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It's the small things that matter, that make or break your days; the snapping shoelace when you're late for the train, the rude voice on the telephone, your computer's refusal to log on, any of a thousand other diurnal obscenities. Conversely, it's amazing how so small an event can bring you out of so low a mood; a morning walk, a drink with a mate, watching a film, a good football result. Recently, my Good Thing has been so small as to be kitten-sized, because, well, that's exactly what it is; a baby cat, bluey-grey, golden-eyed, fanged and clawed, tail like a nail, voice like a distant seagull. And he's washed the light-obscuring grime from the windows of my days.

I'd been low for weeks, maybe months. I was rising out of the trough, steadily, but one foot was still down there, dragging in the mud. Wasted an entire morning dithering, finally managing a few pages' worth of work which went crumpled straight into the bin, put on a fleece and walked down to the village shop, grumbling to myself all the way. Who knows where such low moments come from? The anxiety and sense of futility, the moodiness, the anger barely kept in check; even if you did know the origin of these emotions, they'd still be there, eating you. Nothing would change. Knowledge isn't always power. I dumped a few essentials in the basket; bread, butter, beans. The usual lunch for a man who can't be arsed to cook. At the till, I noticed a woman holding something to her chest, wrapped up in a towel. I asked her what it was and she asked me if I wanted a cat. She'd been visiting someone on a farm nearby, she said, an old person who asked her to check on the feral cat who lived in the barn and who'd just had kittens. So she went into the barn. The kittens were dead, some of them half-eaten; fox, badger, stoat, weasel, polecat, any number of toothy predators. Mother cat nowhere to be seen. Then the lady spotted two tiny glittering eyes in amongst the haybales; a survivor. She fetched a towel to protect her arms - a feral kitten scratches and bites, no matter how wee it is - and caught the cat and was now wondering what the hell to do with it. She'd gone into the shop to see if the owners wanted it but they already had enough cats to deal with so, on the off chance, did I want it? Could I look after it? She turned down a flap of the towel and I saw his face. Size of a Cox's apple, tiny. Eyes that glowed with mistrust and even a kind of hatred for everything I, and the species I belong to, represented. I went to touch him and he hissed. Miniscule fangs, needle-sharp. The eyes glowed greener. So much seething energy in such a tiny thing. I added cat-food and cat-litter to the basket.

Back home, the kitten found a dark crack beneath the sofa and wedged himself in it and stayed there, out of my reach. White bumps of ticks in his fur. When I tried to coax him out he'd growl or hiss and wriggle himself further into his hiding place. I made him a box to sleep in and a toilet tray and got two saucers for his food and water. I slid a bowl of food beneath the sofa. He didn't stir. Just his eyes shining in the darkness.

I've always liked cats. I don't mean the fat and pampered and sulky things that certain neurotic types allow to rule their houses, I mean the little lions and tiny tigers that the average domestic moggy will, if allowed to, prove itself to be. When I was younger, I had an old uncle who, when he retired from his job at Birkenhead Park railway station, took the ragged-eared, one-eyed, battling old railway cat with him. He'd been having a secret affair with a posh woman for some time; she'd tell her husband she was taking their two Pekingese for a walk, go and see my uncle, go home. After one such tryst, she couldn't find the dogs, but needed to return home before her husband got suspicious. So my uncle told her to go and he'd bring the dogs over later, tell her and her hubby he'd found them running free in the park. So she went. He searched for the dogs: no sign. Nor of his cat, until he looked under the bed, and there they were; the cat, and what it had left of the two Pekingese. 'Like a necklace', I'll never forget my uncle telling me, 'bloody thing was wearing their guts like a string of bloody pearls'. And I've watched lions and leopards and jungle cats in Africa, seen the way they yawn and stretch and loll and luxuriate and seem to smile like every Smudge or Tiddles or Mr Snuggles I've ever met. Woken up in the flat where I used to live by next door's ginger tom bringing me presents; rats, mice, birds. Once, even, the arse end of a rabbit; slimy stuff I didn't want to examine too closely up the walls, over the duvet. The cat himself perched proud and purring on the windowsill.

Funny how these savage little creatures bring out our softer sides, how we indulge these ruthless predators. I've been having vivid dreams of late, in which I'm the protector, laden with the burden of looking after other, terribly vulnerable, often horribly deformed or damaged creatures. The kitten's had his ticks removed, been injected and de-loused and x-rayed (and again, after I accidentally trod on him on the stairs), and has lacerated my forearms until they look like the limbs of an Emo-kid after two hours in his bedroom with some eye-liner and a razor-blade and an early Manics album. He's clawing his way up my back as I write. And this afternoon, when I take a wee nap on the couch, he'll lie on my chest and lullaby me off to sleep with his purring, that absolutely magical noise that cats can make. This little panther. He's cheered me up.
© Niall Griffiths 2008

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