Thank you, Cassie Thornton. My friend, a feral class comrade and ace artist, for creating the above, main image 🙂
While writing this, I’ve been staying in a hotel in Southend-On-Sea for a long weekend. I had a lovely time with my family. They proudly showed off their massive TV. It’s half the size of a small car. They certainly don’t need to go to the cinema anymore. I met Graham Burnett. He is a good friend. We discussed him giving an intro and Q&A at my Feral Class book launch at The Old Waterworks. Still working out the dates, probably in April 2026. I had a fruitful meeting with Ruth Jones, who coordinates The Old Waterworks. I admired their growing collection of books suggested by members. Their collection includes the Grrrl Zine Library. It consists of over 700 feminist and LGBTQIA+ specific zines. It also features contemporary art books. They have also published artists’ books and art journals. And also meeting great artist friends, Elsa James and Emma Edmondson, at The Old Waterworks.
On the way back, I felt jubilant. Meeting wonderful friends made me happy. I was also excited about my upcoming presentation of my book, Feral Class, in Southend. After all, the entire book is about my upbringing there. I returned to the hotel and opened the door. I was startled to find a panicked pigeon flapping its wings frantically around the room. I chose not to chase it out. Instead, I sat on the bed. I let the feathered visitor rest near the window. We both calmed down and shared the space in silence for about five minutes. In those seemingly intimate moments, I imagined we connected in some way. I don’t know, it just felt good. But soon, a mutual tension began to build between us. Our brief togetherness was coming to an end. I quietly said to the bird, “Go on, leave—there’s the window.” Instantly, it slipped out through the small gap. It exited the same way it had entered and flew away into the sky. The whole event felt oddly important. This feeling was amplified by the words I was about to write—words about Fizz, our recently deceased cat.
My plan was to sit down in the hotel room and write a farewell to Fizz, our beloved cat who left us two weeks ago. But I’ve come to realise that grief doesn’t follow a straight line. A friendly pigeon reminded me of Fizz. Then my thoughts wandered to all the other creatures who have graced—and occasionally disrupted Ruth’s life and mine. So this piece is for them and others who have lost furry pals. A collection of memories, all inspired by the loss of one very special cat friend.
So, here we go.
To understand the origin of the phrase ‘Furry Pals,’ you have to go back to 1996. That was the year Ruth and I were married at the Bow Arts Trust in East London. It was an art space we were co-running with Marcel Abetting at the time. We held the wedding party in the adjoining enclosed car park, which proved surprisingly spacious. During his speech, my best man, Steve Osborne, recalled a moment we were solving a newspaper crossword together. Steve has always possessed a wonderfully perceptive and joyful sense of humour. To show how my mind works peculiarly, he mentioned that I did not fill in the expected answer, ‘pussy cat.’ Instead, I chose the far more idiosyncratic, ‘furry pal.’
Later, during our time in London, the Furtherfield adventure began. Ruth and I lived in a large warehouse space in Haringey, which we divided into three areas. At the front was a sizable gallery. Behind that, there was a smaller one. At the very back was a sprawling office space. It was large enough to have an ad hoc kitchen. It was there that we, as a group, engaged in various activities. We fixed and pulled apart old computers. We converted them to Linux. We also built something new from the bits and pieces. It served as a daily office, and we held many meetings and side events in that back space. Above the kitchen was a mezzanine that served as our bedroom. Living in the same space where we worked was difficult. There was always so much going on among the public, artists, collaborators, and staff.
At the time, we had two black cats, Bella and Bobby. They were more than just pets. They were our furry confidants. They helped us navigate the chaos. They revelled in all the attention from visitors. If I had to sum up their personalities, Bobby resembled Wayne Rooney. He was stocky and scrappy. Bobby always found himself in the middle of some mischief. Bella, on the other hand, was our Gary Lineker, elegant, even-tempered, and somehow always above the fray. They were quite the pair.
Sadly, Bobby soon exhausted his nine lives. In a decision we’ll never understand, he ate some of the cement. We were using it to patch up holes in the gallery floor. This caused a rectal prolapse. We’ll never forget the sound he made. It was a long, high-pitched yowl of anguish. The cry was harrowing, making his suffering unmistakably clear.
The local vet on Green Lanes, in Haringey, was dreadful. She insisted we should give him a chance, which made us feel guilty. We had already made the difficult decision to have him put down. So we agreed to surgery, spending £1,000 we didn’t really have. But Bobby only got worse. It was an incredibly stressful time. We were running an art space that also served as our home. At the same time, we each held down two jobs each. We were also managing the Furtherfield community online. Additionally, we were running a gallery. All of this was paid for by our meagre wages. Watching him suffer, with no improvement, became unbearable. We eventually took him back to the vet and had him put to sleep.
The Fizz years
Moving back to more recent times: our black-and-white cat, Fizz, and her death. Things felt equally painful, but in different ways. My mum died in 2020, and she had two pets: Mia, a dog, and Fizz, a cat. It was during COVID. Only a small number of us were allowed at Mum’s funeral. This limitation added to the already sad occasion our family was experiencing. Zoe, one of my sisters, suggested they take Mia. They would give her a new home. We agreed to have Fizz. My memory of Fizz, whenever we were at my mum’s, was that she was grumpy all of the time. Fizz didn’t like being downstairs because Mia was always there. Yet, she had to go downstairs to visit the toilet, which was in the garden. You’d hear a thud on the ceiling. You’d hear the tapping of her feet as she descended the stairs. It sounded like a human walking heavily. Which was surprising because it wasn’t a large cat. Fizz’s main anger was towards Mia. She was frustrated because Mia always ate her food. Fizz wanted to save her meals for later.
From the moment Fizz came to live with us, she settled in quickly and found her own rhythm. She was unfamiliar with cat flaps. When I installed one in the kitchen door, she refused to go near it. That meant one of us always had to let her out, constantly. It was trying at times. Still, over time, we all grew to love one another like a real family.
During the time I had cancer, I spent long hours sleeping. Through it all, Fizz would keep me company, a steady, purring presence by my side. This was when we moved from Southend to be around my mum. Once she was gone, we moved to Felixstowe, a period when Furtherfield was also making its move to the area. It has been four years since I was diagnosed with cancer, and I have one year left in remission. I still try to grab some sleep in the afternoons to regain energy. Fizz has been there with me during all this time, without fail.
Well, she was until about a month ago. Even though Fizz was nearly twenty, it seemed as if she’d outlive us both. She had this vitality about her which was infectious. I know it’s strange, but it felt like my mum was inside this furry pal, somehow. They had similar energies. For example, they were playful, stubborn, intimate, and emotionally intelligent, and possessed a witch-like darkness. Yet, just as it was time for my mum, it was now time for Fizz to leave this mortal coil. About a week before we took her to the vets, she was wheezing heavily and coughing.
The vet told us we had to choose. We can either let her go or take her home. She made it clear that if we brought her back, Fizz would only suffer. Ruth and I were completely unprepared. I don’t know why we hadn’t considered that Fizz was not coming home with us. That moment at the vet’s office was the last time we were with her. As the reality hit us both, we looked at each other, finally understanding that this was it.
There’s something about having an animal friend living with you. It connects you to another being that goes beyond just human concerns. Donna Haraway’s concept of companion species gives us an insightful perspective on human-animal relationships. It moves beyond viewing pets as mere property. It positions them as co-evolutionary partners. Haraway uses her Australian Shepherd, Cayenne, as a central example. She illustrates how dogs are not simply companions, but “significant others” who actively shape human lives and thoughts. This perspective directly challenges human exceptionalism and the traditional boundaries that separate humans from animals and nature from culture. Haraway argues that this relationship is not always harmonious. It involves “staying with the trouble.” This means navigating complex ethical obligations, power dynamics, and moments of miscommunication.
Haraway criticises the conventional narrative of domestication. She suggests it was not a one-sided act of human control. Instead, it was a mutual process of adaptation. Both species have domesticated each other through shared spaces and opportunistic behaviours, like scavenging together at garbage dumps. Lives intertwine in a way that exemplifies what Haraway terms “naturecultures.” This is the idea that the natural world and human culture are not separate spheres. Instead, they are deeply and inseparably entangled (Haraway 2003). And, I’d say this extends to other creature friends, rats, rabbits, pigeons, pigs, chickens, and more.
A few days after Fizz died, I started getting chest pains. It felt like someone was constantly poking and prodding at my heart. The pain became so intense. My doctors advised me to go to the hospital. They wanted to rule out a heart attack or stroke. After about four and a half hours of various tests, it was clear. There was nothing physically wrong with me. And yet, at home, the pains continued.
Then Ruth’s cousin Eileen offered a different perspective. She suggested that my chest pains might be connected to my grief—not just for Fizz, but for my mum too. Fizz was my last living link to her. When I was with Fizz, in some strange way, it felt like I was with my mum.
Was it really so strange? The moment she said it, it all made sense. It hit me like a bolt of lightning. Of course. An emotional and psychological diagnosis of what I was going through suddenly clicked into place. And just a few days later, the pains were gone.
References:
Haraway, Donna. The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003.
This post honours my beloved pets: Bella and Bobby, my two cats, one of whom tragically ate cement. And Fizz, my mother’s cat, who came to live with us after she passed in 2020. During my cancer treatment, Fizz became my devoted companion.
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