Chris Pascoe’s Fun Tales
This week, Chris has to contend with a moody cat and a helpful neighbour…
Charlotte is one of my more challenging catsitting clients. Charlotte likes to give an opinion on the world around her, and she achieves this through imaginative use of her litter tray. If Charlotte is happy, her litter tray is a tidy place. If Charlotte is angry, for a reason such as, um… her owners are away and a catsitter is looking after her, she votes with her paws and won’t go anywhere near her litter tray. Instead she re-directs her business onto carpets, sofas, beds, and also the morning mail.
It was the latter of the aforementioned un-ignorable point-raisers that led me to an incident I’ll probably never forget. I arrived one morning, opened the front door and picked up the post.
A puddle of fresh yellow cat pee, unnoticed on top of a plastic magazine wrapper, slopped straight down my trousers. At this precise moment the doorbell rang. I opened the door on auto-pilot.
“Hello, I’m John from next door,” my visitor informed me, his initially warm smile fading as his eyes drifted towards a very visible wet patch across the front of my jeans. “I, eh… just wanted to let you know the alarm went off last night. Went on for ages, it did. I’d have re-set it but you’ve got the spare key I
I rushed to the kitchen sink with Charlotte watching intently, very pleased with herself
usually keep at mine and…”
“Oh, did it? Sorry! I’ll have a look into that!” I assured him, forcing a smile as I shut the door far too quickly.
I rushed to the kitchen sink, with Charlotte now watching intently, very pleased with herself indeed. I had to meet a new client in an hour, and if I didn’t get this stuff off I was going to absolutely stink of urine – never a great first impression.
Right, a good soaking and then a hairdryer, I thought as I sloshed copious amounts of water down the front of my jeans. At this moment the doorbell rang again.
I looked out at the front door, and John the neighbour looked back at me. He’d seen me – I had to open the door. I glanced down at my soaked jeans and walked quickly across the hall. I opened the door a crack…
“Hello again”, he said, bursting past me into the hall, “I’ve been having a think, and I’m pretty sure I can fix that alarm problem if you like?”
At that point he noticed my trousers. A look of horror spread across his face. Five minutes ago, he’d seen a minor patch, now that patch had spread to cover virtually the entire front area of my jeans. He left very quickly, after failing to fix the alarm in super-fast time. All that could be heard in the silent hall was Charlotte purring.
So there you have it – an excellent little catsitting tip. If you want to cheer up the cats in your care, just let them pee on you and totally humiliate you. Simple!
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