I DREAMT last night that I was a lost moggy wandering among the street cats of inner-city Manchester.
I was the only one with a tail.
These guys weren’t Manx cats. They were Manc brats. Street fighters with a bit of Irish in them, like comic legend Korky the Kat.
They spent most of the dream singing Mewchester United songs dedicated to their troll model, Catty from Cork. I think he's the sourpuss-in-boots that all Mew-nited fans idolise. The one that humans call Roy Keane.
The only subject the dream cats wanted to miaow about was furball.
I heard so much of it that the pun cushion that used to be my brain is under threat from a cat’s chorus of chants about Alex Fur-gone's son, or whatever his name is.
Personally, I prefer to remember the days when Denis Paw was top cat around those parts.
Anyway, my street-cat dream (more of a nightmare really) was triggered by a desire to spend more time with my family in the UK.
I have to decide whether to take Tom and Dick, my twin black gatos, with me to England – or try to find a new home for them here In Spain.
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Tom and Dick: Would they settle in England?
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They have no language problems here, but Keith, my cousin's moggy in Manchester, reckons they’ll need to be wary of the locals.
Otherwise they might find themselves missing an ear or an eye. Or walking on anything between one and three legs.
Keith’s local street-cat clan call themselves the Kitty Kitty Gang Bang. They are certainly no Pads Army - apart, perhaps from scabby tabby Fur-Gus, who has all his limbs but is perpetually legless.
Keith (who happens to be a girl), says things have changed for the worse for local felines over the last 30 years.
She recalls: “In my great-great-great-grandparents’ day, the Manc cat community had some fur-midable role models. I mean, who can forget the likes of Moggy Thatcher and Geoffrey Boycat?’’
These days the only ‘greeting’ the Kitty Gang give to strangers consists of a two-word description of a hair ball.
All I can say is that it sounds very much like 'Fur cough'.
The real nightmare begins if that smattering of local lingo does not have the desired effect. The smattering becomes a battering and the ears and legs start to come off.
That clinches it. The boys are staying in Spain.