Bye Bye Marge...

I’d never really got people and their attachment to pets before.

I was often bemused when perfectly rational friends broke down in uncontrollable sobbing when their cat or dog died. ‘It’s only a bloody animal,’ I thought.

But then me, the Missus and the Boy got cats, a mother and daughter from a local animal rescue centre, and I suddenly totally got it. The unconditional love, the affection, the companionship, the physically calming effect of them curling up and letting them stroke you while they purred away.

And I know all this talk of stroking sounds a bit pervy but it was never like that. Honest. I’m no moggy-fiddler.

The mother cat, Marge, was a great big lazy black and white lap cat. She was christened Marge because when she came to us she’d been spayed and the dye they’d used to cover the fur was bright blue and the wound was shaped like Marge Simpson’s hair.

The daughter cat, Buffy, was a tabby who generally shot around the place and killed things in the garden. The general rule was that Marge was mine and the Missus’ cat while Buffy was the Boy’s cat.

Over the years I became massively attached to Marge as she often curled up in my office when I was writing and she’d often claim part of the bed too, but over the past few days she got very sick very quickly so this morning me and the Missus took her to the vet and he advised us to have her put down to stop her suffering any more.

Bizarrely I pride myself on being very good in a crisis and the worse the crisis usually is the more controlled I generally am – but suddenly I was sobbing uncontrollably and turning into a gibbering wreck.

When we got out of there I pulled myself together and the Missus handled it in her usual fashion by cracking very bad taste jokes.

Now I know it’s not a global disaster and that countless human lives have not been lost, and I also know it sounds vaguely ridiculous, but I actually loved my cat more than I love a lot of people.

And I’m going to miss her and her ability to shed white fur all over the house. RIP Marge.