The King & I

In the year following my marital collapse, my mother's small neat address book became quite unmanageable on account of my constant upheavals. Address number thirteen found me in a tiny mews cottage off the Portobello Road. Poky, damp and temporary though it was, I was relieved to finally be living alone, and un-beholden to a series of kindly hosts. Here was time, at last, to assimilate the past and compose a future; to complete the morph from Mrs to Ms. Though paying little attention to the diligent woos of a couple of suitors, there was a dangerous aching vacuum in my heart for somebody special.

Early one morning, hearing a faint but persistent scrabbling, I opened the front door and there he stood, if somewhat wobbly. A grubby, absurd little waif, bearing a short upright tail like a tiny aerial, trotted inside and proceeded to weave a spell around my bare ankles. I had no available resistance , and a convenient tin of sardines left by the previous tenant sprang to mind immediately. This was a total and instant coup de coeur. 

We became an unshakeable item. He was cool, he was the king, and his name was obviously Elvis. In those days, I wallowed in a lot of loud Presley, and he would sit on the speaker absorbing the vibrations as I bopped economically in the tiny living room. And whenever I watched the television he would pose proudly on top of it, basking in the attention. Unlike any other cat I have known, Elvis wanted my company all the time, happy to go anywhere, in my pocket, or on my shoulder. When I shopped in the Portobello, he sat proudly in my basket. He even loved my car - an open-sided mini moke. But as he grew, I had to discourage his recklessness, and leave him sulking at the window whenever I left.

Three months on, Elvis and I piled our stuff into Mokey and left London for Wales and address number fourteen. This was an elderly caravan by the sea, where we would snuggle up and listen to the storms, and wander along the beach collecting driftwood for the little stove that warmed our tiny brave new world. But when the buttercups grew tall and bloomed around us, it was time to move on one last time.

Number fifteen was intended to be yet another short-term address, although over forty years later, I have yet to move on. So it was that Elvis and I found ourselves rattling around in a vast and crumbly old Victorian villa, begging a lot of my attention. I was very pre-occupied getting it sorted, with endless banging and smelly painting, so for the first time, Elvis started to explore the world on his own, though never far from me. There was much that had to be put in order back in London, and stuff that had to be collected and brought back to create our home. On several occasions, I had to leave him in charge while I did a weekend run, and a neighbour was happy to feed and reassure him. He took everything in his Portobello mongrel moggy stride, and even when I acquired a sheepdog pup, he was unphased and adopted him enthusiastically.

Life was good, and we all blossomed. We even went camping together up in the hills. And before long, another stray kitten appeared on the doorstep, as well as a stray boyfriend and both were seamlessly absorbed into our cosy gang, of whom Elvis was always implicitly the boss.

I frequently went off with the man and the dog for a few days at a time, and the cats would take care of things at home, with the doting neighbour in charge of the can opener. But one time, I was stuck in London for a week, tangled up in some distraction, and returned to a terrible absence. Uncharacteristically, Elvis hadn't been seen for several days. 

Indeed, I never saw him again. As the days and weeks passed, I had to accept that my big and cool companion, my partner in flight, my resident comedian and my purring muse, was painfully gone. I searched everywhere, time and again; I put up posters, offered rewards; reached no conclusion. Did he hop unseen into Bob the Butcher's van and get carried off to some yonderness? There was a huge storm in my absence - had he lost his footing on the river bank and got swept away? My neighbour was a fervent gardener, hoeing the soil to a fine tilth, fit for a king's toiletry. Many a time I heard him hurling Celtic curses and clods as Elvis flew over the wall trailing his dignity. One curse too many?

I will of course never know, and deep within, a small door remains forever unclosed, but I have clung to a crazy notion that maybe he just got weary of my absence and headed back to London to rescue me, using some primitive feline homing device. Perhaps he died of old age in the alleyways of the Portobello where he was born.

Or did he actually make it out to Graceland?