No! I’ d be in huge trouble. I did a U-turn and slammed the door
What could be worse than a toe-fishing cat? Chris to the rescue…
My wife Lorraine was glancing through my My Weekly articles the other day, and happened to read about the time her best friend Cheryl, a bit of a cat-hater, came to stay at ours for the weekend, mainly because life had been getting her down a little and she felt the need to get away from things.
The two “things” she found on arrival weren’t great – in Lorraine’s temporary absence, my cat Brum and I had welcomed Cheryl into our house by accidentally dragging her down the hall, ripping her shirt and twanging her bra strap. Difficult things to do accidentally, but we did them.
Cheryl must truly have believed from the outset that Lorraine lived with two woman-curious crazed hillbillies.
“You didn’t actually tell the whole story there, did you Chris?” Lorraine remarked, grimacing as she laid down her copy of My Weekly.
Lorraine was right, there was even more to it than already revealed – after that terrible start, things got much, much worse a little later, when a now recovered but slightly wary Cheryl asked if she could take a shower while waiting for Lorraine to get home.
Not owning a shower and reluctant to get the hosepipe out, I suggested a bath, and so off she went.
Half an hour later, as I sipped a cup of tea, I was alarmed to hear screams from the bathroom. I rushed to the door, shouting, “Are you OK? Cheryl… Cheryl?”
“What is the matter with your flipping cat?”
Brum was in the bathroom with her? Oh no! He must have been hiding in his spot behind the bath panel!
“Arghhh – he’s scratching my toes!” came a new shout.
Toe-fishing. Brum had always loved toe-fishing.
Cheryl’s screams for help became louder and in sheer panic, and without a sensible thought in my head, I started to open the lock-less door. NO! She was in the bath. Presumably without clothes on. I’d be in huge trouble – and she already thought I was a hillbilly.
With this in mind I performed a dramatic U-turn and re-slammed the door, but not before accidentally losing hold of my tea mug.
To all intents and purposes it looked as though I’d opened the door a crack, lobbed a hot-tea-handgrenade into the room, and then slammed the door to deflect the blast. Whatever Brum did, I always managed to make things worse.
Suddenly the door burst open and a towel draped Cheryl brushed past me and into her bedroom. I cautiously glanced into the bathroom. In the corner sat a smug tabby, casually washing. I stared long and hard at him. Eventually he looked at me, in a casual “What?” kind of way, performed the feline equivalent of a raised eyebrow smirk and trotted past me.
When Lorraine got home, Cheryl poured out her woes, but the good thing was, they weren’t the woes she’d arrived with. I like to think Brum and I did our little bit to help Cheryl forget those…