around the kitchen when we’re busy. Frequently, therefore, she gets trodden on (cue much….). Second is ‘feeding’. This used to take about 1 minute of her day but she’s a bit slower of late. The third is ‘unconscious’. This is her favourite activity, taking up about 20 hours each day. Not illustrated are ‘yelling’, about 2 hours, and ‘leaving smelly presents’, usually just beside the driver’s door of the car. We’ve no idea how long she spends doing this and don’t wish to know.

What has all this got to do with summer? We’re glad you asked. Well, one remaining aspect of Gin’s personality is that it is well and truly split. Lurking inside that ‘bag of rags’ body are in fact a summer cat and a winter cat. We must say that she does change from one to the other so consistently close to the equinoxes that there must be some mechanism at work inside her. One day it can be sunny and 15°C and she can’t abide being outside. The following day it can be sunny and 15°C and she loves it.

The defining characteristics of the winter cat are that she sits outside the front door screaming to be in. Once in, she lies by the fire and sleeps for hours. Contrast that with the summer cat. That version sits inside the front door screaming to be out. Once out, she lies in the sun and sleeps for hours.

Well, despite what the weather forecasters are telling us about the next week or so, Gin decided a few days ago, about a fortnight before the Vernal Equinox, that she is now a summer cat. No amount of snow and ice will change the firing of the neurons in her walnut-sized brain until around the end of September. So there you are. Enjoy the summer everyone.