Kevin Maher: Heard the one about the Irishman and his cat?

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‘I lay with his body on the grass and wept like a child bereft - and I finally understood the English’

Oh, the English and their fecking pets!” I heard this catch-cry incessantly
throughout my Irish childhood. It was used by family and friends alike, was
mostly directed at the television set, and broadly referred to Anglo-Saxon
animal fancying in all its guises — from the Queen and her corgis to Barbara
Woodhouse and “Sit!” and Goldie in the Blue Peter garden,
right down to the diminutive dog-bot K9 in Doctor Who.

They were all met with that same stinging imprecation. It was a seemingly
jocular put-down that nonetheless implied, in the knowing silence of
subtext, that the English love of animals