On Friday I made one of my regular visits to the dirty little alley where the Hiss Club HQ is situated. In bygone times there was a hissing from many directions as I approached, as all the Hiss Club cats gathered to greet me. But on this day there was none. No whiskery faces poked from window slits cut before Shakespeare was alive. So I stepped inside. The rooms are a mess of trash, thrown there over the years and never cleared out once. There, in the dark, was, as you see in the foto, a Hiss Clubber. I meowed. The cat did not, nor did it hiss. It felt like the end of the world; just me and one cat left, facing each other with the same historical knowledge. No, two cats!!!!.....I spied another in the fallen stairwell, perched behind an old cooker that was abandoned there. It was past six already, the light fading fast. My camera was pointed into darkness. If I stayed there long enough would all the members, living and dead, return to greet me with meows and hisses and make a special hissy-howl to bring on the end of the world?