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‘I am utterly in thrall to the beauty of cats’: David Baddiel on his favourite pets
Cats for David Baddiel, with all their furry, funny ways, are an expression of love and a deep link to his now gone parents. Oh, and they’ve got far more personality than those barking, snappy pets
My dad died earlier this year. On the upside, we got a new cat. This may sound like a flip gag, and indeed it is, but it also isn’t. Let me explain. In the 1970s, fathers were not expected to show love to their children. Or indeed, much, to their wives. I grew up with my dad and three brothers in a house where familial affection, as we understand it now, was low in the everyday mix. However: we had a cat. She was called Phomphar. This name was my father’s idea, an onomatopoeic rendition of the noise she made when she was happy, which most people would call purring, but he called phompharing. This indicates something, which is that if my father did have a softer side, it was shown mainly to the cats. By softer side, what I mean is he would pick them up and aggressively sniff their heads and say “You’re a great beast – what are you? A great beast, yes you are!” But trust me, for Colin Baddiel, that was effectively a love sonnet.
Cats, therefore, for me are a deep point of connection, with my childhood and with my now gone parents. There was very little beauty in my childhood – this is not a misery memoir-style statement, it’s just a true one about Dollis Hill, northwest London, in the 1970s – but Phomphar was beautiful. Of course she was. She was a cat. Now, luckily, I have a lot more beauty in my life, and a lot more softness and a lot less gruff, blunt maleness, but I am still utterly in thrall to the beauty of cats. I am a fundamental atheist, but when I look at one of my cats – I presently have four – curving like a Matisse in a shaft of sunlight, I believe in God. Some people on social media see me as the antichrist, but really, I am the anti-Zouma.
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