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Firstly, I guess I should apologise to anyone who is reading this after searching on Google or its peers for information on, well, Soviet policy in matters of a foreign nature. Soviet Foreign Policy was the name of my cat. But hey, stay a while, this blog is okay and almost informative.

My friends moved out and so did his, so he moved into my place and brought the cat with him. I guess it was a kidnap.

I did have concerns that Trumpy might be in the family way (up the stick, up the duff, eating for ten) but I asked the opinion of a visiting friend who was (a) a police officer; and (b) female. By my reckoning only a vet would be in a better position to make an assessment. Jacqui said not pregnant.

The next day I returned from an afternoon out to find that the number of cats in the house had trebled - Trumpy and two little flea-ridden balls of fluff.

I did the obvious thing and panicked. After that I went out and bought a book about cats and some flea powder. "Do not use on kittens" it said on the side. Well shit, what else was I to do? They all got a good dusting and the fleas moved into the carpet. They are probably still there.

One of the kittens was mostly black and tortoise-shell with a white scarf around his neck, so he got called Biggles. The other was all tabby and had no obvious name, so we resorted to choosing numbers for page, column, paragraph, line and word from the newspaper. The result was Soviet Foreign Policy, or Soviet for short. A handsome cat and no mistake.

All three cats moved with us to another house, but once the kittens grew up Trumpy figured it was time for them to pack their bags and move out. They didn't, realising that they were onto a good deal, so after thrashing them repeatedly, and without success, she moved out herself and found new owners a few houses down the road. No great loss as the kittens were far more fun and tolerated games like 'kitten catch'. 'kitten in the bag' and 'kitten on the record turntable'.

One night I had an intense dream about being chased into a fish-processing factory. The smell was vivid and to get away from my invisible persuers I hid in some machiney. But then it was activated and I was caught in a huge press and was slowly being crushed to death. At that point I woke and discovered that Soviet was sitting on my chest, breathing into my face from very close range. Little shit.

By and by the kittens matured and settled into cathood. Biggles was run over and rebuilt, and I learned a valuable from that episode - chicks dig injured cats. All those years of trying to entice women into the house and all we needed to do was run over the cat!

To even up the score, Soviet lost half his tail. After close scrutiny of the crime scene (broken plant pot on floor, broken tail on cat) we deduced that Biggles had knocked the plant off the top of the fridge, and Sov was unlucky enough to be standing in the drop zone. His broken tail was lopped by the vet and he became a shorter version of his handsome self. It took him two weeks to get used to it and during that time he would jump from one chair to another and fall short. Oh, how we laughed.

He eventually ended up with one of his female admirers and served out his middle age in great comfort in a Birmingham suburb. Soviet is now in the great sheepskin cat bed in the sky. Gone but never forgotten.