Brad and Tabitha

Every Tuesday evening we feed feral cat colonies in our part of San Antonio. It's a voluntary thing on behalf of our local Feral Cat Coalition, which is an official body recognised by the city. It has been established that it's better to stabilise feral cat colonies than to just round them up and gas them, as certain joyless cunts seem to think would be preferable. Stable colonies are easier to neuter and prevent incursion by wilder, un-neutered cats. Our local colonies are mostly tended by Susan and Randy, who do a lot for the local feral cats and deserve at least one night off a week, so that's where we come in.

We have seven colonies we visit, leaving food and water at each. It takes about half an hour at most. There's a colony on our route at an apartment complex which we don't touch because a local cat-hating nutcase has occasionally threatened Randy and Susan with a firearm. They didn't feel comfortable about asking us to cover that spot.

Nevertheless, we've had a similar flare up elsewhere, albeit one without any firearms. The colony is usually referred to as the double gates. It's waste ground behind a chain link fence with locked gates. The owner let us have a key so we could get in and feed the cats - one of the larger colonies, ten cats or maybe more. Unfortunately the land has been sold, so now we have to feed the cats on the verge in front of the fence because no-one seems to know what the new owner is doing; but it's a quiet street so it isn't a problem, or it wasn't.

We park on the verge and get out. Bess has milk containers filled with water. I have a bucket of dry cat food and a scoop. We stumble into the bushes to find the usual spot as black cats emerge from all around. We stumble because it's seven in the evening in November and is dark, and America doesn't seem to have gone for street lighting with quite the same enthusiasm as my country of origin.

'You shun't be feeding those cats,' we hear yelled from a house across the road, and yelled loud because he wants us to hear. He sounds drunk. 'Y'all are idiots.'

Bess and I are both shocked. We didn't expect this. I experience a sudden adrenaline rush, getting ready for a fight. 'Oh fuck off,' I call back, because it's cold, dark, and I'm not shouting the entire first paragraph across a street at someone I don't know.

'Y'all are encouraging wild animals and vermin,' he bellows with more feeling. I guess he didn't expect to be told to fuck off. Over the months, we've worked out how much food to dish out so that the cats get fed without leaving any surplus, but it hardly seems worth arguing the point.

Now his wife joins in. 'Y'all should be getting them neutered not feeding them. Y'alls are idiots!'

I can see where the house is but I'm concentrating on dishing out the food and getting out of there. Bess later tells me the two of them are hanging out of a window as they shout at us.

'We do get them neutered!' I call back.

We don't personally, but Randy and Susan handle that side of things fairly regularly. The problem at the moment is the coronavirus outbreak has limited the availability of spaces at animal clinics for those participating in the trap-neuter-return program. Anyway, the point is that the cats are neutered, even if it's not all of them or straight away.

'We do get them neutered!' I called back, in case you had forgotten.

'No y'alls don't!' bellows the male voice. It's hardly what you'd call a coherent refutation.

'Okay,' I say.

Stupidity makes me angry, because there's been too much of it on display this year, and often somehow presented as a mark of character. I shout back. My voice probably wavers and cracks but I'm past caring. 'We feed the cats. We trap then when we're able. We neuter them but it doesn't happen all at once,' I yell, or something to that effect, then add, 'it's not that fucking hard to understand, you stupid wanker.'

This is how I remember the exchange, but the moment was heated. In any case, by this point we're done. We get back into the car and head for the next colony. Later we pass the house and take their license plate. Bess engages in her usual detective work.

Their names are Brad and Tabitha. They're renting. One of them was born in 1985 but I can't remember which one. They're both sort of young, or younger than we are. Cops were recently called to a disturbance. They were both drunk, Brad sat on the porch, Tabitha out in the yard yelling about how she has the best vagina in all San Antonio - or words to that effect - and somebody had better come and get some of it, an address delivered as the kid, or possibly kids, looked on with their father. They've been yelling at Randy and Susan too, it turns out.

I'm dreading our next encounter, but the house is dark and silent the following Tuesday, and the same the one after that. They've also left Randy and Susan alone.

Maybe it's not that fucking hard to understand shamed them into behaving themselves, although it seems unlikely.

The Fence

When I first moved to America, my biggest moment of culture shock was - possibly oddly - to do with the fencing. In England we have brick walls or hedges around our gardens or yards, or stout wooden fencing of the kind against which a neighbour's child can kick a football for the best part of an afternoon to the rapturous delight of everyone within earshot. In America the default seems to be chain link fencing, which turns everything into a scene from Boyz n the Hood; so that no matter how nice one's garden may be, horticulturally speaking, you're always half expecting to see a ten-year old Ice Cube discovering a dead body in the alley at the back. They don't have chain link fencing in the better neighbourhoods but, on the other hand, the better neighbourhoods are mostly populated by people you wouldn't want as neighbours.

We know this because we have one living right next to us, an individual I'm naming Squidward for the sake of argument, a man who quite clearly wishes he lived in a better neighborhood. Our guess is that he was born into money with certain expectations but fucked up, obliging him to rent a place he can actually afford in these, his later years. He doesn't like cats, which is a shame, because we have fifteen of them along with a cat colony license, as approved by the city, which means we can have as many as we want. When he first kicked off, we very briefly entertained the idea of cat proof fencing which features an overhang at the top and keeps all of your cats in your own yard. We entertained the idea for as long as it took for us to notice how much that stuff would cost.

Then we saw that it was possible to buy the overhanging topper at a fraction of the price and attach it to an existing wooden fence so as to similarly prevent the daily feline exodus into Squidward's yard, there to deposit turd after turd after turd. This seemed a cheaper option but for the fact that we first needed a wooden fence to which the topper could be attached. We obtained quotes, one from Lowes, one from some other guy. The quote from Lowes suggested we would only be able to fence one side of our garden, specifically Squidward's side. The store representative told us that his guys would be able to work around the existing trees while ripping out the chain link and replacing it with wood to a height of six feet. He also warned us against hiring any old Chuck in a truck for the job. The other guy, who may actually have been called Chuck and who turned up in a truck, gave us the same quote for the same work except that he'd have to cut down all of the trees. We went with Lowes.

City and utility people came to check the ground for power lines, and then our garden was transformed into a building site for a couple of days. We hadn't told Squidward what we were doing. The fence was on our side of the property line meaning we were under no legal obligation to tell him anything, and that was part of the fun. The guys spent the first day cutting back tree limbs, pruning, and ripping up the existing fence, finishing up with a series of holes into which fence posts would be cemented. Next day, the fence started to go up.

From time to time we went outside to see how they were getting on, hoping Squidward hadn't been out there giving them any shit. Then we learned to our utter amazement, that his response to the sight of this fence springing up unannounced had been to additionally contract the guys to fence sections of his yard on the other side of his house, or rather the other side of the house he rents. This was sort of a relief, suggesting that Squidward endorsed the fence to some extent. We'd been expecting legal action, despite his having no leg to stand on, purely because he's a complete wanker whose mission in life seems to be a never ending quest for disappointment in the behaviour and actions of those around him. Typically, he was already starting to piss the workmen off, apparently being unable to decide what he actually wanted them to do. We watched them rolling their eyes as they muttered to each other while sawing and hammering.

Ever since Squidward snitched to Animal Control, he's been an elusive presence, and I get the impression that he's scared of us. Where once he seemed to be out in his garden all the fucking time, impossible to avoid and stripped to the waist with his pinched orange face and wrinkly tanning salon physique, suddenly he became scarce. Now, as the day drew near to its close, with the fencing mostly up, he was back in his garden and we could hear him giving instruction to the workmen. He wanted to know why he'd ended up with the ugly side of the fence, as he called it, the side with the horizontal beams to which the vertical slats are secured. He spoke to the workmen as persons of his kind tend to speak to all manual labourers, as people whose work will later be scrutinised so as to ensure they've done the job properly. He called them back to pick up stray bits of wood, to do a better job of trimming certain branches, and then complained about the soil they had moved when sinking the fence posts. We could hear him having a tantrum behind the fence, stomping around and muttering to himself.

Well, I suppose I'll just have to pick this up myself.

Later he was joined by Mrs. Squidward as he inspected the fence at the front. We'd always assumed the ordinarily reclusive Mrs. Squidward to be some silent, long-suffering observer to her partner's one man war of indignation against the rest of the street, but we could hear her questioning as to whether the cats would still be able to jump over this section of fence, suggesting she might not even know what cats are or understand how they work.

At length, it dawned on us. The Squidwards considered themselves the injured party due to their being better bred and therefore in the right. We were only doing our best to appease them, in our own admittedly ham-fisted way, which is why Squidward ended up with the ugly side of the fence, the fence we'd paid for and had built for him.

My wife took the guys some beers once they were done. We all understood each other very well regarding the neighbour. Squidward probably still believes the object of the fence is to keep cats out of his precious yard, or at least out of his landlord's precious yard. While we're keen to reduce the numbers for the obvious reason that we don't want our cats anywhere near the horrible cunt, the main reason for the fence is so we don't have to see his miserable orange ass; and we probably won't be bothering with the cat proofing toppers. There doesn't seem much point when the fence only runs down one side of our garden.

One week passes. I see him obsessively polishing a tiny mark on his beloved automobile, so I step outside, loudly announcing to my wife, 'I'm just going out to look at the grass,' but he scuttles away, and in any case the term grass, meaning informer or copper's narc is not widely understood in America.

Two weeks later as I'm coming back from the store, I hear him call. 'Hey, Lornce,' as he pronounces my name, clearly trying hard to sound casual. I ignore him. He's probably only calling because he sees that our driveway is empty. My wife is not at home and he seems to be terrified of her. He calls again but I have nothing to say to the cunt. I don't even look in his direction as I go around the side of the house and close the gate.

Cat Homework

We are at the library on San Pedro, right next to the park. The park was famously the site of Yuanaguana, a Payaya village before the Europeans showed up, although being mostly nomadic, the Payaya didn't leave much behind in archaeological terms. This is possibly only the second time I've been to this park because the first visit was a bit weird due to the presence of numerous down-at-heel drag queens and the spectacle of the spring, or the fountain, or whatever the hell it's supposed to be. It's at the centre of the park and resembles a giant version of the candle made from Father Jack's earwax in the Passion of St. Tibulus episode of Father Ted.

We are at the library on San Pedro because we've been obliged to attend a class in much the same way as reformed jailbirds or recovering substance abusers. The comparison isn't entirely arbitrary because this is a class which Bess and myself have been obliged to attend so as to tick all the boxes on our having become a licensed cat colony, as recognised by the city council. Specifically it's a class for the TNR programme, TNR referring to the trap-neuter-return practice by which feral cats are allowed to remain at large without producing a ton of kittens. As joint CEOs of our own officially registered cat colony this sort of thing will soon be our responsibility.

'Let's hope they're not holding a T'n'A class at the same time,' I tell my wife as we enter the building. 'Can you imagine the confusion?'

Gratifyingly, she gets the joke and duly concedes a chortle.

'We're here for the TNR,' she says to the women at the front desk, who point us towards a side room.

We anticipated a class of three or maybe four weird old ladies bringing with them a certain aroma and probably talking to themselves, because the image is difficult to dispel even for crazy cat ladies such as ourselves. However to our surprise, the class is packed, twenty or thirty women and a few guys, mostly younger than us, clean, tidy, and not a tinfoil helmet to be seen. Three women are at the front with a table full of t-shirts and a humane trap. Behind them is a screen on which will be projected whatever is required to illustrate their testimony. Bess and I take seats at the back, there being only a few of the folding chairs still available. Our classroom seems to be the section next to the large print books. I can just see Michelle Obama's autobiography on the shelf to my left.

Our mistress of ceremonies is a regal older lady of distinctly Texan type - which I state as compliment in case there should be any ambiguity here - in so much as that a foreigner like myself is easily able to imagine her wrestling critters and ornery types and taking it all in her stride. Unfortunately this is the noisiest library I've ever been in and I have trouble hearing all that is said. Maybe the cat homework has coincided with an amateur wrestling class held elsewhere in the building.

We're there for about an hour, long enough to contract square-botty from the chairs - as the condition is understood by the medical profession. Mostly we're learning stuff we know, the wisdom of the TNR policy balanced against the usual clueless complaints traditionally made by people who simply don't like cats; but happily there's plenty of new information, not least being the operation of the humane traps which we loan from the city, where we take the cats to be fixed and so on. The hour is genuinely useful and informative, and it feels as though we've joined a secret society, which we sort of have.

The opportunity to ask questions comes at the end, and inevitably there are a few from those who just like to ask questions.

'I'd like to know, on the sheet of paper where you've given the number we need when we want to get in touch with you to ask a question, that number there, is that the one we need when we want to get in touch with you to ask a question?'

No-one actually asks that, but a few of them come close. I raise my hand and ask whether cats taken in to be fixed at the recommended clinics are checked to see whether they have an ID chip. I'm thinking about the wombat, one of our own feral regulars. He's a cat who resembles a wombat, albeit a ginger wombat. He has massive nuts and although we feed him, we otherwise can't get near him. Given his build and general disposition, I have a theory that he may have been an indoor cat who escaped and somehow ended up at our place, so we need to see whether he's been chipped.

I'm told this is a very good question, which is nice.

A bucket is passed around and we all chip in a few dollars towards cat food and similar supplies. Our own cats occasionally benefit from a free bag of the dry stuff which has been sent our way by the Feral Cat Coalition, the voluntary organisation which has arranged this meeting.

We seem to be done so I pop outside for a smoke, seeing as I'm back to smoking at the moment, because the year 2020 has thus far been a bit of a twat, even though it's still only January, and I only smoke in response to stress. Some young black dude approaches me and asks if I have a spare. I roll one for him. He has a strong African accent and seems a bit lost. He's trying to get somewhere, he tells me, but I can't work out why, so I say sorry because I'm not much help. He goes to sit on the bench outside the library to smoke his cigarette.

I look around for my wife but she's nowhere to be seen. I guess she's gone back into the library.

Back inside the library, she's talking to one of the Feral Cat Coalition people. We tell her about our neighbour who hates cats.

'I had one of those,' she tells us, and describes a scenario much worse than our own with a neighbour getting pissy over the slightest feline incursion into his precious yard which, according to our narrator, resembled a tip and was full of all sorts of junk he'd found at the side of the road.

'He was a pyschiatrist,' she tells us, rolling her eyes.

'It's always the way,' I say. 'How many cats do you have?'

'It was fifty at the time.'

I can actually hear Bess thinking holy shit! and that's what I'm thinking too. We don't have anything like as many. Our colony is pretty sane by comparison.

The woman describes how she was fined, and how she had the bad luck to be up before a judge who hates cats.

'You had a cat colony license and you were fined?' I'm trying not to panic. 'How can that happen?'

'It was a couple of hundred dollars, but that was before I had the license.'

Bess and I share a huge sigh of relief.

We go home, and it feels as though we're now part of some mysterious strike force.

Farewell to Fluffy

Back in 2010, my wife had a miscarriage. The child would have been our daughter and she would have been nine by now, had she lived. The event was more upsetting than can be quantified by words, and one of the ways by which my wife attempted to bring something positive back into her life was by getting a kitten. She already had a female cat called Gus, and took on a small feral kitten found by someone on the internet and who clearly needed a home. He was fluffy and loud. By the time he was grown it became clear that he had some Maine Coon in him, as distinguished by his size, and his big fluffy paws with fur growing from between his toes.

He still seemed a little bit wild and it took him some time to get used to me when I showed up. He wasn't like other cats. He remained wary of people and disinclined to displays of affection towards anyone he didn't know; but as those first weeks passed, we became friends.

Reductionist Cromwellian types will dispute that it is possible to be friends with a member of a different species, but that's their tough shit. Fluffy and I may never have discussed our favourite science-fiction authors, for example, but we nevertheless communicated within certain limits and he evidently came to trust me; and the trust of an animal is not something to be taken lightly. During my first decade in Texas, I probably spent more time in the company of Fluffy than I did with any other person, possibly including even my wife; and for what it may be worth, I don't think he was keen on Olaf Stapledon.

Fluffy was officially named Scarface by my stepson, who had been learning about a Native American culture hero of the same name at school. By peculiar coincidence, this was as I was still living in England, and contemporary to writing my novel, Against Nature, which featured a talking dog also named Scarface. The dog belongs to a character named Todd, who argues with his mother because she insists that Scarface is a terrible name for a dog. I maintain that this likewise applies to cats, so it was a relief that Scarface had picked up the boldly descriptive nickname of Fluffy by the time they stamped my card and let me into the country.

As we began to accumulate cats, Fluffy was the one of whom we all remained a little wary. He could be friendly, but he was big, strong, and it was a nightmare getting him into a cat carrier to take him on the occasional trip to the vet. Sometimes he braced himself against the door of the cat carrier as we tried to get him inside, and it would be like wrestling a fully grown man. Initially we tried to keep him away from any new kittens who turned up, as they did from time to time, fearing he'd send them flying with one disgruntled bat of his mighty paw, but as time passed we realised he actually didn't mind kittens, ignoring them just as he more or less ignored the other cats. This was fortunate, because they were as one fascinated by his huge Fluffy tail which flicked this way and that, regardless of whether the cat at the other end was actually awake, yielding running jokes about the tail being its own autonomous entity, and that playing with Fluffy's tail was a traditional part of a kitten's upbringing. They would watch the tail, pounce upon it, roll around with it clutched between their paws as Fluffy let out a loud meow of protest, but would never retaliate, or even take his business elsewhere. We couldn't decide whether he enjoyed the attention or was simply unable to work out what was going on.

Bess and myself had different views as to the extent of Fluffy's intelligence, and the debate began when we noticed his apparent inability to negotiate a door left only part of the way open. Cat's whiskers are supposedly evolved so as to allow the feline in question to make an informed decision as to whether he or she will be able to effect passage through whatever he or she has just poked his or her head into, and we've seen this demonstrated by a few of ours. Most of them learn to push the door open, and Jello has even worked out how to bash open a properly closed door like a small orange DEA officer. Fluffy, on the other hand, would simply sit in front of a partially open door, even with a gap of four or five inches, and stare at it. Bess's theory was that he lacked the intelligence to simply walk though, being unable to recall previous occasions of having done so without anything disastrous happening on the far side, a failing for which he compensated with his beautiful, regal appearance. My theory was that he understood the mechanics of opening a door under his own steam very well, but his regality was such that he simply believed it to be beneath him, and that opening the door all the way was our job.

In case it isn't obvious from the photographs, he really was regal, and we occasionally referred to him as our mini-lion. Excepting visits to the vet or the occasion of my cooking anything involving bacon, he spent most of his time sat around looking beautiful with what appeared to be a gentle smile on his face. In his more overtly affectionate moments he'd cuddle up with his forehead pressed against my arm, or present himself for grooming, which my wife performed with a brush under his chin and around what was, I suppose, his mane; and he clearly loved such attention.

He never fully mastered the litter tray, as did our other cats, and was occasionally prone to marking his territory, which was a pain in the arse; the former we assume may have been down to his being slightly too big to fit in the litter tray, with the latter usually committed only in protest, and once we'd worked out what was pissing him off, he generally behaved. On one unfortunate occasion he rendered my copy of Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men unreadable by using it as a urinal for a good month or so before I discovered what had been going on, but I probably shouldn't have left the book where I'd left it, and it was difficult to stay mad at such an otherwise gentle, good natured cat.

Last June, or possibly July, we noticed he'd taken to peeing on the floor, and that there was blood in his urine. We took him to the vet who told us that a growth in his bladder was almost certainly cancer. We had the option of treatment we couldn't really afford, which wasn't guaranteed to extend his life by much, and which would probably be miserable for him; so we opted to do nothing, instead concluding that we'd simply have to see what happened, and if at any point he was in pain, we'd have him put down. He was ten, not so old as we'd hoped he would live to be, but he'd had a good life and was loved.

The next eight months were more or less business as usual. The blood no longer turned up in his urine, and although he clearly began to have some difficulty with peeing, he was otherwise happy until the final week or so. He stopped eating and drinking and was unsteady on his legs. He was fine sitting on the sofa as usual, but everything else had become difficult and we knew it was time. We weren't going to subject him to the cat carrier at this point, so I wrapped him in a towel and we took him to the vet. I'm still too upset to go into the details, but the ones which matter are that he died in my arms, without pain, and he knew that he was loved.

We buried him in the garden, and bought a plant called a lion's tail for the spot, which seemed appropriate. Some days I talk to him as I water the plant, telling him that I love him and miss him, and I don't care how that sounds. Three people have died on me in the last month, but this hurt a lot more than the three of them added together, and it continues to hurt. He was a constant presence in my life since I arrived in America, and sat at the heart of our household. He was like my son, or the child we didn't have. He was the best cat in the whole world.

Feud

Since moving here, I've done more or less all of the Texan things which establish oneself as part of the San Antonio landscape. I've eaten chicken fried steak. I've experienced the music of both Selena and George Strait. I've been to a Spurs game, even though I found it massively underwhelming. The only thing left seemed to be feudin' with hornery types, and now I've ticked that one off the list as well.

It was a routinely horrible morning at the beginning of 2020, routinely horrible because the year didn't really get off to a great start with three deaths amongst friends and family, one relative sent into something of a tailspin by the same, the demolition of the house in which my wife used to live - apparently because the new owner just wanted something in a different colour - a traffic citation, and the aforementioned wife suddenly finding herself obliged to work from home because the company decided it could make great savings by giving the office space to someone else. Then, as I take out the trash I happen to notice Squidward out in his yard.

'Good morning,' I call.

I won't remember the reply but it's something testy about how he's engaged in the activity of gathering turds produced by our cats which have been deposited upon his property, or at least his landlord's property.

Okaaay, I think, and get back inside.

Squidward has lived here since before we moved in. He used to star in a popular children's cartoon series and I believe he worked in seafood retail but is now retired.

Ten minutes later he rings our door bell.

'Sorry about the snide comment,' he says, 'but you've got to understand my problem. I'm asking nicely, so what are you doing about all the cats?'

We have a number of cats, although not all of them belong to us. Most of them are feral or stray cats which we feed because someone has to. The population is fluid, more than ten, but not too much more. Some of them roam into Squidward's garden from time to time because they're cats and it's cruel to keep them cooped up inside.

We work with people from the San Antonio Feral Cat Coalition, which is recognised by the Animal Control Services of the city council, to make sure all of our ferals and strays are spayed or neutered, which usually reduces the nuisance factor unless you just plain hate cats. I've told him this before, suggesting I'm fine with him hosing any that wander into his yard so as to deter repeat appearances. I bought him a bag of something called Silent Roar, which is also supposed to deter feline incursions.

I've heard his objections before and I still don't know what he wants me to say. Maybe he wants me to concede and get rid of them or have them all put down in accordance with what is presumably his idea of a good neighbour.

'I mean I wouldn't mind if it was just one or two,' he says, and I immediately recall that he clearly did mind when it was just one or two. He's been at us since we moved here, not often but just enough to form a pattern built up from just about every conversation I've ever had with the man.

Our first encounter was him welcoming his new neighbours across the chain link fence which divides our respective yards. The welcome was a detailed account of how terrible the previous tenants had been, three young guys who partied hard all of the time. This one always puzzled me because the mail we still get for the previous tenant is all addressed to Maria Ramos, a young single mother who lived on her own with just her kid. This is how everyone else in our street remembers her. No-one remembers the three party dudes. Not even the landlord was able to remember the three party dudes, because we asked when we bought the house from him.

Then Squidward wanted to know whether we were leaving food out for vermin - raccoons and opossums. We weren't, but he established the theme of the great interest he takes in what happens in our yard, the one we now own. I find this odd because generally I've never given a shit what other people do in their own yards, so I find it difficult to imagine that sort of mindset.

Yet here he is again.

He tells me that he's just sold one of his three cars - which I presume would have been the one with the personalised licence plate. The buyer complained about the paintwork having been scratched by cats. Online research suggests that this is actually impossible. Cat claws lack the necessary density to make a mark on automotive paintwork just as I'm unable to scratch the paint of a car with my fingernail, excepting obviously shitty paint jobs where some hillbilly has brought a can of emulsion back from the hardware store in hope of recreating the vehicle from The Dukes of Hazzard. Casual scratch marks left upon vehicles almost always turn out to be from trees, so it is generally believed.

As we have our conversation, such as it is, he takes a call from the disgruntled buyer so I have to stand and listen, wondering if he actually does want me to promise to have them all rounded up and euthanised. He clearly believes it's an option.

The city of San Antonio has a no kill policy regarding feral or stray cats, instead having opted for TNR - trap, neuter, vaccinate, and then return them to wherever they were found. The policy was adopted on the basis of it being better to manage stable cat populations which aren't going to produce a ton of kittens, for without stable cat populations, unstable cat populations tend to move in, bringing with them all the fucking, fighting, disease, and territorial marking you get with un-vaccinated, un-neutered cats.

Squidward gave me a heads up as I was heading out on my bike about a year ago. 'Hey, just a heads up,' he said. 'There's been an Animal Control truck seen in the area. They've been picking up any cat they find and euthanising them on the spot, so you might want to keep your guys inside. I'm telling you this as a friend.'

Even at the time it sounded a little like the five-year old who has definitely just seen a real dinosaur.

More recently he suddenly had a daughter who was going to get rid of her two beautiful cats after ten years, and did we know anyone seeing as how we're obviously cat people and all?

It was a weird question. The daughter was living hundreds of miles away, and it seemed odd that someone in San Antonio had been picked as the potential solver of this apparently knotty problem. It seemed odd that she somehow lacked the ability to seek adoption in her part of the country; and the description of beautiful cats sounded very much like the words of a man trying too hard to impersonate someone who has no problem with cats. It felt as though the answer he was rooting around for was, hey - we'll take them, we love cats, we need as many cats as we can possibly get our hands on.

The thing is, we actually don't want that many cats but here they are, and there were at least five already hanging around when we moved to this street. When it's practical we find homes for them, as we have done over and over. We didn't bring the raccoons or opossums with us either.

Back in the here and now, he ends the call and says the same stuff all over again. I still don't know what to tell him. We can't do anything we're not already doing.

'That guy who lives next to Donna shot someone in the head a few years ago, right inside their house,' I tell him. 'You remember that? I mean with all due respect, while I'm sure we're not the most amazing neighbours in the world, I don't really see how we can be the worst.'

'I think very highly of you.' He seems slightly stunned and is pulling back, trying to be the nice guy again. 'We're very fond of the both of you,' he adds to no obvious purpose, then leaves.

A few days later we get a letter from Animal Control Services. Someone in our neighbourhood has registered a complaint about property damage and nuisance animals, but it's a form letter naming no names, adding that we should ignore it if it doesn't apply to us.

We talk to Susan from the Feral Cat Coalition. She works with Animal Control and warns us that we should expect a visit, and also that Squidward has filed a claim against us with the small claims court for property damage, a claim which didn't go anywhere due to lack of evidence seeing as he'd already sold the car, despite it having apparently been reduced to scrap by cats.

We spend a couple of days shitting ourselves. We've all seen Animal Cops Houston.

Animal Control turns out to be one young woman who turns up in the truck. She's a cop and actually very helpful. The city is mainly concerned that strays are subjected to the TNR process, which all of ours have been, and that we're demonstrably making efforts to reduce potential nuisance - for example leaving sandboxes around the yard to draw the production of cat poo from adjacent properties, which we do. Having been satisfied that we're not the sort of people who end up on episodes of Animal Cops Houston, she leaves and puts in the necessary good word by which we are able to apply for a cat colony license. This means that providing we TNR and otherwise stick to the established rules, we can have as many cats as we fucking well want.

I never had a strong opinion regarding Squidward, beyond thinking there was something a bit unpleasant about him. Now, however, he's pretty much revealed himself for who he is behind the unconvincing nice guy persona. Donna has told us he once called the cops on her son who was playing his radio too loud, so loud that the walls of Chez Squidward were apparently quite literally shaking. Everything about him seems fussy, suggestive of a privileged upbringing which failed to segue into the riches and status he probably believes to be his due, which is why he's reduced to living around here. He'd clearly rather live in Terrell Hills surrounded by doctors and dentists, prissy older women with face lifts, a better standard of person, people who touch base or give you a heads up, somewhere with a neighbourhood association to prevent scumbags such as ourselves moving in.

I've seen our cats in his garden, but they mostly stay away, and I find it difficult to believe in the hundreds of steaming turds with which they supposedly bespoil his beloved driveway on a daily basis. I suspect it's more likely that he simply hates cats and is too finely attuned to how others may impact upon his existence. Anyone living in a town or a city will probably have neighbours, and one has to make allowances for the same or else fuck off and live on a private estate with a high wall around it.

Our cats are all neutered, excepting the Wombat whom we have as yet been unable to catch. There's not much fighting, not even much bird destruction going on - contrary to the received wisdom - and not much, I would argue, to get all snitchy about. It's not like we have a fucking meth lab in the garage.

The next day, a tiny grey cat turns up on our door, a living skeleton who has been seen up and down the street for weeks, getting  more and more emaciated by the day. We haven't been able to get near her, but hunger has evidently overridden her fear, and here she is. We get her to eat, although she can't handle much at first, and over the next couple of days she gets stronger and begins to fill out a little. Once she's up to it, we'll get her neutered and take it from there, maybe see if we can't find a good owner as we've done with previously rescued kittens. Once inside our home, she's friendly, and too friendly to have been just a stray. Most likely she was dumped by some arsehole.

I've never been the sort of person who can simply walk on thinking fuck it - someone else's problem, and I don't understand anyone who is, at least where animals are concerned. I don't understand anyone who sees a cat, raccoon, opossum, stray dog, or any form of wildlife, domesticated or otherwise, and whose first thought is that had better not shit in my yard. On days such as today I tend to think such persons lack empathy and are as such incomplete human beings who probably shouldn't be allowed to raise children.

I am resident in America thanks to a green card and my whole life is here. I'm reliably informed that criminal convictions of any kind don't look great when reapplying for a green card, or even seeking citizenship, and I live next door to a man who calls the cops because he can't get along with others.

I don't think I'll be having much to do with him for a long time.

Face Off in the Parking Lot

We pull up to the fence and get out of the car. It's a chain link fence with a steep grass bank on the other side and we can see into the gardens of houses on Sumner far below. Five or six cats are running up the bank to greet us, tails aloft. We still can't get near them, but I guess they've come to recognise us. Bess fills the two plastic water bowls and I leave a couple of piles of dried food in the usual places. We walk back to the car and watch everyone chow down.

'Look,' I say pointing, 'there's the fluffy one. I haven't seen him in a while.'

He trots across the Walmart parking lot to join the others. The others are a tabby whom Bess has provisionally named Tree Cat, two black and white with markings which give them the appearance of Adolf Hitler - mother and son, by our estimation - a black cat, and a sleek grey who closely resembles our own Grace.

We do this every Tuesday evening on behalf of the Feral Cat Coalition, feeding the strays here and over behind Advance Auto Parts; because there will always be stray cats, so it's better to encourage healthy, stable colonies which can be more easily trapped, neutered, and then returned.

Sometimes we show up and there will be some guy sat in his car. Occasionally it will be some guy who lives in his car. Such is the economy. We leave them alone and they leave us alone, but tonight it's just us and the cats.

It's cold so we get back into the car and sit for a few more minutes, just watching the gang.

Another vehicle pulls up, a red Chevrolet. The door opens dispensing a massive dog, an English bull terrier which runs around the grass, wagging its tail and barking happily.

'Oh fuck,' I say.

'Are you kidding me?' Bess asks rhetorically.

The dog lays a turd, then another one. It doesn't seem to have noticed the cats.

'It isn't er… doing anything,' I suggest, hopefully.

'Let's wait and see.'

The dog, which is fairly large and muscular, suddenly barks and runs to the fence, after the cats.

'Oh hell no!' Bess leaps from the car. I get out too.

There's a woman sat in the other vehicle, window down, playing with her phone. She hears us talking and gets out. She's Hispanic with hair dyed different colours, maybe thirty. Her clothes look cheap and feature glittering panels. I'm about to say something about keeping the dog on a leash but I hear my wife's voice rise up like an angry guest on Jerry Springer. 'You better control your dog, bitch!'

Without looking I can almost sense my wife's head doing the cobra thing, side to side. I'm slightly shocked and even a little depressed that the term bitch has already entered the negotiation process. I don't think I'm going to be able to get the lid back on this one.

'Who the fuck are you calling bitch?' the woman demands, not without some justification, I feel.

I raise my hands in the air like a school teacher. 'There are plenty of dog parks. You can't just let your dog run around here.'

'She needed the toilet. She was crying!'

'Sure, but we're here to feed the cats, and your dog should really be on a leash.'

'There are leash laws in this city, bitch,' my wife proposes, or something along those lines.

'Maybe if we could just not call each other bitch for a moment,' I suggest, but no-one hears me.

There follows some more hooting and hollering and then we're back in our car, driving away with no idea of what just happened beyond knowing that the situation wasn't going to get any better. My wife had a lousy day at work and wasn't in the mood for bullshit. She doesn't often get angry, but when she does it's quite impressive.

'The cats will have run away,' I tell her, hoping that I'm right.

We drive down towards Lowes where we see a cop. Bess took a photo of the red Chevrolet on her phone, so we have the license plate, and you don't just let your dog out to shit everywhere, no leash and with no intention of cleaning it up.

We turn around and drive back up to Walmart. The red Chevrolet is still there, but no dog so she must have called it back. This is a relief because taking it to a cop would have felt a bit too much like the actions of one of those twitchy fuckers who posts on Next Door about strangers seen calling at houses in the neighbourhood.

We go home.

A Gastropsychogeography of England

Philip Best of notorious room clearance outfit Consumer Electronics observed that I was a food pusher. I was visiting him in Austin and making delivery of some of my home made pork pies - because it's easier to make too many than it is to make too few and we can't get them in Texas - and the comment came as I was describing a brief period of the nineties during which Jim Macdougall stayed over at my place every other weekend and I'd make us a chili in the hope of keeping him alive - his strict diet of beer, fags, bar snacks and Temazepam being nutritionally questionable; so Best's observation seemed fair. Thus deciding to embrace the role, I hereby declare my invention of gastropsychgeography, a philosophical discourse in which one gives account of what is eaten, where, and what it means. This follows on from psychogeography, a practice devised by Ivan Chtcheglov which seeks to map the meaning of a place in terms of its history, and psychochronography in which Sandifer ingeniously lists what was at the top of the hit parade when certain episodes of Doctor Who went to air. Gastropsychgeography is therefore, in essence, a travelogue of meals consumed by an author except much more important; and this is where it begins. This time next year you'll be reading Alan Moore's brooding testimony of Northampton's finest chip shops and Sandifer will be self-publishing tallies of previously obscure forms of iconic artisan bread consumed whilst binge watching Who, but it was all my idea. You're welcome.

Fish and chips, Earlsdon.
My mum gave me a tenner and sent me up the road for fish and chips from Gabriel's Fish & Chips in Earlsdon, Coventry. Being fifty-four years of age, I was conscious of this being one of those grand English traditions once immortalised in the likes of Beano and Dandy, so grand in fact that I'm surprised some red-faced gammon has yet to fume over imagined EU rulings preventing English mothers sending their offspring up the chippie with a tenner. We had two portions of battered cod and a single helping of chips between the two of us, because Gabriel's single helping is a shitload of chips in itself. It was pretty great, and we ate while watching Downton Abbey, an episode in which one of the butlers gives in his notice and the other one gets a bit sniffy about it.

Doner kebab, Earlsdon.
This time my mother sent me in the other direction, down the road for doner kebabs which I didn't enjoy quite so much as I thought I would. They were okay but not amazing, the main selling point simply being the pleasure of a doner kebab served in pita bread with chilli sauce, like nature intended - as distinct from a puffy flatbread with no sauce of any description, which seems to be a Greco-Texan thing. We watched The Curse of the Were-Rabbit whilst dining, which I hadn't seen before, so that was nice. Less entertaining was that Motecuhzoma took a small measure of his revenge on the both of us the following morning, so that's a lesson learned until next time.

 

Battered sausage with chips, Foleshill.
I was out with the intention of catching performances by Cristiana Ilie and Hainbach at the Tin, a venue situated in Coventry's new fangled Canal Basin, but I hadn't eaten. I'd called at the City Arms, a Weatherspoon pub, about an hour previous in the hope of ordering their Full English breakfast, discovering that it is only served until noon. With my gastronomic plans having been thus foiled, I therefore had to ask around and was directed to the Sandy Fish Bar in Sandy Lane, which was just around the corner. The expedition impressed upon me how the Tin is but five minutes walk from the home of Martin of Attrition, and I'm surprised he doesn't have some kind of residency there, knocking out a set of handbag house standards every Sunday evening or whatever. He literally lives so close that there wouldn't even be much point getting a taxi for the sake of a cumbersome tuba. Anyway, I ate my sausage in batter and chips on the seating provided at the aforementioned Canal Basin, all the while monitoring the venue for signs of activity seeing as I'd arrived about an hour before even the bar staff. The sausage was, in particular, pretty good.

Sausage sandwich, Coombe Abbey.
I asked for a sausage roll and this was the closest they could manage, although it was decent so I'm not complaining. I was at the Café in the Park with my dad. We were up that way having gone out for a stroll during which he hardly mentioned Brexit at all, although there were several ominous remarks hinting at a sceptical view taken regarding climate science. It didn't seem like there was anything to be gained in rising to the bait, so I didn't. I was a bit surprised by the general youthful bewilderment which greeted my attempts to describe a sausage roll to the café staff, but never mind.

Dinner, Binley.
This was prepared by my dad some hours after the above, and comprised steak pie, roast potatoes, runner beans, carrots and squash. The pie was hand crafted and amazing, and the vegetables were all from his allotment. The squash seemed an initially incongruous addition, but was slightly sweet and went very well with everything else. We manged to avoid talking about Brexit, although on a related note, my dad's wife - or at least the woman who would have been his third wife had they bothered to get married, which they didn't - opined that the good thing about Donald Trump is that he's not afraid to say what he's thinking. I couldn't be bothered to argue. Whatever gets you through the night.

Persian takeaway, Earlsdon.
Grilled lamb, rice, and houmous delivered by the Cyrus Restaurant once the guy on the other end of the phone line grudgingly conceded that yes, they did deliver if we really weren't able to get down there to pick it up. The food was at least as good as anticipated, and the rice in particular was delicious, light and fragrant. We ate while watching an episode of Midsomer Murders during which I realised that I sort of fancy Camille Coduri. I knew I'd seen her on telly somewhere before, but couldn't remember where. Later I looked it up and found out that she once played the mother of Bingo from the Banana Splits in Eccleston era Who, which was a bit disappointing.

 

Cream tea, Coventry Cathedral.
Part of the reason for my visiting England, aside from seeing my parents and other people, was because Lynda would be there. Lynda is my mother's younger sister - my aunt. She moved to Australia in 1973 and none of us had heard from her since. Thankfully the reunion was a delight and not at all awkward as a few of us had feared it might be. Part of Lynda's visit entailed wandering around Coventry like tourists with myself and my dad - who likewise knew her back in the sixties due to his having married my mother. There was a lot to look at in Coventry, and certainly one fuck of a lot more than there had been when I lived there. Our particular favourites were the Doom Painting in the Holy Trinity Church - a recently restored fifteenth century mural depicting what happens to sinners in enthusiastic detail - and the Cathedral. My grandfather - Lynda's dad - was a structural engineer whom they consulted when they were building the thing so as to ensure that it wouldn't simply collapse into the tunnels dug by coalminers from Keresley colliery, so it's all connected somehow. Anyway, we had cream teas in the Rising Café in the basement of the modern cathedral, which was nice. The central axis of a cream tea is a scone, which is like the thing which an American would call a biscuit for no obvious reason, but better. A biscuit in the American sense is usually too salty to be considered a scone and is therefore thematically equivalent to a gammon flavoured ice lolly, at least from where I'm stood.

Pizza, Earlsdon.
My mother and I stayed home and had a Waitrose pizza, which was probably a bit scant between the two of us but then she doesn't eat a whole lot and I was probably still full of scones. Midsomer Murders had inexplicably vanished from the television schedule so we watched Have I Got News for You? because I hadn't seen it in fucking years, and it's one of the few English shows I miss. I had no idea who at least three of those involved were, but Paul Merton is still funny. One of the most amusing exchanges concerned an elephant dentist from Peppa Pig. Sarah Kennedy - whom I know from my art foundation course in Leamington Spa back in the eighties - provides the voice of Nanny Plum from Peppa Pig. I think Sarah also had something to do with The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, so like I said, it's all connected. Alan Moore probably hasn't even heard of Peppa Pig.

Full English breakfast, Earlsdon.
I was vaguely inclined to give Weatherspoon a miss, my enthusiasm for cheap beer past its sell by date having waned since the homeless Thundercat who owns the chain started banging on about Brexit; and my friend Carl pointed out that most Weatherspoon pubs have the atmosphere of a cross-channel ferry due to the surfeit of red-faced gammons on a quest for cheap booze; but a full English breakfast is a full English breakfast. I had mine with a couple of slices of black pudding and it tasted fucking fantastic, just as it always does. I had no reading matter to hand and was dining alone, so reluctantly browsed the Weatherspoon corporate magazine. Naturally there was a special feature on Brexit, lifting opinion columns from publications on both sides of the political divide, because that's how much the homeless Thundercat - whose name is Tim Martin, by the way - loves democracy. Each piece was supplemented with commentary from himself under the byline of Tim Says which, in the case of those pieces in support of the remain argument, tended to kick off with what the author fails to realise is that blah blah blah, reducing the enterprise as a whole to something of a stacked deck. The rest of the magazine was mostly interviews with bar staff, so I watched the telly instead, sound down but with captions. They were showing live footage from the Supreme Court legally proving that Boris Johnson is a massive cunt, which was more interesting than the Weatherspoon corporate magazine.

More fish and chips, Earlsdon.
Once again my mum gave me a tenner and sent me up the road for fish and chips from Gabriel's Fish & Chips in Earlsdon, Coventry. The queue wasn't quite so enormous this time, comprising just three people. As usual, there was some fish left over, so that was saved for next door's cats, Geoff and Pig who are brothers and both ginger with white bits. By the end of my stay in Coventry, Pig had taken to meowing his head off every time I went into the garden in presumed anticipation of my handing a tupperware box of cod over the fence. I think that's how he got the name.

Bread and cheese, Earlsdon.
My aunt Lynda told us that her favourite food is bread and cheese, and specifically sourdough bread because other types of bread tend to give her digestive trouble. My mum therefore gave me a fifteener and sent me up the road for sourdough bread and an assortment of cheeses from the Co-op in Earlsdon, Coventry. I came back with edam, brie, one of the blue mouldy ones, and a fourth cheese I can't remember. Lynda was delighted beyond expectation. It turns out that this love of cheese is apparently a familial trait. Some doctor once told my mum that she might like to think about cutting down on the cheese. She told him that it wasn't going to happen because were she to make such a dietary adjustment there would be no point in being alive.

Curry, Greenwich.
Back when I lived in London, I often went for a curry with my friends Carl and Eddy, their choice because whilst I enjoyed Indian food, there were other things I preferred. We usually went to the Mogul in Greenwich. Since moving to America, my love of curry has increased for reasons I don't fully understand, so I was fairly keen to revisit the Mogul and give it another go. Unfortunately the Mogul experienced some kind of civil war in my absence, resulting in a diaspora which led to the establishment of the Mountain View on the Trafalgar Road, so that's where we went. I recognised the staff, and even shook the hand of Ron, who I believe runs the place and for whom Carl and Eddy seem to be the equivalent of season ticket holders. I had chicken korma with saag paneer, which was gorgeous.

Tunnock's tea cakes, Solihull.
I went to visit my friend Martin who lives in Solihull. I know Martin from the art foundation course we took with the woman who went on to become the voice of Nanny Plum. Martin was in the very first line up of the Cravats, and later played in different bands with both Carl and myself. As we'd scheduled an afternoon of just hanging out rather than alcoholic abandon, we started with a trip to the corner shop for Mr. Kipling's cherry bakewells and Tunnock's tea cakes, following which we drank tea and listened to the Shameful Ca$hin album. Shameful Ca$hin is Martin's current band and they've recorded an album at Woodbine Street Studios in Leamington Spa, soon to be issued on vinyl, all going well. The album reminded me a little of the punkier incarnations of the Cravats with a touch of the Stranglers and a bit of a rockabilly undercurrent. It's possibly the greatest thing Martin has ever recorded. I opted for Tunnock's tea cakes out of curiosity, having no real memory of them whilst being aware of a wave of nostalgia having spread their legend across certain stretches of social media. They're essentially chocolate covered marshmallows, arguably the English equivalent of American snack foods such as Hostess Twinkies and the like. I thought they were okay but nothing special, and Martin didn't seem to like them at all. Also worth noting is that Martin has a ginger cat called Jeff. He really loves that cat.

Thai curry, Earlsdon.
My mother and I stayed home and had a Waitrose Thai curry, which came in a natty little wooden box, and was excellent. Midsomer Murders had once again inexplicably vanished from the television schedule so we watched three episodes of Upstart Crow on DVD as I'd never seen it before. Having grown up in close proximity to Stratford-upon-Avon, I'd pretty much had enough of Shakespeare by the time I was seven, so I didn't know what to expect but nevertheless found it very watchable. I don't actually have anything against either Shakespeare or his works, unlike Martin who is of the considerably stronger opinion that it's all bollocks, but Upstart Crow almost made me wish I'd developed more of an appreciation. My mum on the other hand thinks Shakespeare is the shit, to phrase it in terms with which she is most likely unfamiliar.

Melted cheese sandwich, Shrewsbury.
I went to visit my friend Charlie who lives in Shrewsbury. I know Charlie from the fine art degree we took with Martin who was in the very first line up of the Cravats. Charlie is best known as artist of the Walking Dead comic book and is accordingly now a local celebrity, which was impressed upon me when I noticed that the local art gallery was advertising an exhibition of his work with his name in massive letters. We went for a bite to eat at a small café called, I believe, Ginger & Co. We talked mostly about comic books, superhero movies, comic book publishers assuming that, having finished with the Walking Dead, what Charlie really, really, really wants to draw next is even more zombies, and we talked about Comicsalopia, a comic art convention which was held in Shrewsbury a few months ago. Apparently it hadn't gone so well as hoped due to organisational complications arisen from one of the major sponsors screwing up with the wonga whilst failing to fully understand the genre, expressed as an unusual fixation with Peppa Pig. The sandwich was fancy and involved spinach and possibly mozzarella. It was very tasty.

Another full English breakfast, Coventry.
I had this one at Café 37, Earlsdon, which seems almost like it's just some bloke's front room. I've been there a few times over the years and don't ever recall any other customers, so I'm glad it's somehow managed to stay open. The food was good, sort of like the Weatherspoon version but with a bit more soul. Options for reading material were Coventry Evening Telegraph, Daily Mail, and the Sun. I tried with the Coventry Evening Telegraph but it mostly seemed to be articles on the level of how some local sports club had purchased a new tennis racket. The only piece I read in full was something about the council intending to pull down the swimming baths, which makes me a little sad as they were structurally engineered by my grandfather. I reluctantly switched to the Sun and was pleased to notice that whilst the right-wing bias was such that it actually came off on my fingers, the paper generally wasn't quite so rabid as I remembered, its mania being concentrated in small, evenly distributed flare ups within the wider context of a generally gormless whole. The only article which really caught my attention was an argument against the closing of private schools, at least partially predicated on the notion that if Jeremy Corbyn thinks it's bad then it's actually good. I don't know where the readership stand on the matter, but it's always entertaining to see members of the working class moved to fuming indignation over threats to the well-being of chinless Etonian twits who regard them as, at the very best, a slightly smelly economic resource.

Yet more fish and chips, Earlsdon.

It was my last evening in England, at least for a while, so my mum gave me a tenner and once again sent me up the road for fish and chips from Gabriel's Fish & Chips in Earlsdon, Coventry. This time was a bit later than usual. My mother is an independent benefits advisor, meaning she gives advice to, or even represents in court, those who have been wrongfully denied benefits, which is pretty much everyone who has been denied benefits due to government policies which hold that numismatic hand-outs are the only thing preventing most claimants from becoming high paid executives. Anyway she had two such persons turn up at six in the evening seeking her advice, one of whom had no head and only one leg but had nevertheless been declared fit for work and denied disability benefit. My mother had anticipated that their case would take about fifteen minutes to sort out, so I should go up the road for fish and chips once they were done. Unfortunately their case took about an hour to sort out, and in the meantime Sue from next door, patron of Geoff and Pig, came round. She was trying to separate the two sections of the tubing of a vacuum cleaner which had become stuck. I was unable to pull the two lengths of tubing apart. One of the people who had come to see my mother gave it a go, but he couldn't do it either. Anyway, it was close to seven before everyone left and I was able to go up the road for my final fish and chips from Gabriel's Fish & Chips in Earlsdon, Coventry. Now as I compose this account in a house built on a different continent, I know that even as I write, Geoff and Pig are probably finishing off the bit of cod that we couldn't manage. It's a circle, my friend.

Full English breakfast with Japanese influence, Heathrow.
I'd got up at ten to five in the morning so as to catch the flight back to lovely, lovely Texas, and yet somehow I'd managed to end up with hours to burn, just bumming around the airport; so I figured I may as well eat to pass time. Wagamama caught my eye because I recall having loved their food back in the nineties, and there was a full English on the menu which struck me as weird. I went in thinking about bowls of big fat noodles with crunchy ginger stuff, but somehow just couldn't not order the full English because it would be my last one in a while and its presence at Wagamama, which let us not forget serves primarily Japanese and Asiatic cuisine, seemed improbably incongruous. It came in a bowl and incorporated spinach and shitake mushrooms, but was otherwise the genuine article - sausages, bacon, couple of fried eggs and so on - and yet it had some Japanese quality which seemed to justify its place on the menu and yet was difficult to pinpoint, something in the subtle flavours department stemming from how it was cooked; or it could just be that I was prevented from blobbing the customary dollop of tomato ketchup on the side. Naturally I asked for ketchup, even qualifying the request with sorry to sound like a caveman, but… - but they didn't have it, and I was therefore forced to tackle the flavours unalloyed, which was okay because it was delicious. I read some more of The Face in the Abyss by Abraham Merritt as I ate. It's about four hard boiled blokes who go off in search of lost gold, and who keep having arguments about which one of their party might be considered the dirty double-crossing rat. They talk like James Cagney in a gangster movie, often finishing sentences with an interrogative see. So far I'm enjoying it. I picked the book up at the Oxfam shop on Broadgate in Coventry, which is a fucking great shop and seemingly the closest England comes to having a branch of Half Price Books, albeit a somewhat compact one. I also picked up a Rupert Bear annual and two Hornby Railways catalogues which I had as a kid - which is apparently what my midlife crisis looks like. I only mention these details because I haven't found a way to shoehorn Peppa Pig, Shakespeare, or anyone named Geoff into the account.

Ourselves from an Alternate Timeline

From time to time my wife takes to walking the neighbourhood for the sake of exercise, usually depending upon whether it's that time of year during which Texas is actually hotter than the surface of the sun. On one such excursion she noticed what she came to think of as the Sea of Tails House. The door opened as she passed by early one morning, although she couldn't see the person within. Cats - and too many to be counted - appeared from trees, bushes, beneath cars, and everywhere around, all answering the call of breakfast and making a beeline for the door with tails happily aloft, hence the name.

Many of the cats were often sat out on the front lawn of the Sea of Tails House and we would drive past on our way home just to get a look at them, because we like cats. During one such manoeuvre we additionally noticed a silver-grey Honda Element parked in the driveway of the Sea of Tails House, its rear adorned with a sticker in memorial to Cecil, the lion famously killed by massive wanker Dr. Walter J. Palmer DDS dba. Bess was driving a silver-grey Honda Element when first we met, and we both felt fairly strongly about Cecil's death at the hands of a fucking twat, so we considered the possibility of the residents of the Sea of Tails House actually being ourselves from an alternate timeline, given their having even more cats than we do.

They weren't ourselves from an alternate timeline, despite the evidence of the car, but were a couple named Susan and Randy. We met them one day as we passed and saw they were stood outside their house surrounded by cats and talking to a visitor. We stopped the car and introduced ourselves, although it should probably be noted that by this point Bess had already communicated with Susan on Next Door, our neighborhood internet chatroom, so the encounter wasn't quite so weird as it may sound.

They were about our age or maybe a little older, kind of unpolished in some respects and of unmistakably Texan heritage. Their visitor was Susan's sister-in-law from her previous marriage, a woman originally from Leicester, England, which was weird given the city being in such proximity to where I grew up. We stood around talking about cats, how we too used to get around in a silver-grey Honda Element, and how we knew their home as the Sea of Tails House.

Aside from day jobs, it turned out that Susan and Randy were representatives of the San Antonio Feral Cat Coalition. In this capacity they spent much of their spare time feeding feral cat colonies, rescuing strays, and participating in the trap-neuter-return program. The trap-neuter-return program - or TNR - entails neutering feral cats then returning them to the environment from which they were taken in the hope of reducing the numbers over time, whilst keeping the colonies otherwise stable without anyone ending up in the gas chamber. This has proven to be the most effective means of dealing with feral cats because exterminating an established colony simply leaves a gap in the local ecosystem which other less-settled and almost certainly more fertile ferals will occupy.

As time passed, we became good friends with Susan and Randy, who were additionally able to help us out with some of our own cats through their membership of the Feral Cat Coalition granting them access to certain veterinary services. In return, we took on a couple of feeding slots, and so every Tuesday evening we convey food and water to feral colonies behind Walmart and Advance Auto Parts, giving Susan and Randy a night off. It takes about ten minutes and we get to see cats. The Feral Cat Coalition drops us off a bag of cat chow whenever we're running low, so it's neither an expense nor a trouble.

Now we're deputies, or something of the sort. Susan and Randy are taking a trip down to the coast and have asked us to fill in on three nights of feeding at more than just the usual two spots. We meet on Deerwood, just behind the bowling alley. Deerwood leads into a distinctly knackered neighbourhood of apartment complexes and waste ground at the back of everything else. We get the feeling we won't be seeing yachts in the driveways. Neither Bess nor myself were aware of these streets, despite having lived within a mile of them these last eight years. Susan has drawn a map marked with six feral colonies in addition to the two we already knew about. The largest colony comprises four or five cats, but most are just two or three.

The first is outside Merlin's place, which is at the back of the office of Jan Ischy Prin's law firm, which looks a bit Better Call Saul from where I'm stood. Merlin lives in a trailer situated behind the chain link fence and Susan is talking to him right now. One of his cats has something which sounds like ringworm, he tells us through the fence. Susan describes an ointment.

'We have some of that at home,' Bess pipes up. 'I could drop it by for you tomorrow, if you like.'

Merlin nods an affirmative whilst somehow nevertheless failing to acknowledge my wife. He's kind of old with a bit of an aroma, and we're all trying to keep from looking at what the hell is going on at the front of his pants, but he doesn't seem like a bad guy and he likes cats. The thing that he doesn't seem to like is people he doesn't already know, but never mind.

We move along to where the fence meets the bushes. Susan pours out a little pile of dried cat food and fills styrofoam bowls from her container of purified water. Cats emerge from the undergrowth, one of them Siamese.

'Is he really called Merlin?' I ask, watching the subject of my enquiry shuffle back towards his trailer.

'Yup,' Randy tells me.

'He seems a bit awkward around strangers.'

'You don't want to worry none about that. It's a job to shut him up once he gets started so be thankful; and all he'll talk about is the Bible once you got him going.'

'Oh.'

Randy pulls a face, amused but not unkindly. 'He don't hold with the theory of evolution.'

'Oh dear.'

'Every summer he goes to stay with all his buddies in Mexico some place, like down near Cozumel. I think they're the only friends he really has, and he always takes the coach.'

'What? All the way to Mexico?'

'Yeah - a couple of thousand miles and three coaches, he says. Always tells me, I was sat next to this one feller the whole way and couldn't get a word out of him. I think that's because he starts off telling them about the Bible.'

'Sheesh.'

We adjourn to our respective vehicles and drive one hundred yards up the road. Susan and Randy leave food and water by a tree at the centre of a green associated with an apartment complex. There are no cats to be seen, but apparently they're around somewhere. Next is a vacant lot on Cloudhaven, cracked concrete squares where a house once stood, now overgrown with the usual scrubby hackberry bushes and dry things with thorns. Randy pours food onto a wooden door laid flat on the grass verge. Cats emerge from the house which isn't there, three of them, two orange.

'Hey, Swirl,' Randy greets the smaller orange cat. 'How you doing?'

Next is the apartment block behind the antique castle. It was once a mediaeval themed restaurant, hence the ludicrous crenellations running along the edge of the roof, as on a castle. Then it became a private museum dedicated to the history of film, which I only found out because it was mentioned on the radio, on NPR. This function was advertised by a giant model movie camera at the top of a pole serving for a sign on the Austin Highway, despite that curious parties were apparently required to apply for the privilege of going in and having a look around. Now it's a similarly secretive antique center owned by a guy who allegedly hates cats. We therefore feed this colony in the parking lot of the apartment block, on the rough ground down near the fence. Unfortunately some guy in one of the apartments also hates cats.

'He comes out and tips over the water bowls,' Susan tells us. 'He's threatened us a few times.'

This worries me. Susan bears a striking resemblance to Freida from Orange is the New Black even to the point of her voice sounding similar. Freida is resourceful and deadly, and I realise I have come to assume Susan to be the same. I can't imagine anyone threatening her.

'He spreads dog do all around to scare off the cats,' Randy adds. 'Sometimes he's sprayed the cat food with weed killer, and as you know, that's illegal.'

'You just got to explain to him, cool and calm, you're working for the Feral Cat Coalition and it's all legal and has been approved by the city.' Susan waves the legal papers at us, signed forms in a clear plastic wallet. 'We got a right to be here and if he has a problem he needs to take it up with the city.'

'He don't like me much, I can tell you that.' Randy chuckles. He seems very much a guy who takes everything in his stride.

'Well, we don't like him, and even his neighbours don't much like him,' Susan adds, glancing around at the apartments behind us, 'so I guess it all balances out.'

'You'll give us a copy of that thing,' I say, 'in case he has a pop at us too?'

'We already have a copy,' Bess says.

We watch the four or five cats come out to eat and drink, and then we're off again.

Rainbow Drive has a number of large apartment complexes which have recently been shut down. The tenants were all shipped out and quite a few pets left behind to starve or turn wild. Susan and Randy have mentioned this before and it's been a major headache for them over the last six months. The places remain empty, boarded up behind secure fencing, but the emerging cat colonies seem to have stabilised. They're very happy to see us too, and as we feed them I pet a black fluffy one, which has been my first friendly cat of the evening. I have an unusually soft spot for black fluffy cats.

After this, we're done, with only the Walmart cats left, and we already know about them as they're on our regular route.

The week passes, and then we fill in from Monday to Wednesday as agreed. Our shifts are without incident, aside from a homeless man emerging from the vacant lot on Cloudhaven to apologise for having trespassed on what he seems to suspect is our property. I tell him that we're just feeding the strays, and the rest of the conversation is about how I'm from England, because he has to ask, naturally.

I don't mind, but it's one thing I like about Susan and Randy, namely that they've never seemed bothered, presumably because they already know someone from Leicester so it doesn't seem such a big deal. At no point of my previous existence could I have predicted the arrival of Susan and Randy in my diminishing circle of friends. From one point of view, I suppose they might seem weird and cranky. They have a million cats in their yard. They're about as Texan as it's possible to be. I don't know if either of them have ever set foot inside an art gallery, and Randy's truck is festooned with the sort of bumper stickers you would probably expect of a guy with that beard, accent, and baseball cap - jovial threats involving firearms; and yet I've never known a man appear so genuinely happy at the sight of a kitten. They're good people, honest, and without any strange screwy agenda. In fact, these days and in terms of my present location, Randy and Susan are easily the nicest, most well-balanced people I have the pleasure of knowing, aside from my wife. I'm still not sure if this says more about me than it does about them, but whatever it says is, I feel, probably something good.

From the Cheese Cave to the End of Days

'My friend Jeremy will be in Dallas,' Bess said. 'We need to go.'

'We need to go to Dallas?'

'Yes. He has a one man show. The cats will be okay for one night and I haven't seen him in ages.'

'He has a one man show?'

'Yes, and it's in Dallas.'

'Despite our having been married for eight years, this is the first time you've ever mentioned anyone called Jeremy.'

'It is?'

'Yes, and that's why I have certain reservations as to the urgency of this proposed visit to Dallas even before we get to your use of the term one man show.'

'We've been friends for ages, since we were at school. I can't believe I've never mentioned him.'

'Well, maybe you have, but I already have a friend called Jeremy and it's not a very common name in my experience so I'm sure I would have noticed your mention of this additional Jeremy.'

'Well, we need to go to Dallas.'

'For a one man show?'

'Yeah. I don't know. It could be awful, but I have to see him. Even if it's really bad, it will still be exciting to go. We can visit Dealey Plaza.'

'Can't I just stay here? That way we won't have to worry about the cats. I hate leaving them on their own overnight. You should go and meet your friend and have fun.'

In the end we reach a compromise because Bess is similarly uncomfortable with the thought of leaving the cats unattended. We're going to set out early in the car, see Jeremy's one man show, then drive back the same day. It will be a long time spent on the highway, but we did it back in 2013 when we drove to Fort Worth to see a baby elephant then recently born at the local zoo. It's a bit of a hike, but we've done it before.

We leave at around nine. By ten we're already passing through Austin, which seems weird. Austin is usually to be found at the conclusion of a long road trip, but the travel time has passed more quickly on this occasion with Austin now marking off just one segment of a greater distance.

Bess explains how she first encountered Jeremy during a school trip to Washington DC. The trip brought together kids from all across the country rather than from any one specific school, and she and Jeremy were in the same hotel. They hit it off immediately and have kept in touch ever since.

The next major conurbation through which we pass following Austin is Temple. I look at the map and deduce that we should be in Dallas shortly after midday. We've been on the road since nine, it's now eleven, and Temple isn't far short of Waco which looks like two thirds of the total distance to me. We've been listening to a CD of a lecture by Howard Zinn entitled Stories Hollywood Never Tells, about political bias in the movie industry. Andy Martin gave me the CD many years ago and I recall having once found it interesting and enlightening. We tend to listen to either spoken word or stand up comedy on our road trips, and Howard Zinn seemed like a good choice as I hadn't heard the thing in a long, long time. Unfortunately, whilst I continue to sympathise with Zinn's general position, he pauses and mutters and doesn't seem to speak well in public, and there are a whole string of movies conveying anti-establishment, anti-war, or otherwise left-leaning messages to refute his theory; which leaves him sounding like your archetypal whining snowflake - as I believe is the current nominative - and this is a realisation which places me in the company of your archetypal whining Trumpanzee, which is awkward. Bess feels the same so we eject the disc.

Approaching Waco, we begin to notice billboards advertising the Cheese Cave.

'The what?' Bess asks, having missed the billboard.

'It's a cave, probably one of the old mine shafts where they used to dig for cheese,' I propose.

'We need to go there.'

Traffic slows as we come into Waco.

'We could just go to the Cheese Cave and tell Jeremy the traffic was too bad,' I suggest.

'I'm tempted.'

We crawl along, idly making an assessment of the city of Waco based on what can be seen from the highway. We already know they have a Cheese Cave. They also seem to have something to do with a mammoth. Inevitably we get onto the subject of David Koresh and whether or not the city has chosen to remember him with a statue, or at least a blue plaque. Realistically we both know that a theme park would be expecting too much.

By now, we're both hungry. We make several attempts to dine at branches of Cracker Barrel, an eating establishment dedicated to the dining requirements of crackers such as ourselves, but it's Father's Day so the parking lots are all crammed and with lines of customers trailing out of the entrance awaiting seating. We settle for Heitmiller Steakhouse, and Bess takes the opportunity to learn more of the Cheese Cave by reading about it through the agency of her phone. Apparently it's a store selling all sorts of cheese, so we definitely need to go there at some point.

Duly fed and watered, we return to the road. Dallas, when we arrive about an hour later, reminds me of Austin. At least the city centre has the same look about it, which I didn't expect. I think of this as being my third trip to this locality, but the two previous visits were actually to Fort Worth, the neighbouring conurbation which I've tended to regard as being simply west Dallas, at least up until now.

Dallas, the TV show, was pretty big when I was a kid growing up in England. Its influence was such as to have impacted upon the language of myself and my peers, specifically in the coining of a verb, to do a Dallas. Holding two slats of a window blind apart with one's fingers whilst peering out at an approaching visitor, perhaps with a look of suspicion forming upon one's face, was doing a Dallas. I seem to recall that Sue Ellen Ewing spent quite a lot of screen time doing a Dallas, and presume that's where it came from. It seems that I must have watched Dallas, and enough so as to negate the need for anyone to have explained the verb to me, but it was a long time ago and all I can otherwise remember are grassy plains, skyscrapers, and big hats. So this is, after all, a new thing for me.

We pass what curiously resembles a British pub, then find ourselves at Theatre Three. Jeremy's one man show will be performed in the basement, in a subsidiary venue wittily named Theatre Too, and we're here with twenty minutes to spare, which seems like good timing. We purchase drinks in special theatrical sippy cups from a goth wearing a Church of Satan pendant, then head downstairs.

Jeremy sees us in the queue - which isn't too surprising given that the queue comprises just Bess and myself - and is overjoyed that we've made it. Introductions are effected, breeze is shot, and I am relieved to realise that he's a nice guy. This is because my wife is disinclined to befriend arseholes.

The show, which is called Keeping Up With the Jorgensons, isn't well attended, just five or six of us for whatever reason, but is nevertheless an exceptional performance of a wonderful piece of writing. Jeremy spends an hour talking us through the events of a road trip taken with his father when he was a kid. It's both hilarious and horrifying, and most impressive is that I somehow forget I'm watching one man playing all of the parts - himself as a kid, his father, grandfather, neighbours and others; all are brought to life in detail so agonisingly plausible that you can almost smell the booze and the foot odour. It's exhausting to watch, but in a good way.

The hour is up. Jeremy comes out to take a bow, seemingly unconcerned by the poor turnout, and Bess and I get back on the road. The woman who sold us our tickets said something about a tornado warning, which is worrying. Back upstairs, we stare from the theatre doors at a Biblical deluge where before there was sun. We were going to take a look at Dealey Plaza, but this changes things; and Jeremy was supposed to be heading off to the airport to catch his flight immediately after the performance, so it probably changes things for him too. We run for the car, having reasoned that it may get worse, and maybe we can get ourselves out of Dallas before it hits.

It takes less than a minute to get to the car but we are both soaked by heavy blobs of rainfall sluicing from the heavens. We drive cautiously around Dallas, back onto the highway. The streets empty as everyone else takes cover. The sky darkens and we hear thunder. Visibility drops and the vehicle in front reduces to red lights in the dark grey haze of noisy water.

Back at Theatre Too, the woman selling tickets showed us the animated weather forecast, horizontal waves moving west across Dallas and Fort Worth. It looked as though we would be okay south of the city, with the storm proposed to hit Waco no sooner than 6.30PM, and it's only just gone four. I try hard to keep from visualising our car sucked up into the sky.

The rain eases a little and the sky brightens, but the roads are still slick with water and the car hydroplanes across the highway from time to time. Bess grips the wheel and drives slowly.

'It looks okay up ahead,' I suggest.

'Yes,' she says, 'once we're clear of the city…'

The sky darkens, thunder cracks, the rain renews its efforts, and this happens over and over for the next hundred miles or so. Sometimes we even see a thin stretch of blue running along the horizon or hit a dry patch of highway allowing us to go a little faster, but then I look away and when I turn back the storm has somehow revived itself. Lightning flashes, our wheels lose traction, and golfball hailstones batter the car, on and off for the next couple of hours, all the way through Waco, and then Temple. At one point a lightning bolt strikes a light pole about fifty feet away, so quick and loud it makes us both jump. The light at the top of the pole seems to explode and it resembles a special effect.

It's after six as we approach Austin, with more and more blue sky somewhere ahead of us. We're hungry so we stop in at a Cracker Barrel, reasonably confident that it will have cleared by the time we've eaten. We eat and the rain is harder than ever as we once again run for the car.

We drive slow, and eventually it no longer feels as though we're driving through the Biblical end of days, and it's after nine by the time we get home. We survived, and next time we'll go looking for that Cheese Cave.