My first word was “dog”, which my mother described as a curiosity, since the “d” and “g” sounds come from different parts of the mouth. Babies start with “mummy” or “daddy” precisely to avoid these tongue gymnastics. But it wasn’t a curiosity. It was because I wanted a dog. This was definitely nature rather than nurture and, in a house full of cat people, it went unnoticed. My parents started with a cat called Oedipus, and I decline to comment on whether or not that’s because they were/are wankers. When they got divorced and my mum kept custody of our cats, we had many more – Mitten, Mutley and Mutley’s offspring, plus step-cats Shearer and Le Tissier, in my father’s second family, where he sired yet more cat people.
