by Aled Blake, Western Mail Source

IT’S strange the effect an animal can have on you. One little cat has had a major impact on my life – I say little, when people see him they say he’s huge.

Anybody who knows me knows about Eddie. He’s one of my favourite topics of conversation, and I don’t have many. Eddie is our family cat and lately we’ve started to get worried about him.

Eddie adopted us in the summer of 1993. We had been on holiday to France and when we got home there he was in the back garden hiding in the bushes – a scraggy little black-and-white kitten, malnourished and afraid of practically everything.

After weeks of giving him morsels of cheese, left-over meat and eventually saucers of cat food, Eddie started to trust us. Gradually he came into our house and made it his home. After putting up notices in the shop windows of Tonteg to see if he did belong to anybody, my brother, sister and I were allowed to keep him.

I named him after Eddie May, Cardiff City’s manager – my hero – who’d just led us to promotion from Division Three. It seemed apt. And comedic.

Eddie had a tough time settling in. Our other cat Tess didn’t much like the new addition, but the teething problems were overcome and a kind of feline peace did eventually reign.

Tess went a couple of years ago, leaving Eddie to enjoy his autumn years with all the attention he loves.

Eddie and I have a special relationship. He’s been a companion through my years as a teenager and I continue to dote on him when I see him.

He was, and still is when I’m at home, smuggled into my bedroom so he doesn’t have to spend nights out in the pouring rain. He’s always pleased to see me, jumping on my lap as soon as I sit down and purring contently – and I’m the only person to have the honour of such attention.

Lately though, Eddie’s age is starting show. He’s begun, sporadically, to have epileptic fits – watching his helpless body jerk violently is massively upsetting. All we can do is hold him down and whisper calmly into his ears until it’s over.

Last week he’d lost his appetite (those of us who know Eddie know that’s unusual) and refused to come in the house.

So we are worried about him and my family is telling me something that I don’t want to hear, that Eddie’s life is nearing its end. He’s getting old and I have to accept that he might not be around for much longer.

It’s stupid, I know, to attach such emotion to an animal. And I know and believe that the life of a person is more valuable than anything else.

But Eddie has become a part of our family, he’s as much a Blake as any of us. He has a personality all of his own – he even has conversations with us first thing in the morning.

When he does go, he’ll leave a chasm behind, one that I doubt will or can be filled.

Why do we feel this way about animals?

In a nasty world our pets give us constancy, companionship and loyalty no matter what.

When we get home from work, worn out, stressed and deflated, pets don’t give us more problems, they don’t care about the mistakes we made or the arguments we had. They might ask for some food and then they’re happy – you take your dog out for a walk and he’s your friend for life.

That relationship is so much more simple than any we have on a human level. You give a little to your pet, and you get a hell of a lot back.

OK, they might interrupt a crucial game of football on the television when they suddenly feel the need to get a breath of fresh air or have some pangs of hunger, but for animal lovers that’s a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things.

Perhaps we have come to value the lives of our pets more than people. For so many, animals provide a morsel of therapeutic happiness amid a morass of uncertainty. There is no crime in feeling that way.

Just ask Eddie Blake.

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