If you've been following me on Twitter, you'll know that Bertie died a week past Saturday. In the end, his heart gave out. He must have experienced a final catastrophic bleed. His vets were able to resuscitate him, but he had no brain function. He was finally put to sleep shortly before ten o'clock in the morning.
Anne's previous cat was called Saturn. She was an adventurous soul who spent a lot of time out of doors. She was killed in a road accident on Christmas Eve, 2005. Since my cat didn't get on with other cats, I was worried about introducing yet another one to the house. I needn't have worried. When Anne said that she missed having a cat of her own and wanted to get a couple of kittens, I just said that Kick would have to get used to the idea one way or another. She decided on Burmese because she's always liked them, I think.
Anne calls him the best cat ever, and I have to agree with that. We picked him out of a large litter. We more or less arbitrarily chose him because he was the palest of the young toms in the litter. We'd already chosen Madeleine who was the oddest kitten in the room. She was the smallest and when we first saw her she was licking the wallpaper. The others in the litter appeared to be picking on her and I felt sorry for her and that was that as far as she was concerned. I wanted to look after her. Bertie was just a little bundle of energy and fun. We could have chosen any of his brothers. We decided to take either the darkest or the palest of the brown kittens and on a whim, we chose the lightest.
He was called after Bertie Wooster. Madeleine is of course called after Madeleine Bassett. We picked the names for them in a little hotel room in Southwold where Anne had taken me for my fortieth birthday. We'd been tossing ideas back and forth and I couldn't come up with anything sensible at all. I'd called my own cat Kick the Cat, so it was beyond hope that I'd be of use in choosing names. It's probably just as well I have no children. We collected the kittens the day after we came back from the Suffolk coast and they became part of our lives.
Bertie was a bit of a daddy's boy. I called him all sorts of nicknames. He was my big, beefy boy; the original chocolate log; a bit of an Oxo cat. He was remarkably even-tempered. I never saw him lose his temper and beat up his sister. If anything, she tended to get the upper hand in any arguments in spite of her comparatively diminutive stature. When he was particularly content, he would lie on his back waving his front paws back and forth in the air and purr. His only bad habit was his chewiness. We think that he thought of himself as a labrador puppy. He would chew cardboard boxes and bits of paper. If you let him, he would also gently gnaw on your fingers. I'll probably miss that more than anything else. He was also a cat with a healthy appetite and would stomp around the pillows in the morning to wake us up if there were nothing in his food bowl. He and Madeleine would chase each other around the house, have a bit of a wrestling match and then fall asleep curled up together.
I shall be for ever grateful for the chance to have had him in my life for the past few years. His was the least malicious soul I have ever encountered and I shall miss him terribly. I haven't felt able to write about him until now and I have to say that I'm feeling a little wobbly and slightly teary as a result of writing this short appreciation. I'm very grateful to Simon Tappin and his colleagues at Dick White Referrals for the care they gave him in his final days. They gave him every chance to get better but his body let him down in the end. Simon sent us a very nice card last week with a message of condolence. Anne and I thank him for that too.
Bertram Lyle
b 26 January 2006
d 7 November 2009
Anne's previous cat was called Saturn. She was an adventurous soul who spent a lot of time out of doors. She was killed in a road accident on Christmas Eve, 2005. Since my cat didn't get on with other cats, I was worried about introducing yet another one to the house. I needn't have worried. When Anne said that she missed having a cat of her own and wanted to get a couple of kittens, I just said that Kick would have to get used to the idea one way or another. She decided on Burmese because she's always liked them, I think.
Anne calls him the best cat ever, and I have to agree with that. We picked him out of a large litter. We more or less arbitrarily chose him because he was the palest of the young toms in the litter. We'd already chosen Madeleine who was the oddest kitten in the room. She was the smallest and when we first saw her she was licking the wallpaper. The others in the litter appeared to be picking on her and I felt sorry for her and that was that as far as she was concerned. I wanted to look after her. Bertie was just a little bundle of energy and fun. We could have chosen any of his brothers. We decided to take either the darkest or the palest of the brown kittens and on a whim, we chose the lightest.
He was called after Bertie Wooster. Madeleine is of course called after Madeleine Bassett. We picked the names for them in a little hotel room in Southwold where Anne had taken me for my fortieth birthday. We'd been tossing ideas back and forth and I couldn't come up with anything sensible at all. I'd called my own cat Kick the Cat, so it was beyond hope that I'd be of use in choosing names. It's probably just as well I have no children. We collected the kittens the day after we came back from the Suffolk coast and they became part of our lives.
Bertie was a bit of a daddy's boy. I called him all sorts of nicknames. He was my big, beefy boy; the original chocolate log; a bit of an Oxo cat. He was remarkably even-tempered. I never saw him lose his temper and beat up his sister. If anything, she tended to get the upper hand in any arguments in spite of her comparatively diminutive stature. When he was particularly content, he would lie on his back waving his front paws back and forth in the air and purr. His only bad habit was his chewiness. We think that he thought of himself as a labrador puppy. He would chew cardboard boxes and bits of paper. If you let him, he would also gently gnaw on your fingers. I'll probably miss that more than anything else. He was also a cat with a healthy appetite and would stomp around the pillows in the morning to wake us up if there were nothing in his food bowl. He and Madeleine would chase each other around the house, have a bit of a wrestling match and then fall asleep curled up together.
I shall be for ever grateful for the chance to have had him in my life for the past few years. His was the least malicious soul I have ever encountered and I shall miss him terribly. I haven't felt able to write about him until now and I have to say that I'm feeling a little wobbly and slightly teary as a result of writing this short appreciation. I'm very grateful to Simon Tappin and his colleagues at Dick White Referrals for the care they gave him in his final days. They gave him every chance to get better but his body let him down in the end. Simon sent us a very nice card last week with a message of condolence. Anne and I thank him for that too.
Bertram Lyle
b 26 January 2006
d 7 November 2009
A wonderful and heartfelt tribute to an obviously wonderful, and much loved, friend. I'm sure you'll always feel a warm glow when you remember him.
Thank you, Pam. I'm glad to have known him and feel privileged to have looked after him. He really was a hell of a guy.