The pet I’ll never forget: Oscar the cat, who opened my eyes to the power of male friendship

My dad is not a religious man – he goes to the pub when my mum goes to mass – but I’m sure that meeting Oscar was a spiritual experience for him.

When they locked eyes across the scrubbed concrete floor of the shelter that Oscar presided over with mob-boss-like remove, an oath of loyalty was sworn.

My dad – ever the pragmatist and not prone to superfluous bouts of sentimentality – had insisted we get an outside cat to ward off mice in the winter.

Oscar lived in a wooden house lined with old fleeces, from where he spent hours watching the rain.

In the hierarchy of domestic crimes, this sits somewhere between dirtying the windows (which Oscar frequently did) and gratuitously putting on the heating.

There was tenderness: once, my dad accidentally clipped Oscar’s tail in the door when he came running over to greet him; I’ve seen less ashen-faced men in a morgue.