Although he spends much of his time in quiet contemplation of the radiator these days, Eric was always a fighter and fierce defender of his territory. His arch enemy is Marmite, who lives next door and disputes that Eric's territory covers his garden. Eric has always emerged victorious from his many skirmishes with Marmite and has caused Marmite to be hospitalised on three occasions while not retaining even a scar himself.
None of us quite match up to Eric's standards of cleanliness, so he is forced to wash us at every opportunity. He finds Beaubo particularly in need of a wash, and spends hours doing this while Beaubo lies asleep.
Eric has despatched large numbers of mice, rats, voles and birds to the afterlife, always bringing his kills home to share with the rest of us
He is also a regular uninvited guest at any neighbours' barbeque, and can smell one starting up anywhere in the street. He always brings home something he's managed to steal, sausages are a favourite, but he's also managed hamburgers and chops. He is still able to steal things from our grill, on one memorable occasion, he stole a sausage, turned to run and his tail caught fire. Fortunately, I was on hand with a towel to put out the flames so no damage was done and he's still always hanging around the grill when anything is cooking.
Eric is old now and skinny and slower than he used to be, but he's still up for a fight. I was in the garden back in the summer when I heard the sound of a cat fight coming from next door's garden. Thinking it was one of the other cats,I looked over the fence to see Eric squaring up to the now 17 year old Marmite in yet another territorial dispute. Marmite was still the first to leave.!!
Sadly, Eric has now departed for the Rainbow Bridge. He had a heart attack in January, 2002 from which he recovered, but the vet warned us his time was short. In February he disappeared. Extensive searches of the area revealed no trace of him. I guessed he'd had another heart attack and died somewhere, but still worried about him. My neighbour and Marmite's owner, Briony, was in Australia at the time. A few weeks later, Briony returned and found Eric's body in a lean-to next to her garden shed. He'd obviously gone there to die on the territory he's spent his life disputing with Marmite. It was as if he was making one last claim to it.
