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After Soviet, my next and, for now, last cat was Billy.

Billy was acquired at the same time as Milly the chocolate labrador, on the premise that they would grow up to be best buddies. Half of them went along with this, Billy was in the other half.

He would hide behind a door and when Milly padded into the room would launch himself at her head and take hold like that nasty face-grabbing thing in Alien. She would play along by keeling over, and he would then use his back feet to pummel her nose while biting her ears and digging his claws in as far as possible, and all the time his face was a rictus of evil.

Milly would just lie there wagging her tail, which must have been pretty insulting as far as the cat was concerned.

Anyway, Billy was a retard. Here are two of his finest moments:

We stripped a section of wooden floor upstairs, stained it and then varnished it. In order to keep Billy from messing up what was a very lovely finish, we blocked the area off with a three foot wall of cardboard. Naturally he didn't see any great significance in the obstacle and hurdled it. Presumably he then stopped for a look around, because when we discovered him, mewing pitifully, he was stuck to the floor. He probably could have unstuck himself - I managed to by gently easing each paw up - but shit-for-brains decided he was welded fast.

Two houses away lived a man with a large collection of birds, mostly ducks and chickens. Billy the wannabe hunter found this fascinating and would spend many an hour watching them. Eventually he found the courage to embark on a mission into the chicken house. On arriving he discovered that the chickens were bigger than him and was scared witless, so he spent 24 hours hiding in some straw in the corner of the chicken house. We knew this because we could hear him whining, but it was muffled and we couldn't figure out which direction it was coming from. When we finally tracked him down, the chickens were going about their business, having realised he was about as deadly as a potato. He still wouldn't come out though and I had to contort my way into the henhouse to haul him out.

I lost Billy and Milly when I lost my girlfriend. I miss the dog...