A lot of workplaces outlaw nicknames due to undertones of bullying. But I don’t really bother to nickname someone I don’t like. Basil was our cat and he had loads of nicknames.
BATHTULLE BANGUL BAKSULLE BANDOOL
A nickname can certainly be a term of endearment. The more you have the more loved you are. Thinking all of this makes me feel less guilty about what happened to him.
His inky black fur is dull with grease
His eyes are urine
His tail is accusing
His tongue is rasping
His ham oozing
We wanted a cat and we got that
I’d look at his tongue and wonder if anyone had ever cooked a cat’s tongue and if so what would it be like?
(A cat’s ham, by the way, is their bum. It does rather look like a slice of luncheon meat, doesn’t it? Don’t pretend you have never looked.)
Basil lived at an address in Adelaide Avenue with us. Adelaide Avenue is in a part of Lewisham called Ladywell. It still tickles me to think of how Nigerian taxi-drivers often pronounced the road “Adiladi”. As if it was a place in Nigeria rather than, presumably, one in Australia that I’d only ever heard of due to watching Neighbours avidly as a schoolgirl - on at just after half past five every weekday evening. I am also rather amused by my workmate’s joke, made the other day, that he’d like to go inside a lady’s well. I bet he would. I doubt he would ever be seen again either if he managed it. A bit like Basil, who this story is really about.
Anyway, I don’t know who Basil was mixing with but one day he turned up at the back door with a bullet in his head. Being a cat, this is what they do, he went and hid and by the time he'd decided to come for help he was deranged and had a brain full of maggots. Someone shot our cat with an air rifle and Basil shut down.We were all up for writing to the local paper to complain but, of course, we forgot about that after the initial surge of righteousness. Hes not buried in Ladywell cemetery in case you were thinking about that. Hes a cat, why would that be allowed? But, somehow, whenever I pass by that place, the graveyard, on a bus I think I would not be at all surprised to see Basil walking in there.
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