Seeing as we are in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, with millions of people either in lockdown or self-isolating, many previously face-to-face activities are starting to be carried out online. I thought this true story might serve both as a cautionary tale and as some light relief.
When you acquire a cat you have to keep him or her in for six weeks. However, in my house there are several means of egress that furnish any self-respecting cat with the opportunity to escape. For example, there is a cat flap, a front door, a back door and a window that very conveniently opens just above the kitchen roof.
With this in mind, the cat's name is very important, for a reason that will become clear. Thus, when we brought home, from a rescue centre, a cat called Tweazy, I put my foot down.
Claudius at work, by Terry Freedman
"There's no way I'm walking up and down our road calling 'Tweazy, nice Tweazy, come back home Tweazy.' We have to call him something different, something more manly, something befitting his huge size and strength."
We settled on Claudius, on account of his Roman nose.
Claudius joined our other cat, Becky, in our happy home. Becky was small, female and vicious – and I had the lacerations to prove it. Claudius, a huge ginger bruiser of a cat, wanted nothing more than to play with Becky, but every time he tried she batted him away with her paw. Becky regarded us as (marginally) useful idiots, and Claudius as just an idiot or a nuisance.
Once the six week period was up, we let Claudius out into the back garden. We had an apple tree there, and Claudius would run at full speed out of the cat flap, down the garden and up into the tree – all without even pausing for breath.
While I was working, he liked to sit on my lap, around my neck like a stole, or sometimes on my shoulder. I would quite often find myself walking around the house with Claudius perched next to my head, and even answering the door like that. The postman and other delivery people probably thought this was a real-life version of Treasure Island, with myself cast in the role of Long John Silver, and Claudius in that of the parrot.
Another favourite place of Claudius was on my desk, preferably on important papers that I had to take to meetings. This would have been bearable, had it not been for the fact that Claudius had a bit of a problem....
Early on in his residency we noticed that he wasn't well. It turned out that he had a blocked bowel, and had been constipated for several days. Consequently, part of his bowel had started to go rotten. The vet said he could cut that bit out, but that there was only a twenty percent chance of survival. Claudius did survive, and thanks to decent pet insurance, so did our bank balance. However, after that he would often leave proof of his visits in the form of a brown ring that, to anyone not in the know, looked like a coffee mug stain. That's what I told people it was, if they noticed it in a meeting. I could see the funny side, although that didn't prevent me becoming impatient and annoyed.
When Claudius wasn't sitting on my shoulder, perching in the apple tree, or leaving his calling card on my papers, he would try to play with Becky.
Swipe. Hiss. Claudius may have been big, but really he was a gentle giant, all seven kilos of him. But Becky.... I did feel sorry for him.
Another way in which Claudius tried to bankrupt us, when the bowel operation failed to do so, was through allergies. He was allergic to a whole range of things, most of which seemed to grow in our garden. We spent a fortune on different kinds of specialist cat food to accommodate his delicate palate.
One day, a colleague in the education technology world emailed me to ask if we could chat on Skype. Chris Smith, aka ShamblesGuru, lives and works in Thailand.
"I was wondering if you would be happy to give a talk to a group of headteachers about what's happening in schools in the UK as far as technology is concerned. Just for maybe 15 or 20 minutes over Skype."
"Sure", I said. "When?"
"It will be on a Sunday. Unfortunately, because of the time difference, you will need to be ready to go at 6am."
"On a Sunday?"
"Yes, but look, don't worry. Just wear a shirt and don't worry about what you wear below the waist. Nobody is going to see."
I like Chris. He's an optimist. I'm an optimist too, but I also like to take precautions. What if something happened, and I needed to get out of my chair before the Skype call ended? Of course I had to wear trousers!
On the appointed day, I had no trouble connecting up with the Thai Headteacher conference. It was slightly disconcerting that they could see and hear me, while I could not see or hear them, but I just pretended to myself that I was making a "talking head" video to upload to YouTube.
I was well-prepared and, I thought, quite eloquent. I had just reached the part where I was talking about the government's latest initiative, when Claudius leapt onto my desk. Before I had a chance to stop him, he leapt on to my lap with such force that my chair fell backwards. I tried to grab on to the desk, but succeeded only in yanking out the wire that connected my computer to the internet. So the last thing that esteemed audience thousands of miles away saw was me falling head over heels backwards, arms flailing and legs in the air, with a cat sprawled over my face.
I've only cried a few times in my life. I cried when my dad died. I cried when my sister died. And I cried when Claudius died. He lived to a good old age, but his organs started to break down: liver, kidneys; he even started to lose hair. Even though I knew, and know, that the kindest thing to do was to have him put to sleep, I still felt, and feel, like an executioner, a great betrayer. He died in my arms, looking up at me with his huge eyes, while the vet injected him.
When Claudius failed to come home with us, Becky spent three weeks looking for him. She even walked along the road in front of the house, something she had never done before. Then she became unwell. We took her to the vet so they could investigate what was going on. Fifteen minutes after we had arrived home, the vet phoned to tell us that Becky had had a massive heart attack, and died.
The apple tree started to go rotten. We had it chopped down, and used the trunk and some of the branches to make a woodpile as a habitat for other creatures. It worked. The woodpile houses a thriving community of insects (we even spotted a stag beetle once), providing endless fascination to the two feline tyrants who currently rule our home.