I, Tomcat Mikesch, the redhead, belong to the toughest of my kind! For more than 20 years now, I have managed to outwit the Boindlgramer (also known as Death) every single day!

After my last senior check-up at the vet ten years ago, I decided to avoid the veterinarian like the devil avoids holy water—and instead trust only my own body! Because, as I once read in a cat guide, it is the best doctor for ninety percent of all illnesses that may befall you. Thankfully, I have never needed the remaining ten percent, as I have been spared from any serious accidents—almost as if by an invisible hand—throughout my long Methuselah-like life!

Well, there was one time when I burned my feline back. Driven by my greed for grilled sausages, I placed my cheeky fur directly beneath the barbecue—just as it was burning beautifully—and singed off a patch of my rusty-red coat. But better to lose a little fur than to lose one's mind, I thought as the wise old tomcat I am. My lady nursed me back to health at home, and the very next day I was already happily leaping around the garden again! A little poorer in fur, perhaps—but all the richer in experience!

The money I save by skipping my usual annual senior vet check-up, I prefer to invest in delicious cat food, treating myself to the occasional delicacy that delights both my heart and soul—and sweetens every additional day of my already remarkably long life! But hardship is part of a long life as well. That means occasionally being forced to survive on nothing but dry food—with all the flavour of a tough old shoe sole! My lady, like so many others, has to watch her budget. And just as in my food bowl, there isn't high tide every day—sometimes there's low tide too! Long live the tides, my friends!

The main thing is that I always have plenty of fresh water available, which I greedily gulp down by the litre like a vacuum cleaner! Other cats I know spend all their money on food, while I drink mine away. To each their own, as my furry, old, wise grandmother always used to say when she was still among the living!

Even though, at my biblical age, my ears don't work quite as well anymore, I can still hear exactly what I want to hear—even if it's the joyful clatter of my good lady placing a full, deliciously overflowing food bowl before me! As for everything else, my red ears conveniently switch off—for example, whenever the subject is my sharpening my razor-sharp claws on the brand-new sofa, prompting my lady to throw a fit because, once again, I failed to keep my velvet paws under control!

Sometimes, my dear ladies and gentlemen, growing almost deaf in old age has its advantages—as you can plainly see!

Another highlight of my wonderfully long feline life is my dear human lady's coconut oil-covered feet! There is nothing I enjoy more than slowly licking the exotic-smelling oil from her feet, centimetre by centimetre, with my rough tongue—grunting contentedly while the lady of the house enjoys a complimentary foot massage from yours truly! Let anyone dare to say an old red-and-white tomcat is no longer good for anything!

My own paws, on the other hand, depend entirely on how I'm feeling each day. Some days they move as smoothly as clockwork, while on others I strut around as stiff as a giraffe, enduring the mischievous laughter of my human family, who claim I look like a thoroughly soiled sock! Just imagine such outrageous insults, my dear people! At moments like these, I'm truly grateful for the merciful cloak of partial deafness, which kindly spares me from hearing every offensive remark!

You really can't please the humans in my family sometimes! Nevertheless—or perhaps precisely because of that—I have always kept my delightfully biting sense of black humour and firmly resolved to make it into the Guinness Book of Records! Long after my two-legged family has moved into a retirement home, I'll still be stretching lazily in the garden sunshine, grooming my magnificent fur, twirling my whiskers with satisfaction—and thanking the good Lord for my seemingly eternal life!