Oliver

In 1989 Oliver Zinfandal arrived at TomCatTowers!.

I had been put in touch with a cat fosterer who had a Persian cat, desperate for a new home. I was told that he was very affectionate and loving, the perfect family pet. He had been bought as a very expensive wedding present but as children arrived they were all allergic to him!! I realise now what that allergy was!!

We arrived early at the fosterer’s home and as we waited for her to get home we peered through the window to see the most magnificent, huge Persian cat, all grey with a beautiful white bib and an extravagant white moustache. I fell in love with him instantly. As we were led into the house we stepped over a black cat on the carpet. He was very quiet, we didn’t realise he was dead. Poor thing must have died during the day.

We were introduced to Oliver who was enormous! He grumbled and growled as he sat on a shelf glaring at us. It took four of us to wrestle him into a cat basket. The basket rocked from side to side on the back seat of the car as we drove home. Oliver grizzled, spat and snorted with the continual hisses all the way to his new home. I just assumed he was a bit upset.

Oliver may have been a rescue-cat but thought his new home at Tom Cat Towers was completely beneath him as he proceeded to turn his finely tuned, pedigree squashed nose into the air as he contemptuously ignored all and sundry. Any attempt at friendliness was met with a tongue curling hiss and a snarl.

Any efforts to detangle his matted pelt were met with all out war. Oliver did not hold back on the violence and had no idea that it was not acceptable to go for the kill when approached with a comb or brush. He would savage any human who dared to touch him and he meant to seriously harm.

He grumbled and spat viciously in the faces of our other two gentle cats, Willi Whizkas and Tushtots who shared his home and he would bowl them off their food with an aggressive hiss or a good swipe from his massive paws. If we tried to pick him up he would growl and yowl constantly, then try to bite, quite nastily, any part of human flesh in reach of his snapping fangs.

Oliver was a monster. Not the loving adorable cat we had been lead to believe he was. No wonder nobody wanted him and his previous owners were ‘allergic’ to him! He was a nasty cat!

Family were afraid to come round as his behaviour was so bad he actually frightened people, especially when they saw him draw blood when I approached him!!

It got so bad that we only had three options. Take him back. Give him to someone else (But who? No-one would want a vile animal like this; it would be unfair to the new owner) the third option was to put him down which didn’t seem fair to Oliver.

In desperation we called BBC Barking Mad. They did not believe how naughty he was and how he would growl like a dog all the time. They had quite a shock when they did meet him!!

They filmed him with Philippa Forrester and he performed like the little alpha-diva he was. He cussed, spat, snarled and his piece-de-resistance was to savage my hand so badly we had to stop filming and seek urgent medical attention - very quickly as I dripped with blood yet again!!

A training routine was set up by the cat psychologist. Basically, Oliver was treating TomCatTowersas an hotel. So all his food, treats and snacks were removed and Oliver was to come to us for food. He had to learn that Oliver was not the boss, I was.

Oliver, to be honest was terminally stupid. I think he had just got through life on looks alone as he was really gorgeous to look at. But he was a complete airhead. The only time he used his brain was to work out that a rustling plastic bag waved loudly in his direction contained ham scraps from the deli counter. It took about six months for him to work this one out! He would waddle as fast as his fat legs would carry him to look cute and appealing in an effort to ensure these scraps ended up down his greedy fat neck and not his two brothers, Willi Whizkas and Tushtots!

Even then his ‘table manners’ left a lot to be desired as he hissed and snatched food to gobble down quickly, not even worrying that he may snap or bite fingers in the process. He got bigger and fatter and was almost too big and heavy to pick up. Not that Oliver did cuddles or nice!!

We bought Oliver every conceivable cat treat and toy. All were treated with utter contempt. He didn’t even give us the courtesy of sniffing them. Only one thing excited him. A Culpepper catnip mouse. He would lie on his back and lazily pat it for about thirty seconds before yawning and nodding off. Oliver was incredibly lazy. Just standing up was violent exercise to Oliver’s mind!

Oliver could snore. We knew exactly where he was by the thunderous snore. Like a tractor vibrating across a field, Oliver rumbled and vibrated his way through his 23 hours a day snoozes, catnaps, cat-kips, serious-sleeps and forty winks!

As Barking Mad was about to be aired on television in 1999 John Peel reviewed the programme, saying his owner (me!) had the patience of a saint to put up with such a monster. Oliver was described as making a continual noise, like a little thunderstorm.

Shocked by his very bad behaviour, viewers wrote to us. One person kindly sent a video showing how bad cats should be muzzled. I was horrified, but it did give me an idea. Grooming was still a wrestling match that ended in a pile of knots and fur, an extremely evil tempered cat and me, covered in my own blood!

We put a sock on his head. It almost worked. As he couldn’t see he didn’t have a target to bite. Nevertheless he would snap indiscriminately. It was funny. A snarling cat, black sock on his head with four white fangs piercing through the fabric snapping away whilst trying to grip onto human flesh. But it sort of worked and grooming was less violent but still hard work.

Strangely, he would let us bath him. He would chunter and grumble, but he would sit nicely as we shusshed him up and down in the water in the bath. He even had his own shampoo in a bottle labelled ‘Wash and Growl’! However, always one to have the upper paw, Oliver would wee on hands when his bottom was being washed. I’m sure he had a smug smile on his whiskers when he did this. He even let us blow dry him but it was to an accompaniment of chunters and cusses as he lay there on his back, legs in the air swaddled in towels with a totally martyred look on his furry-face!

He loved the garden and would waddle up and down the path like an old pantomime horse, spending his days lying under bushes snoozing his time away. He was 10 years old when we adopted him, by the time he was 18 he was starting to fade. He would still fight and snarl, spit and bite but occasionally, just occasionally towards the end he would let me hold him in my arms like a baby for a very quick cuddle as I told him I really did love him.

Hygiene was not a word that flashed through Oliver’s dictionary. In fact he didn’t really do personal hygiene. Grooming was something that he just watched the other cats do. Many a time he came in plastered with stuff on his bottom that he should have buried. We had to don a face mask, latex gloves and one person would hold the snarling beast while the other operated at the other end with scissors and soapy tissues. He even came home with a batch of maggots living on what was hanging off his bottom so they had to be cleaned off.

During the hot summer of 2006 Oliver came home yet again with a fully decorated bottom and it all had to be pulled off him. Off he then went into the bushes not coming in at night as it was so warm. By the third day a really obnoxious odour was following Oliver round, and it was the devils own job to catch him. We were horrified to see that his back end was alive with maggots. I cleaned them off and took away those that crawled out of him. It had to be an emergency trip to the vets the next day. Oliver was suffering from 'fly strike'.

The Vet, (the only word he really recognised- I did say he was stupid for a cat) made Oliver disappear for a couple of days. Despite frantic calls and searches he didn’t appear until the third day.

He had dragged himself home from whatever bush he’d been lying under. He was covered in brown blood and his backside was just heaving with maggots. As I rushed inside to get a towel he tried to do a runner but was headed off at the pass. I knew what would happen but hoped for the best as we rushed him to the vet.

She took one look at him and said ‘I can’t repair this’ Oliver, at death’s door, was given the final kindness. I broke my heart.

He’s buried in his favouritepart of the garden and we miss him dreadfully. He never was a lap-cat or a cuddle-kitten just a bad tempered, snarly old cat who was the worst cat in the world but who we loved with all our hearts. He featured in our book as Willi Whizkas Tall Tales and Lost Lives as Ginger Tompkins, but the fictional character was much nicer that the real life one!

People said that he must have loved us or at least liked living with us as he never ran away.

Oliver was just too stupid to have even thought of that!!