Ring
“I think your cat wants to come in, love.”
“Oh, he’s not actually our –”. A blur of fur races past me through the hallway, and I lock eyes with the tabby making himself at home in a cushy armchair.
I thank the well-meaning passerby and accept my new life as a part-time cat owner. And I was not the only one. Hugo, the strong-willed Arabian Mau, had recently been the talk of the local Facebook group.
The residents of the formerly quiet West End of Edinburgh speculate about the presence of this new furry fellow on their street. “Does anyone know this cat?” “He doesn’t have a collar and has been patrolling William Street all morning.” “He somehow got into my house.” “He’s eating my cat’s food.” Jane Rutherford, Hugo’s owner, set the story straight: “He’s my cat. He has a loving home but has decided to spend his days roaming the West End.”
As the months went on, Hugo became a part of the family. My dad stopped protesting his presence and started buying him tuna. No longer dependent on passersby to ring the doorbell for him, Hugo started waiting on the wall by our house, jumping expertly to our kitchen window to be welcomed into our home.
The Facebook posts continued, and we knew Hugo went to other houses. “But he definitely likes us the best,” we told ourselves. Despite his penchant for playing the field (or cobbled streets), Hugo always came back home to us.
In April 2023, I found myself reading an announcement in the neighbourhood group that Hugo had been hit by a car, and Jane had to put him down. Suddenly, the reality that Hugo was not our cat and that he was now no one’s cat hit home. I didn’t know how to grieve when he was never mine to grieve in the first place. I kept expecting to see him magically jump up to the kitchen window.
The reality that Hugo was not our cat and that he was now no one’s cat hit home.
Almost two years after his death, I meet Jane to reminisce about Hugo’s antics and the legacy he leaves behind.
Hugo Sanchez (to give him his full name) was a stray cat in Qatar, then a well-loved pet in Abu Dhabi, and a famed rat catcher with locals in Spain before he arrived in the city of Edinburgh.
“Quite the well-travelled cat”, Jane quips.
Hugo arrived on the scene in 2019 and slowly started to explore the city. Jane recalls how Hugo “just suddenly started staying away longer and longer … It would be for a night; we thought nothing of it … and then suddenly it was a week… It got to the point where he wasn’t coming home at all, and he’d just moved to William Street.”
Jane hypothesises that the Qatari cat (perhaps instinctively) developed a taste for the “posher” side of town: “I wondered if he thought we were too low class for him.”
When the post about Hugo’s death went up on our local group, Jane was overwhelmed by the number of messages she received, as well as the many photos featuring Hugo in all these different homes across the West End.
The anecdotes about Hugo’s antics around town are never-ending.
He was once taken to the Cats Protection League in Leith and advertised as ‘looking for a home’. On another occasion, Jane had to get off the bus mid-journey on Princes Street after spotting Hugo outside Tesco. The cat even made a cameo in a feature film whilst roaming the local cathedral. He was partial to riding the lift in a local building and was banned from a West End pub after stealing a steak.
Today, a small committee of neighbours are working towards commemorating Hugo with a statue on the wall next to our house where he would sit and wait. I reminisce about the evenings I spent with Hugo and feel grateful to have been a part of his legacy.
But not everyone remembers him as fondly. A former West End resident tells me how Hugo was a “nuisance”, and allegations of him biting neighbours show a darker side to the well-loved cat.
“Sometimes he’d go a bit Luis Suarez, but he was alright really,” my dad concludes with his tear-jerking eulogy.
Maybe Hugo wasn’t the saintly cat to rival Greyfriars Bobby. He was complicated, unfaithful, and sometimes slightly violent—not any worse than other men commemorated in bronze anyway.
If his statue is made, I hope the tourists leave his nose alone.
