Chris Pascoe’s Fun Tales

Chris’s decorating efforts are complicated by Bodmin’s well-meant interventions

With our house soon to go on the market ahead of our epic emigration four miles across the sea to the Isle of Wight, I’ve been decorating over the past week.

Going by my past decorating endeavours, this was never going to be a great idea but – I thought – when it all inevitably goes wrong, at least I’ll be able to write about it, thereby hopefully raising enough money to pay a proper painter to put everything right.

Unfortunately though,

I’ve been unexpectedly efficient – no coming down ladders straight into a paint tin then hopping around with it attached to my foot, no accidentally painting the furniture, no dripping ceilings turning carpets into a white winter wonderland. Nope, none of that – it all went surprisingly well.

However, as you’ve probably guessed, I wouldn’t have brought it up had something not happened.

Bodmin happened. Our giant black tomcat likes to participate in all household activities, and decorating proved no exception.

Bodmin is always quite taken aback when I show signs of activity. Considering me to be a mainly sedentary animal, when I suddenly started painting, he took an immediate interest. For a whole day he watched me with big, wide eyes while one of our other cats – tiny, kitten-like, black and white Spooky – looked on disapprovingly.

On day two, Bodmin decided he’d watched from the sidelines long enough, pretty much understood the basics of painting, and that it was time to lend a hand. Or tail, even. I suppose using his huge bushy tail as a makeshift paintbrush was actually a very clever idea, but I only became aware of his ingenuity when I noticed a brilliant-white line running all the way along my newly painted wall, continuing down the neatly papered hallway, and terminating at a large cat with a brilliant-white tail-tip sitting beside the fridge.

My resulting language was too much for Spooky – ears pinned back in surprise, she left the room in a rush. When I next saw her, I was in for a bit of a surprise of my own.

On the morning of day three, Bodmin happily nowhere to be seen, I watched Spooky nipping in and out of the room, her diminutive frame always well clear of the walls. Midway through the afternoon, my painting almost complete, out of the corner of my eye I saw her come back in and settle down in the corner. Wait, though – when did she suddenly get so big?

I spun round, performing a full blown double-take.

The black and white musclebound cat in the corner was clearly not Spooky. No – it was Bodmin, sporting a newly painted half-white face and paws. As misguided disguises go, it could best be described as Shrek trying to pass himself off as a pixie.

I can’t understand why my wife Lorraine was so upset about the white paw prints all over the carpet. It took me far less time to clean the carpet than the cat…

It could best be described as Shrek trying to pass as a pixie

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