My dad is not a religious man – he goes to the pub when my mum goes to mass – but I’m sure that meeting Oscar was a spiritual experience for him. When they locked eyes across the scrubbed concrete floor of the shelter that Oscar presided over with mob-boss-like remove, an oath of loyalty was sworn. The other cats mewled in vain.
I had walked in hoping for a grey kitten akin to Berlioz from The Aristocats and walked out with an aloof ginger tomcat who looked like Brendan Gleeson and possessed the world-weariness of someone who had seen unspeakable things. If cats smoked, he would have been on 30 a day. Everybody loved Oscar. He deigned to tolerate only my dad.
