One jewel blue day in September my housemate shouted up the stairs, "Come quick, you have to see this"! I thought someone had been killed on our busy road outside, but was surprised to find a large male cat, lying on it's side, bleeding, and warm dead.
My immediate reaction was to stroke the cat closely followed by burying it. We have a small yard in a very jewish area of north London where upon getting a neighbor and a friend to help, we buried it with a small cross made from lolly sticks.
The cat, clearly a stray, was strong and tabby coloured and without its collar, nameless, "what shall we call it"? said Mark. "Dunno, big cat like that, samink like 'Rambo'?" said Marks friend Andy. "Rambo it is then". A funny and fitting moment where we 3 blokes suddenly became all too quiet for our age.
Two weeks later the jewish neighbors below our flat snapped the cross in half and put it in the bin with a letter on our doorstep.
"...we kindly ask you to respect the fact that the religious symbol you have recently placed in the front garden is both offensive, antagonistic and provocative to us..."
Its a shame as most places i've lived in London neighbors want to know and talk to each other, yet here in Stamford Hill I've found the conversation to be as dead as a cat called Rambo.
