The Revenant

Rolph the Cat is back!  Now, I realise you didn’t even know he was missing, but he’s back.  A returner from the dead – a Lazarpuss, if you will.

And why should you care?  Allow me to fill you in - if Rolph didn’t exist you’d have to invent him.  Bastard son of Lemmy the Cat (the bin bag harlot).  Born with a caul over his face, the runt of the litter.  Tall for a cat.  A measured gaze and jacked up back legs – like a Zanzibar racing camel, a wiser and more specific man than me once pointed out. 

A wit and raconteur, if only he spoke Human.  A poet and artist, if only he could solve the opposable thumbs’ conundrum (the conthumbdrum?).  A reader of Rimbaud, Verlaine and possibly a little Marquis de Sade.  Well, all cats have a cruel side.

Like all artists, difficult to live with – shining too bright, followed by whole days of existential angst when his issues meant there was nothing else for it but to lie on top of the kitchen dresser with his head drooped over the edge, musing on his whole raison d’etre.

Sporty too – an awesome retriever of screwed up paper and the best wicket keeper in the whole of the West Mids.  All round, renaissance cat, his signature dish of decapitated squirrel was remembered by all who observed (or dared to eat) it.

He had an idiosyncratic, work ethic for a cat, regularly bringing tons of pieces of paper or card he’d gathered through the cat flap.  One morning, there were thirty, separate pieces of rubbish artfully arranged – KFC wrappers, Papa John pizza boxes, Aldi carrier bags. A cottage industry of crap.

He dragged our neighbour’s parcel into our garden and on Valentine’s Day, a large, padded card.  I wondered about the implications of this – had he found a discarded card from a spurned lover and wanted to save someone’s feelings?  Or had he stolen it before it was given, causing an un-necessary cleaving?

And damn, he could rock a hat!  The George Melly or Pharrell Williams of cats.

Then, one day at the beginning of May, he disappeared.  There one minute and gone the next.  Vamoosed, vanished.  The house seemed quieter and the remaining cats seemed… just cats.  His brother, Johnny, a faithful, dogged Watson to Rolph’s flamboyant Sherlock.

We mounted a poster campaign (finding it difficult to find a picture where he wasn’t sporting a hat) and got many a text and call from the old lady network, who hadn’t actually seen him, but sagely and as it turned out, rightly assured us he’d be back.  Never underestimate the wisdom of an old lady.

After various tipoffs, we went on stakeouts that saw us lurking in back alleys, peering over walls at cats that weren’t ours.  The cats, caught unsuspecting in the middle of their nefarious cat biz, peered back. 

We found out from people in nearby streets that Rolph had a number of alter egos.  Owners of cats might speculate about the other lives their animals lead, but rarely get evidence of it.   We found out he was Eugene, who regularly popped across the road for a barbecue and nibbles in the garden.  He was, “oh, that’s Wilf, who stays with Dan the postman.”

No lead found him though and although my son said he was sure he’d gone on a pilgrimage to find himself, I thought we’d never see his like again.

We’d begun thinking about getting a compensatory kitten (we’re really shallow in our family) when I got a phone call to say Rolph had been found.  In Hollywood! Hollywood, Worcestershire, that is.  But still, how jazz hands Fabulous for him to have gone to Hollywood!

He’d been spotted walking through a field of horses and was now boarding in the kennels and cattery run by the people who owned the horse field.  I picture him in this country setting, either Huck Finn-like in a battered, straw hat, jauntily tilted; spear of grass in his mouth.  Or possibly, on the back of a white stallion, clinging on to its mane, taming it, breaking it.

As we’re in another country, we can’t go and fetch him for a couple of weeks and I asked the rest of the family how much they want him back.  They’re all at 100%.  I reckon, I’m at 85%, leaving, 15% for the emotional and financial hassle I know he’ll continue to bring. 

But that’s just the way he rolls.  And for now at least, Rolph the Cat is back!

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