4 minute read
NOTES ON A SMALL CITY
Richard Wyatt: Notes on a small city
Columnist Richard Wyatt remembers the cats who have found a place in his heart, the blockbuster musical stage show of the same name and the less successful screen adaptation...
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Astrologically speaking, I am a Leo. That makes me a king of the celestial jungle –vivacious, theatrical and passionate. However, coming back down to earth, I have to say it’s domestic cats rather than lions that have featured in my life.
This may be a difficult subject to cover in a city where it would seem to outward appearances that dogs rule, but my heart has always belonged to those independent, sensuous, fur-covered felines who over the years have demeaned themselves enough to spend time with me.
The latest pet in a lengthy list of rescued animals features in the cartoon to the right. It’s long-haired Mr George who is riding on the rear rack of my bicycle. Accepted and fostered as a kitten by our then existing cat –the late but lovely tabby Lawrence –George has been our companion for some 14 years.
My first furry friend was a chance find when I was just 14 and out with my uncle during school holidays delivering cattle food to Somerset farms. Returning the lorry to the mill at Bleadon I happened to see where the resident moggie had decided to have her kittens, close to the warmth of the building’s industrial boiler, and one of those kittens was soon on its way to my home.
Despite the unexpected surprise I was allowed to keep her and Nickel, as she was named, lived to see 24 summers before entering her pussy paradise while sleeping in the sun below a privet hedge. Nick, as I called her, always remembered that furnace near her ‘nest’ as a kitten and was the only one of my cats who would burrow down the bed to my knees on a cold winter’s night.
In adulthood cat followed cat, although not all were lucky enough to live out their natural lives. However, each one found a place in my heart as fellow ‘servants’ of Felis catus will no doubt concur.
The above musing was brought on by my chance purchase of a reduced-price DVD spotted on a supermarket shelf. Just a fiver for a copy of the screen adaptation of the blockbuster musical Cats –you know, the one that bombed at the box office. I wanted to armchairwatch the film I saw on the big screen back in 2019 and judge it against the overwhelmingly harsh notices it received at the time. Critics penned such headlines as “an adaptation straight outta the litter box” or as “one to furget” and even as “a dreadful hairball of woe.”
Despite it being panned, and it lost Universal Pictures a lot of money, I liked it. The feline fantasy film was based on the incredibly successful stage musical of the same name by Andrew Lloyd Webber, which in turn was based on the poetry collection of 1939 by T.S. Eliot, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.
Theatre impresario Cameron Mackintosh started a countrywide tour of the musical at the Bristol Hippodrome in 1993 and even pulled in Olympic gold-medal-winning ice-skater Robin Cousins to don whiskers and a tail as Munkustrap, a principal character and the main narrator in the musical.
There was a major stage makeover to bring the action further out into the auditorium –a sight the city’s theatre-goers had not seen there before –and what an after-show party at the then Royal Hotel. I know I wasn’t the only ‘me’ saying ‘ow’ the morning after!
Lord Webber had taken the collection of whimsical light poems Eliot wrote for his godchildren and turned them into a big budget blockbuster that has made millions. It’s the story of a tribe of street cats called the Jellicles and the night they make the ‘Jellicle choice’ by deciding which cat will ascend to the ‘Heavyside layer’ and come back to a new life. Each contestant introduces themselves to us by song and dance. There’s humour and pathos and … well, I just lap it up as I love a musical.
Director, Tom Hooper introduced a new character called Victoria into his star-studded movie version. She is a young white cat, thrown out of a car in the streets of London, who is introduced to the alley cats and leads us through the action.
While I re-watched that movie I couldn’t help thinking of the ‘furry friends’ bought to amuse during the Covid lockdowns, and hoping that they have indeed found a forever home. n
