My pyjama trousers must have been on the small side at the time – not unusual for a nine-year-old going through a mini-growth spurt. However, the reason I know that the trouser legs were hanging above my ankles is that when Tiggy took a swipe at them that morning, she managed to draw blood.
To be fair, she had given me due warning. On the previous occasion I was slow to feed the cat, she had growled with such naked menace that had she been human, the message could not have been more explicit: next time I’ll cut you.
She always was a feline of her word, with clear boundaries we knew not to cross. There was to be no picking her up, and it was unthinkable to try to get her to sit on your lap. Open up a clothes drawer, allow her to wallow in your school jumper, and she might briefly consent to being stroked, providing you did not interfere with her impressive efforts at shredding the sleeves.
Tiggy being my first ever pet, her aversion to human contact came as a disappointment. I had assumed she would be as affectionate as my friends’ tabbies and tortoiseshells, perhaps with the same playful disposition as the Disney-cute characters I had seen in The Aristocats movie.
Instead, if Tiggy had any cartoon equivalent, it would be from Tom and Jerry, sharing as she did Tom’s dedicated zeal for mouse pursuit. That said, she was far more successful in this field, regularly depositing eviscerated rodents on the living-room rug – with a sideline in decapitated birds.
Other cat-owners insisted this was an act of love, Tiggy bringing us the trophies from her hunting. I was pretty sure, though, that this was just another way she had found to terrorise me and my little brother and me, frequently dropping the bloodied torsos in front of us just as we sat down to watch television.
I cannot claim to have had any great love for this furry serial killer, but the onset of adolescence saw me develop a certain respect for the lifestyle she had negotiated. My early forays to discos and parties were circumscribed by a strict curfew, yet Tiggy continued to stay out until all hours, presumably enjoying what passes as nocturnal entertainment for a cat in late middle age. And despite returning home only to sleep and be fed, she was not the one regularly accused by my parents of “treating this house like a hotel”.
More importantly, Tiggy did not seem to share my growing concern about social status, her stance towards any other cats who visited our garden one of cool reserve. She was as carefree and self-contained as I was anxious and needy. And while I suffered continued humiliation at the hands of bullies at school and skinheads on the dancefloor, I was pretty sure she would face down any hostility with a combative confidence I could only dream of. After all, as I knew only too well, Tiggy had claws.
