The Life and Death of Alphabet

The cat arrived in September 2008 while I was on tour. Anna let him into the house because he was sheltering from torrential rain under a car. She didn't feed him but he refused to leave and spent days on our doorstep.

Eventually she gave in, started feeding him and he became our cat. He had no collar, no microchip and we didn't find any lost cat notices matching his description so we have no idea where he came from.

He loved me and I loved him. My wife named him Alphabet because he was black and white, like printed words. Also, before we found out whether he was male or female, we left our options open in shortening his name to either Alphie or Bettie.

At Christmas we tried to take him with us to visit my family but he panicked in the car and lapsed into drooling catatonia.

So we brought him back to the house, revived him and phoned everyone we knew who was staying in town over Christmas. We arranged for someone to come and feed him most days but I had to drive 4 hours back home on Christmas Eve. I left again at 2am on Christmas Day. For the duration of my stay, he sat on my stomach with his nose touching mine.

He was grumpy, smelly, old and set in his ways and he didn't like children. When our son grew old enough to chase him, he got even grumpier. He refused to run away from the uncoordinated toddler's attempts to stroke him. Instead he sat deadpan until the pressure built up to the point where he would start biting Paddy. Fortunately, Alphie had no teeth left to speak of so no-one ever ended up in hospital.

And eventually he got annoyed to the point where he left us and moved in with a couple of stoners down the road. I asked them not to feed him but they ignored me. We tried feeding Alphie amazing special food but it wasn't enough to get him to stay and I felt there was nothing else I could do. We gave him up with misgivings that the two stoners weren't up to the task of looking after Alphie properly.

A few weeks ago he started coming to us again. We didn't feed him but we let him in and out and he spent some nights here. He seemed to be getting on better with Paddy who is now old enough to be more coordinated in his stroking.

And last week, while we were away from home, two loose dogs cornered him and did enough damage that he died the next day - the stoners didn't take him to the vet to be put down. Apparently he was waiting near our door when the dogs got to him.

There is no point to this story except that I thought he deserved a better death than that and I wanted to give him a decent memorial.