2024 Pablo

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We'd had Pablo since 2008, so sixteen years. He was the loveliest cat you could imagine - he never hissed or scratched, unless he was sorely provoked, and even then he used to lick you afterwards as a sort of apology.

We miss him licking out our yoghurt pots, and mewing in the morning for his breakfast, and draping himself in the most inconvenient places when we wanted to work. We miss him emerging out of the undergrowth to join us whenever we went into the garden, and, maybe most of all, we miss him sitting on the drive to welcome us home when we'd been out for the evening.

Conversations with Pablo

Conversations with Pablo took two forms: the mutual conversation and the one-way conversation. The one way conversation could go in either direction.

When Pablo would come in from the garden you would hear the clack of the cat flap, and he would then often announce his presence with a long mew. “Here I am! Come and administer to me!” Sometimes this would be for food, but mostly just attention, being picked up, or a requirement for the human to sit down and allow him to sit on your lap. Sometimes these mews would be extraordinarily long and plaintive. “Where are you? Get a move on!” If he had been out in the rain it would be “I’m wet! Come and dry me!”. Another occasional one-way cat utterance would be when he was going out. He might give a quick mew, as if to say “OK. I’m going out now…”

One way conversations originating from the human were also quite common. Whenever he went out last thing at night I would invariably say something like “No fighting now!”, just as he was leaving. I amused myself by thinking he would be annoyed to be told what to do, and that he was thinking “Please, please don’t tell me not to fight”. Maybe he was. He was certainly a cat who really didn’t like to be made to do something he didn’t want to! Another thing we found amusing was to say “We’re going out now. You just stay on the sofa. Don’t bother to do any hoovering or anything.” Or when we went to fetch the yogurts from the kitchen. “I’ll fetch them. Don’t lift a paw…”. The irony was inevitably either lost on Pablo, or, more likely, he just rolled his eyes and ignored us.

The two way conversations were often about food. The magic words “Tea Time!” would always get a very keen mew as a response. “Bed Time Snack!” would also sometimes get a mew, albeit often quite feeble. I think he knew it meant he had to get off the sofa and go through to the kitchen. This was clearly annoying as he had usually just settled down by then. He would also give a little mew if you stroked him, but only the first time. Subsequent strokes wouldn’t elicit a response - mews were strictly rationed.

He was certainly a contrary cat, as all cats are I suppose. If we were on the sofa eating our tea, he would be desperate to sit on my lap, but would be told he couldn’t. He would sit and glare at my lap while I was eating, as if to say “Get a move on, I want to sit down.” Then when I had finished, and put my plate down, I would pat my lap to say that it was free. Of course then he would turn away, and go and sit on another chair. “I don’t want to sit on your lap now…”. 

Pablo had a very expressive back. You could tell when you were in his bad books, even from behind. We saw a lot of his back in the mornings. After his breakfast, and after we had taken our tea and coffee back upstairs to bed, he would mew at the bottom of the stairs. Kate could usually persuade him to come up to see us, and he would eventually jump up onto the bed, but would almost never come near enough for us to stroke or tickle him. He would either sit just out of stroking range, or move to the farthest possible corner of the bed, turn his back on us and sit facing outwards. Very strange!

Pablo would play little games with us. When he wanted to lure us into the kitchen, to give him food, he would mew at the bottom of the stairs, but when you looked down you couldn’t see him. He made sure to stay just out of sight in the dining room door. I think this was his way of saying “If you do come down I’m NOT going into the living room. Only the kitchen will do!” If we were in the kitchen, in the key “pre-tea time” hour, he would sit exactly in the middle of the floor, in the most inconvenient place possible.

We miss you Pablo...