What do you do with a cat that’s turned junky?

GET a cat, they said.

It will be calming, they said. What “they” didn’t know, of course, was that the cat I was to inherit - i.e. the second-hand cat - has anything but a calming effect and I suspect he likes it that way.

As anyone who knows me can attest, my time is spent basically going from one stressful event to the next and so, when the second-hand cat’s one previous owner left him with me, I was assured it would help calm my nerves.

Not being a cat person and having not had a pet since my pet duck Timmy when I was six (which ended up on the dinner table), I searched the internet for cat ownership.

“They can: Lower stress and anxiety”, the piece I found reported.

“Cat owners know how one session of petting or playing with their cat can turn a bad day into a good one.

(One session with this cat turns my day into a bloody and painful one.)

“Scientific evidence also shows that a cat’s purr can calm your nervous system and lower your blood pressure.”

Obviously, the second-hand cat wasn’t included in this study as I’m the one left like a cat on a hot tin roof.

As anyone of like age might realise, nocturnal trips to the loo become the norm as we grow older but normally that’s an unhindered walk in the dark.

However, not when that walk has to take in the kitchen where the cat’s tucker is kept in a cupboard under the sink.

Hardly a night goes by that the mongrel moggy doesn’t trip me up as I trek through the darkness en route to the nocturnal relieving station.

This cat has the theory that whenever I venture into the kitchen he’s got a chance of at least a cat snack and so he follows me.

It matters not if he’s sprawled out snoring (and he does) on his blanket in the lounge and I tiptoe past him thinking I’ve escaped detection, he’ll be underfoot the moment I step into the kitchen area.

And, he’s a big cat.

Even the vet referred to him as “The Beast” when he was last taken there for his shots.

Visitors to the house often liken him to a small lion, a black and white lion, but a lion nonetheless.

The only solace I get from this is that should a burglar sneak into the place late at night and his trek to the safe take in a route through the kitchen, then he will have to negotiate The Beast.

I can see me rising from my bed at the sound of a crash in the kitchen to find a hapless burglar lying unconscious on the floor having tripped over The Beast only to strike his head on the kitchen table on the way to the floor.

I know, it’s happened to me. However, despite all this, even I was concerned when I arrived home from work last Thursday to find the second-hand cat nowhere to be seen.

Ordinarily, he waits to pounce as I walk into the home expecting a snack having not feasted since the morning.

But he was nowhere to be found and when he hadn’t returned to base by 8pm, I confessed to being more than a little concerned.

Then, about 9.15pm as I watched the footy, in he came, covered in cobwebs and staggering - yes, staggering.

I watched as he walked aimlessly about the lounge before standing on my thongs, staring at the wall about 3cm in front of him for about five minutes.

He seemed out of it.

I feared he’d taken a bait or he’d been hit by a car and was concussed.

Brushing the cobwebs off him, I suspected he’d stuck his nose into a spider’s web and had been bitten for his trouble and he was actually high on spider venom.

And, I think I might have been right because though by morning he was fine and getting under my feet again, he’s been venturing under the house into the spiders’ domain ever since.

As if it wasn’t enough to have an annoying fat cat for a pet, now I’ve got an annoying fat cat junky for a pet.

Now I’ve got an annoying fat cat junky for a pet.