This weekend's post is entirely different; I must keep you all on your toes. Another benefit of growing old is you can try things and be different. I was not always a dog woman. I have lived with cats of all shapes, sizes and temperaments for most of my life. The one that I have missed the most is Peanuts 🥜. John used to describe him as a king amongst cats. This week is the story of my curmudgeonly old tom (well minus done important bits) cat, Peanuts. It's a diversion from my usual eclectic mix of ramblings.
My mother was working away in Birmingham for a few nights. At the time, she was a lecturer in law. She, as usual, left my older brother in charge of my sister and I. In his wisdom, my brother handed me, his 12-year-old sister, some housekeeping with instructions to buy some milk and other bits from Sainsbury's in Muswell Hill. I was never one to hurry jobs I didn't want to do. So I took my time window shopping and just generally dawdling. We had recently lost our cat, Sooty, and I needed a feline fix. The pet shop was at the opposite end of Muswell Hill Broadway, so I headed there first.
When I looked down into one of the cages, the most beautiful ginger kitten looked into my eyes; he needed a home, and I needed a kitten. I put the housekeeping to a much better use than milk and bits. Peanuts was lovingly carried carefully home down Muswell Hill in a box. The only reaction I can remember from my brother was, "You can tell Mater," as he called our mother. I did and was very glad she was over 100 miles away and would be there for another couple of days. Peanuts used his blue eyes to charm her so he could stay.
Peanuts moved house on numerous occasions and took them all in his stride. The first move was from our family house to a seventh-floor flat. He used to sit on the balcony looking over the spectacular view of London. During the move, I stayed in the house with a couple of friends while my mother moved into the new flat. I was just closing the garage door, having got something out of the freezer, when Peanuts shot in. Unfortunately, not all of him made it. When I opened the garage door again, he came out but with the end of his tail hanging by a thread. He happily pottered into the house, liberally swishing blood all over the magnolia hall walls, blissfully unaware of the damage to himself and the walls. The vet chopped half an inch of his tail off, and I had to scrub the walls of all evidence of the carnage before Mother or the new homeowners arrived.
Peanuts was always my cat and grew up with me. He saw many changes over the years. When he first entered my life, I was a fresh-faced pre-teenager living at home with my mother and siblings; by the time he died 18 years later, I was married with a 10-year-old daughter, my son on the way and working and living in Hertfordshire. When my mother left home for Hong Kong, she left Peanuts, in charge, aged five and me, aged 17, living alone in a flat in Hornsey. I would never go to bed without him. I knew he would protect me from intruders or, at the very least, hear them before me.
Peanuts graciously allowed my husband, John, to share his home, under sufferance of course. He bought up our daughter Sarah. He taught her the best place to hang her fork over the highchair so he could steal her bacon, sausage, egg or whatever was available. He was an ace breakfast thief. John forgot this talent. One morning, he left his full English Breakfast on the floor to open the front door. He was only gone a minute, but that is all it took for Peanuts to devour the lot, including the baked beans. John was so shocked by the crime's speed and audacity that he couldn't be angry.
Food and Sarah were significant parts of Peanuts's life. He developed a liking for cold chicken vindaloo for breakfast. I stopped sterilizing Sarah's bottles when I caught her sharing his cat food. He took on a pack of four big dogs, thinking they were about to harm his bacon supplier. Sarah was on our front path in her pushchair, and Peanuts thought the dogs were heading her way. Watching a standoff between 4 dogs and one ginger cat spitting furiously at them was quite a sight. He won, and they scuttled off.
Peanuts survived our ground floor flat, gutted by fire in the middle of the night. When John asked a fireman if they had found any cats, they said they couldn't smell burnt cat. Peanuts appeared in the morning with Wordsworth, the tabby, who had joined our family, wanting their breakfast.
Peanuts earned his nickname, Albert Tatlock, a lovable but curmudgeonly character from Coronation Street. I still miss him today, 35 years later.
Did you grow up with pets? Which one was your favourite and why?
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I remember Peanuts! He lived a long life despite his tail ❤️! Tabby was my cat. She was a force - the vet had special leather gauntlets to put on when she visited. And Harry the dog would cry wanting to go upstairs, but couldn’t as Tabby would sit half way up, waiting to bop him on the nose as he tried to get past. Whenever we were all out though and it was just Tabby and Harry we’d come home to them curled up in the same room together.
This is great. Peanuts brings back memories of our own Norton, AKA "Thumbs" (so named because he was a polydactyl cat, born with an extra toe on each of his paws).
Thumbs was a scrapper who both patrolled and terrorized our neighborhood. He had a chewed-up, scarred ear and a broken kink in his tail that left him looking like the walking dead. I was convinced that he was invincible and was going to outlive us all. Although he had no friends in the feline world, he was the sweetest boy to our family, always leaping out of the shadows to rub up against our legs every time we were headed out, and since no one else in the neighborhood wanted this mess of coarse fur and battle damage, we ended up adopting him.
Thanks Jo, your wonderful memories of Peanuts were able to help me rekindle some of my own 😼