Checkmate to Checkmate

You know that quote from Robbie Burns about what happens to the best-made plans of mice and men?  It can apply just as well to cats and women. Though come to think of it, I’m not sure about that. My plans may well have gone, as Robbie put it, “agley”, but I think so far as Checkmate is concerned things are going entirely to plan.

     After my much loved tortoiseshell Shelley (okay, it wasn’t original!) fell asleep and didn’t wake up on her favourite place on the armchair, I resisted the idea of having another cat. After all, there was no denying it, having a pet could be a bind, and after all, nobody could replace Shelley, could they? I resisted the idea for at least two weeks until I “accidentally” got into conversation with my friend Sue who works at the animal sanctuary and she just happened to mention that they had a lovely cat looking for a forever home. I’ve never been wild about that term “forever home”, it sounds like tempting fate, but even as I told myself that I would have a look but politely express my regret a pair of green eyes met me from across the room and I saw the black and white cat seated on the faded purple cat tree. And yes, I do mean black and white, not black with one white ear or one white paw. Something of the colouration scheme of a Friesian cow. Or a chessboard. And that led me to decide on the ideal name. I went through the motions of asking Sue if she had a name and she said that she had been found in one of the feral colonies, but it was plain she wasn’t feral, and though they generally kept an animal’s name if they knew it, they tended to just say “puss” or “pooch” or whatever if they didn’t, not because they were being in any way impersonal, but because they wanted the new owner to choose the name and for the animal not to be confused. “She’s got you eyed up, Liza,” Sue said, and of course, she had. Checkmate in more ways than one.

     They had to go through the official business of the home check and all that, but as Sue said, in my case it was just a formality. 

     She was right when she said that Checkmate was a lovely cat. Of course, like all cats, she had some issues with the concept of gratitude, and plainly thought that living in a comfortable home with a doting owner was her due. As Sue said, there was no evidence of ill-treatment. She was a bit skinny (as I was to discover myself, she was a terrible mouser) but had no health issues and though she could be a bit snooty with strangers, she had an amiable temperament and as long as she got what she wanted was undemanding. She was also what Sue expressively called a comfortable cat. Of course making herself comfortable was no minor part of that, though her capacity to apparently be perfectly comfortable at an unnatural angle on top of the radiator seemed to defy the laws of gravity, let alone those of comfort. But she was easy to live with. As my neighbour Beryl told me, when I was out at work she often saw Checkmate lying dozing or surveying the universe on the window sill. She wasn’t aloof and was pleased to see me when I came home, I flattered myself not just because her lack of opposable thumbs made opening a tin problematic, but there was no frantic leg-weaving or lap-kneading or banshee-like high octane miaows. 

     She was the kind of cat that even non-cat lovers liked and could get on with. 

     Well, that was what I thought. So when the office was closed for refurbishment for the summer I decided that rather than get temporary work I would indulge in a “taking my writing seriously” session. Not that I hadn’t done it before, but this time, I thought, I would take it seriously which, ironically, meant in some ways not taking it as seriously and accepting that a couple of short story competitions were probably more realistic than either picking up one of my unfinished novels again, or starting a new one.

     We must have made a cosy scene. Me seated at the laptop in what the more pretentious shopping channels called loungewear, which translated as, well, you’re wearing elasticated waist tracksuit bottoms and a cardigan that looks suspiciously like a bedjacket, but you’re dressed, and Checkmate curled up either on the radiator or on the armchair. I noticed that whilst Shelley had favoured the left side, she nearly always chose the right, but sometimes sniffed at the left, a curious (in both senses of the word) look in those keen green eyes of hers. I was pretty sure she knew that another cat had sat on that chair before her, and it wasn’t just some residual smell or the like, but it didn’t freak her out, and she wasn’t jealous. She seemed to find the thought rather pleasing, but made the point that she was no replacement but most definitely a cat in her own right by choosing the other side. 

     Half an hour must have passed before she leapt onto my lap. Oh, this is rather touching, I thought, and though I generally never went in for “animal baby talk” I confess that something along the lines of “Has ‘oo come to see Mummy?” may have crossed my lips, and she looked at me as if I had gone slightly, but probably harmlessly mad, and proceeded to put her paws (two white, two black) on the keyboard. I had always been mildly scornful of such images and told myself they were probably photo-shot and were demeaning to both cat and owner, though there was some guilty little core that whispered, “Yes, but it’s still cute”. I rubbed her chin in her favourite spot and asked if she was going to help me with my story, telling her I might even write one about her. This beats going into work and dealing with phone calls about home insurance, I thought. I could get used to this. 

     So could Checkmate. I could never quite fathom if she were fascinated with the keyboard or saw it as a rival. The next morning when I came down I found her lying across it. Well, I couldn’t resist. I took a photo. She quit her new-found favourite place readily enough when I presented her with breakfast and I took my chance to have a bowl of cereal and a slice of toast, too, even though I don’t normally go in for breakfast despite what “they” say about it being the most important meal of the day. This was probably a mistake. I should have seized the opportunity to get some writing done. As if we were choreographed in some paw de deux (sorry!) as I returned to the laptop, so did she, and deposited her sleek furry rump on the keyboard. 

     I felt the first stirrings of foreboding that this might well be cute but could also become a little problematic. I lifted her from the keyboard onto my lap and had a sensible conversation her about how it was lovely that she wanted to come and see me and I was so glad to have a spell at home with her, but she was a sensible cat, wasn’t she, and was going to sit down on the radiator or on the armchair for a while to let Mummy get on with her writing. I had almost subconsciously started referring to myself as Mummy. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with that, but I had never done it before, either with Checkmate or Shelley. 

     She looked at me without apparently feeling the need to blink, with her head cocked on one side in a pose almost more canine than feline, as if she were taking in every single word I was saying and we were in perfect understanding. And then proceeded to take her place on the keyboard again. 

     It was two days before I did what I hated doing and – well, I won’t even say had sworn I would never do, because the thought hadn’t even entered my head – relocated Checkmate to another room. Just for an hour or so, I promised her. Just while I get a proper start made on this story. And you can have chicken for tea instead of catfood. I had a little spare room on the ground floor. If my writing ever did amount to anything, I had some vague notion of converting it into a study. There wasn’t an armchair in it, but there was a radiator, and a window, and I put an array of cushions on the floor, along with a bowl of water and her favourite catnip toy (or at least the one she condescended to play with most often, reminding me of Colette’s quote about cats feeling the need to amuse us). She let herself be carried in there without making too much of a fuss. You’ve no need to feel guilty about this, I told myself. When you’re at work she spends hours by herself and Beryl has told you she’s quite happy dozing on the window sill.

     Two minutes later I was in the process of wondering whether the mixed metaphor that had come into my head was witty and original or just silly I heard a noise that (talking of mixed metaphors) would have curdled the blood of a brick wall. It was loud enough for me to hear in the next room, but not, purely in terms of decibels, earsplittingly loud. But it held the essence of reproach and abandonment and indignation and puzzlement so intense that the mere need to pause for breath appeared to have been side-stepped. 

     Ignore it, I told myself. She has water. She has cushions. She has a radiator and a window-sill and has never been traumatised by being alone for far longer than this. There are noises it is impossible to ignore. Not for one minute did I imagine that Checkmate was talking, but I knew that if she had been, she would be saying something along the lines of “I thought you were staying at home because you wanted to be with ME, and now you shut me in this room all by myself, and I am the most neglected and betrayed cat who ever set paw on this earth.”

     At that precise moment the doorbell rang, and I saw it was Beryl. I remembered that she had said she’d come round, mainly just for a chat but also because she was our local Avon Lady and the latest issue of one of my “guilty pleasure” magazines said their new night cream did miracles, and at a tenth the price of some of the high-end ones.

     Before opening the front door I opened the spare room one – I had left the one to the lounge ajar. For once I wasn’t that pleased to see Beryl, though of course it wasn’t her fault. Rebuking myself for a hypocrite, I half-wished that Checkmate would resume her newfound tricks. I certainly hoped that she would quit the plaintive reproachful wail that managed to be both eloquent and monotone at the same time.

     She did neither. She gave Beryl’s legs an affectionate rub, and then, with one neat balletic leap, took her place on the window sill and the note of her purr told me that she was sound asleep, or at least as soundly asleep as cats ever are.

     “Such a lovely cat,” Beryl said, fondly, getting out her catalogue. “No trouble at all!”