Chris Pascoe’s Fun Tales

Chris offers respite cover for a volunteer. But the cats have evidently heard of him

Every now and then, as penance for being a cat sitter and spending most of my days sipping cups of tea with a curled-up furry psychopath on my lap, I’m asked to “do my bit” by offering my services free to the local branch of Cats Protection.

To do this, I, my wife Lorraine and daughter Maya move into the home of a Cats Protection volunteer named Ian’s house while he’s away, and look after a multitude of occupied cat-pens in his garden, as well as his own cats, Henry and Silly.

Henry, an elderly white and black shorthair, manages to stay happy and vibrant despite being on a huge cocktail of medications, while Silly is just basically… silly. Silly would be her middle name if it wasn’t her first.

In case you’re wondering why I move in with all these cats rather than visit them, with there being so many and Henry’s vital medication to be applied every 12 hours just to keep his heart pumping and tail swinging, there really isn’t a choice. Also, Ian’s house is better than ours.

On arrival we were warned that missing just one dose could put Henry in serious jeopardy. No problem, I thought – Henry would always be indoors, courtesy of a microchip catflap that excluded his chip, so what could possibly go wrong? Well, you know me…

On the first morning, Henry virtually rode Silly’s back straight through the catflap, using her microchip as his key, and vanished. After an hour we were worried, but as the 12-hour medicinal deadline neared, we were beside ourselves.

Adopting emergency mode we began knocking on doors.

“Have you seen our cat?” was the continuous question. No one had. An elderly lady across the street who decided to help us could be heard calling “CHRIS! CHRIS!” for the next half hour – I think she may have misunderstood my introductions.

After just 12 hours in residence we’d thrown a quiet street into total turmoil.

While all this was going on, Silly had a fight with a pigeon and cornered it under a neighbour’s car. While Lorraine and Maya continued hunting Henry, I was ordered to rescue the pigeon.

Thus I found myself lying in the neighbour’s drive, legs protruding from beneath his car, trying to grab the bird.

At that point, my phone rang – they’d found Henry! I whooped with joy and began laughing, surprising the pigeon and also, I think, the owner of the pair of slippers that had suddenly appeared beside the car.

I recognised the slippers – 20 minutes earlier I disturbed this night-shift worker from his slumber, raving about a missing cat. Now I was laughing under his car.

“You found your cat?” he asked, quite calmly I thought.

“Yes, thank you, I have,” I replied, slipping out from under the car holding a pigeon. His eyes narrowed.

I started to speak, but he was gone, quickly closing his door behind him.

So, now Ian’s neighbours think I’m insane. It’s truly amazing what you can achieve in 12 hours…

I was ordered to rescue the pigeon cornered by Silly

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