Anyone, I assume, who has ever had pet cats is often only lucky enough to meet one extra special cat in their lives. Maybe I’m being unkind to the others but for me, my special cat has to be Sidney.

Abandoned, lost and rescued from an office roof by me in maybe one one act of kind heartedness in my life, Sidney was a tiny blue eyed and very wild kitten who turned into a wild eyed cat with decidedly untameable qualities and some very unattractive habits. A mystery cat like so many others, he could also be seductively charming but only to a tiny and very honoured group of humans. Mostly he was superior, aggressive, cunningly ingenious and resentful of anyone who interrupted his chosen path through life.

Fond of existentialist cats as I am, I don’t know how I managed to miss three wonderful little films about another extra special cat – Henri.

The three short Henri films are directed by a brilliantly sardonic American wedding video-maker from Seattle, Will Braden who also does the wittily existentialist French commentary with such Gallic ennui that he sounds more French than Jean Paul Sartre. My cat sidney would have respected Henri but, undoubtedly, he would have hated him too. I can think of no greater accolade.

If you too missed these wonderful (and very short) films, here they are. Magnifique!

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This is Sidney.

He was my first pet. I am not counting all those much loved childhood dogs and cats – and rabbits, tortoises, budgerigars and hens. Those animals long remembered were mostly looked after by adults when the going got tough.

Sidney was different.

He was, as you can see a black and white cat. The most common colour for a cat but there was nothing common about Sidney.

He was born on the roof outside my office window and when still very tiny, he managed to escape the “controllers” who had been sent for to stop the feral cat problem.

He was too young to leave his mother but his mother wasn’t going to be around no more so I took the step..out of the window, over the roof and scooped up this small and very vicious creature.

I think I was always Mom after that. He was devoted, wild-eyed and insanely jealous of my friends. Often they would not know that I had a cat until it was too late. The running charge, talons extended and the feline and often bloody man hug to the leg before he was off again. Invisible once more.

He was the nearest a domesticated cat can be to a wild jungle cat. He turned my flat into a Beatrix Potter horror movie but all those dead animals were presents for me – even the wing-flapping blackbird on my bed in the middle of the night.

Sidney, you were great.

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