Spike

A long time ago my father got a message to collect a crate from the bus stop. He had no idea what this was all about. We no longer lived on a farm so it wasn't a crate of day old chicks, apples, or raspberry canes. The 'bus stop' was the pub in the town and when daddy got there the manager told him that there was a cat in the box. 'It's come from the Isle of Man,' he laughed. 'and the first thing that's come from there, wherever it is.'
My father told him that oddly enough his great grandfather came from the Isle of Man. He looked into the crate then and a little cat stared back. He brought it home and had words with my younger brother who had ordered the cat in the first place.
Very soon 'Spike' named in honor of my brother's idol Spike Milligan, became a big lad. Being a typical pure Manx cat breed he didn't have a tail, just a little button which intrigued everyone. In our house he loved to run up and down the piano keys when the lid was left open. Usually he slept in a basket on top of a wardrobe in my brother's room. Each morning he head butted every bedroom door to awaken the household. If the usual call didn't come we feared that Spike had spent a night on the tiles.
His nocturnal adventures often resulted in a phone call from the Garda Station asking Daddy to collect his cat who had been causing a disturbance. Daddy, mortified and embarrassed would drive home with Spike glaring at all and sundry from the back window of the car. 'Spike is not my cat,' he'd protest before telling my brother to 'put manners on him.'
Spike and manners didn't go together. He destroyed flowers in the gardens of our neighbors

stole fish from the shop -- although he was well fed, and chased any child he saw eating an ice cream. Spike loved ice cream and would happily lap up  a cone or wafer dropped by a child he'd chased. His legacy is the number of tailless kittens being born today in our town.

Some time after the loss of Spike I lined up with other Spike Milligan fans outside a Dublin bookshop. I wanted a signed copy of his book for my husband. When I reached the desk where Spike was signing his latest volume I told him about his feline namesake.
 'We had a Manx cat named after you Spike,' I said. 'And would you believe that kittens without tails are being born in our town even now.'
'My oh my,' he replied. 'Would that I could have been so prolific!'