Introducing the Fatpuss

Today I am wearing a black and blue wraparound dress that ties at the waist. It has bracelet sleeves. I have put a black camisole underneath, and matched with black wedges and tiny black enamel earrings.

Yesterday evening, Fatpuss sat at the front door and scowled heavily, while Podae pranced about and the Grimth just purred, as he always does.

Fatpuss is an absolutely massive cat. He's a British Shorthair, which means he's solid and stocky, with stumpy little legs, a short fat tail, and a big round head. He's completely black, from the top of his tiny ears to the tip of his furry tail. Great golden eyes survey the world, they're the only touch of colour on him except for three white hairs on his left flank.

He's also very fat - hence the name.

He did have a real name once, but all he ever heard us say was Fatpuss (what a fat puss; where's the fat puss; come here you fat puss; who's a big fatty fat puss) and now it's all he'll answer to.

Although we do also call him Gigantor.

Our housemate, the Amateur Actress, calls him Fatticus Pussiatus - a Latin interpretation, you could say. Or Harry Potter-esque? He's so imperious and majestic that it actually suits him very well.

But mostly it's just Fatpuss. We even had to change the name on his vet file and his collar tag, because the nurses used to call him by his real name and he'd just sit there stolidly, ignoring them.

Mind you, he's good at ignoring people. That's part of his charm. As a British Shorthair he has a character which can best be described as "aloof". Which is to say, he hardly responds to anything. Fatpuss exists in his own world, only surfacing from his deep internal contemplation long enough to demand affection (rarely) or food (a great deal more often).

Anyway, he's cross with us because yesterday My One True Love cleaned and oiled our front and back decks.

It means the deck is oily until the coating soaks in. Which means Fatpuss can't cross the deck to the back door to be let in, which is his favourite route, because he doesn't want to get oil on his paws. He walked on it accidentally yesterday, and it wasn't until three-quarters of the way across that it penetrated his inscrutable demeanour that something wasn't quite right.

You should have seen him, he actually put the brakes on and tried to go into reverse, before discovering that option still had him on the oily surface. So he tippy-toed quickly across to the threshold of the back door and yowled to be let in: Oh my god! there is SOMETHING ON THE DECK! my paws feel all STRANGE! I can't be-LIEVE you would let this happen to me!

If only he had gone around the side and used the cat flap, we wouldn't be in this position. But he prefers to use the human doors, because they offer the best access to his home comforts, and also means he has a shorter distance to walk from garden to sofa.

Fatpuss is not a lover of exercise, as you no doubt will have gathered from his name. He'd much rather sit patiently at the back door than walk around the side and let himself in through the cat flap in the laundry. Of course, this could be because the cat flap is getting to be a bit of a squeeze these days ... but it's also because he's inherently lazy.

He's so lazy in fact, that when he wants to go in or out the front door, he just sits there and stares at it - willing it to open through the sheer power of his mind. He won't miaow to let us know he's there, he just stares intently at the frame of the door and waits for one of us to pick up the pulsing electromagnetic waves he's sending us.

And sadly, he's now trained us very effectively to check and see if the Fat One needs to go in or out, and more often than not we see him there, and lo and behold, Fatpuss gets door service.

Sigh.