Sunday, December 17, 2006
Jimmy & Jemima
The usual 5.30pm train heading south out of London. Rows of suited commuters, wearing the polite expressions of their civilized boredom. It's the silent carriage: the ring of a mobile phone receives a hate-stare. I-Pods are to be turned off.
Guildford, and someone gets on who doesn't belong in the nine to five crowd. I can hear him talking in the strange burr of country tones that only rural England creates. Who too? And where are the usual complaints? But I have no hunch of what's going on beyond the back of his bulky, black leather jacket - until, that is, Woking. There the train thins out, seats and space dots the carriage - and he drags his couple of big, battered bags down the aisle, to plonk himself next to me.
But not exactly next to me, it turned out. Out from his coat elegantly stepped a black and white cat, to settle with a stretch in the space between us.
"Goodness," I said, damning to hell the rules about noise in a split-second decision. "Got far to go?"
"Oh, just The Isle of Wight."
Just The Isle of Wight? But that's a several mile ferry journey after an hour more of this, I pointed out.
"Well, it doesn't seem so far when you set out like us from Birmingham, four hours ago!"
Birmingham: a couple of hundred miles into the west. I asked why.
"I had a job there. I don't like to take time off from my yard, but the money was good. I was up a Gantry Crane - you know, one of the really big ones - and took him with me. He doesn't like to be left alone, you see, doesn't like to be away from me. I left him once for a week and he'd stopped eating by the time I got back, the silly thing."
He seemed to be getting into his stride, this big, forty-something character like I'd never met before, so I prompted him with a few more questions. Cats don't normally miss people like that, do they? How come he's so relaxed on a public train, with people like me tickling his chin and stroking his back? What's his name?
"Jimmy. No, well he's a bit different, you see. Out where my yard is there's a female wild cat, ferrel, like. Each year she has three, four, sometimes five of them. And she rejects all of them, except the most perfect one, her favourite. Just drags the others off somewhere or other and abandons them. She hides her nest pretty well - but last year I found old Jimmy here in my yard. My yard's a big place - a breaker's yard - nearly forty acres. Anyhow. Jimmy wasn't a pretty site when I found him. Have a look at his eye - do you see -"
"The misty little patch? Yes - I noticed it before." The tiniest of purrs from Jimmy as I stroked around his ears.
"Well this isn't a pretty story I'm afraid - when I found him, he had a tape worm growing right through there . . . When the vet took it out, it was longer than his whole body, bless him. He was just a kitten of course. That wasn't all though. He was wrapped in barbed wire you see - and as it turned out had a broken skull. Don't know how he'd managed that. Something falling from the yard maybe. So vet's had to put in five metal plates in his head - just there, where the scar is - over the years. Boy has that cost a lot."
He gives Jimmy a little tap on the bonce. A slight stir from him, then back to rest; the usual indifferent cat response. But this is not a normal cat, that much already is clear.
"Really?" I said. "I've no idea about these kinds of things."
"Well, it's been just a bit under three thousand pounds, so far. And I had to have him - you know -" I know. Men always know the implication of that kind of look, and feel it with a slight wince down below. "But that was after. The reason was, see his four white socks? They're perfect. If I didn't have - you know - breeders would thieve him. He'd be worth a mint, you see. He's perfect in that ways.
"Anyhow. So when I found him he was near dead. We took him to the vets, like I said. The vet told us there was no chance, that the best thing to do was put old Jimmy down - but I talked him into around. He just didn't want the work.
"At first Jimmy wouldn't eat - in fact he didn't really walk properly. He used to push himself along the ground on his back legs. We figured that was the only way he'd been able to eat, being wrapped in barbed wire and partly blind and all. Just pushing himself along like that, hoovering up whatever grubs he was lucky enough to run into. They were probably trying to eat him too - what with all his flesh . . .
"So I had to teach old Jimmy to eat. I went away for a job a few months after that - leaving the boys to feed him. But they said after a few days he'd stopped eating, and would just spend all his time scratching my door. I decided after that to take him with me. Oh, he comes up the crane with me alright. He likes it enough - don't you Jimmy?"
A little stretch on the seat.
"So he's happy not only on a train," I said, deciding to state the obvious to keep the conversation going, "but on a crane, too! Remarkable!"
"Oh - any vehincle, really."
"Really?!"
"Oh yes, as long as I'm there. Well you see I have to jump on a dirt-bike to close the gates of my yard each night, and get back. We haven't got them electrified or remote controlled you see - we only got electric last year. We'd been making our own out of cooking oil and the like, but one of the generators got old and blew up. So we had to wire the yard up, put in a substation, all that. Still at least we had free electricity for fifteen years. Still got free water mind - we weren't sure about the Well there when we took it over, but then we found a second spring and dug our own.
"It's - well anyway - where was I? That's right.
"So I take him down on the handle bars of my dirt-bike most nights, if he's in the mood. You like that Jimmy, don't you? Oh, he likes to fly too. One of my mates down on the island is a World War Two buff. Really into it. So a whiles back he built himself a replica plane - you know one of those two-seaters, front and back, open top. He rents it out and the like. Anyhow - when I go up I takes Jimmy up in it too! He's done the loop the loop. Rolls, spins, the lot. He didn't mind it. Because he was with me, you see."
How selfish and unattached cats usually are: hopping from house to house, garden to garden, lap to lap to sofa, forgetting who you are the second your back is turned. Yet, there Jimmy was, the Dare Devil cat who overcame the limitations of his species in this remarkable, trusting, loving bond.
"What happened to the other kittens?" I asked.
"We managed to find one other," he said. "Some years we don't find any at all, you see, although we'll be looking again this year. That other one we found was Jemima. My friend has her now. Now, Jemima really does have a story to tell. She -"
- and the train pulled in at my stop. I thought about wishing Jimmy and his owner luck. But what more luck did either of them need?
"Nice to have meet you," I said blandly.
"Likewise," he said, having not really met me at all.
As I exited the train and started to walk along the platform, a family got on. Through the glass of the carriage window I saw a daughter with her phone out, taking a photo of a beaming son stroking an unflapped Jimmy. Jimmy's owner was starting to talk to their parents. What a story they had coming, I thought, and then wondered what that fine man's name was.
Guildford, and someone gets on who doesn't belong in the nine to five crowd. I can hear him talking in the strange burr of country tones that only rural England creates. Who too? And where are the usual complaints? But I have no hunch of what's going on beyond the back of his bulky, black leather jacket - until, that is, Woking. There the train thins out, seats and space dots the carriage - and he drags his couple of big, battered bags down the aisle, to plonk himself next to me.
But not exactly next to me, it turned out. Out from his coat elegantly stepped a black and white cat, to settle with a stretch in the space between us.
"Goodness," I said, damning to hell the rules about noise in a split-second decision. "Got far to go?"
"Oh, just The Isle of Wight."
Just The Isle of Wight? But that's a several mile ferry journey after an hour more of this, I pointed out.
"Well, it doesn't seem so far when you set out like us from Birmingham, four hours ago!"
Birmingham: a couple of hundred miles into the west. I asked why.
"I had a job there. I don't like to take time off from my yard, but the money was good. I was up a Gantry Crane - you know, one of the really big ones - and took him with me. He doesn't like to be left alone, you see, doesn't like to be away from me. I left him once for a week and he'd stopped eating by the time I got back, the silly thing."
He seemed to be getting into his stride, this big, forty-something character like I'd never met before, so I prompted him with a few more questions. Cats don't normally miss people like that, do they? How come he's so relaxed on a public train, with people like me tickling his chin and stroking his back? What's his name?
"Jimmy. No, well he's a bit different, you see. Out where my yard is there's a female wild cat, ferrel, like. Each year she has three, four, sometimes five of them. And she rejects all of them, except the most perfect one, her favourite. Just drags the others off somewhere or other and abandons them. She hides her nest pretty well - but last year I found old Jimmy here in my yard. My yard's a big place - a breaker's yard - nearly forty acres. Anyhow. Jimmy wasn't a pretty site when I found him. Have a look at his eye - do you see -"
"The misty little patch? Yes - I noticed it before." The tiniest of purrs from Jimmy as I stroked around his ears.
"Well this isn't a pretty story I'm afraid - when I found him, he had a tape worm growing right through there . . . When the vet took it out, it was longer than his whole body, bless him. He was just a kitten of course. That wasn't all though. He was wrapped in barbed wire you see - and as it turned out had a broken skull. Don't know how he'd managed that. Something falling from the yard maybe. So vet's had to put in five metal plates in his head - just there, where the scar is - over the years. Boy has that cost a lot."
He gives Jimmy a little tap on the bonce. A slight stir from him, then back to rest; the usual indifferent cat response. But this is not a normal cat, that much already is clear.
"Really?" I said. "I've no idea about these kinds of things."
"Well, it's been just a bit under three thousand pounds, so far. And I had to have him - you know -" I know. Men always know the implication of that kind of look, and feel it with a slight wince down below. "But that was after. The reason was, see his four white socks? They're perfect. If I didn't have - you know - breeders would thieve him. He'd be worth a mint, you see. He's perfect in that ways.
"Anyhow. So when I found him he was near dead. We took him to the vets, like I said. The vet told us there was no chance, that the best thing to do was put old Jimmy down - but I talked him into around. He just didn't want the work.
"At first Jimmy wouldn't eat - in fact he didn't really walk properly. He used to push himself along the ground on his back legs. We figured that was the only way he'd been able to eat, being wrapped in barbed wire and partly blind and all. Just pushing himself along like that, hoovering up whatever grubs he was lucky enough to run into. They were probably trying to eat him too - what with all his flesh . . .
"So I had to teach old Jimmy to eat. I went away for a job a few months after that - leaving the boys to feed him. But they said after a few days he'd stopped eating, and would just spend all his time scratching my door. I decided after that to take him with me. Oh, he comes up the crane with me alright. He likes it enough - don't you Jimmy?"
A little stretch on the seat.
"So he's happy not only on a train," I said, deciding to state the obvious to keep the conversation going, "but on a crane, too! Remarkable!"
"Oh - any vehincle, really."
"Really?!"
"Oh yes, as long as I'm there. Well you see I have to jump on a dirt-bike to close the gates of my yard each night, and get back. We haven't got them electrified or remote controlled you see - we only got electric last year. We'd been making our own out of cooking oil and the like, but one of the generators got old and blew up. So we had to wire the yard up, put in a substation, all that. Still at least we had free electricity for fifteen years. Still got free water mind - we weren't sure about the Well there when we took it over, but then we found a second spring and dug our own.
"It's - well anyway - where was I? That's right.
"So I take him down on the handle bars of my dirt-bike most nights, if he's in the mood. You like that Jimmy, don't you? Oh, he likes to fly too. One of my mates down on the island is a World War Two buff. Really into it. So a whiles back he built himself a replica plane - you know one of those two-seaters, front and back, open top. He rents it out and the like. Anyhow - when I go up I takes Jimmy up in it too! He's done the loop the loop. Rolls, spins, the lot. He didn't mind it. Because he was with me, you see."
How selfish and unattached cats usually are: hopping from house to house, garden to garden, lap to lap to sofa, forgetting who you are the second your back is turned. Yet, there Jimmy was, the Dare Devil cat who overcame the limitations of his species in this remarkable, trusting, loving bond.
"What happened to the other kittens?" I asked.
"We managed to find one other," he said. "Some years we don't find any at all, you see, although we'll be looking again this year. That other one we found was Jemima. My friend has her now. Now, Jemima really does have a story to tell. She -"
- and the train pulled in at my stop. I thought about wishing Jimmy and his owner luck. But what more luck did either of them need?
"Nice to have meet you," I said blandly.
"Likewise," he said, having not really met me at all.
As I exited the train and started to walk along the platform, a family got on. Through the glass of the carriage window I saw a daughter with her phone out, taking a photo of a beaming son stroking an unflapped Jimmy. Jimmy's owner was starting to talk to their parents. What a story they had coming, I thought, and then wondered what that fine man's name was.
