Chris Pascoe’s Fun Tales

It seems cats just can’t resist turning Chris into something resembling Quasimodo!

My wife Lorraine is forever forcing me to “look after myself.” Probably noting my failure to look after rabbits particularly effectively, she must feel the need to keep an eye on the situation. This enforced self-mindfulness can involve anything from putting a coat on in -10 degrees (she puts my reluctance to do so down to a Geordie gene in my heritage) to occasionally eating vegetables (really, I much prefer eating things that eat vegetables) and applying various creams and moisturisers before “it’s too late”. I’m concerned about what exactly happens when it’s too late, but I resist the horrible oily stuff at all costs.

Every now and then though, Lorraine catches me totally unaware and slaps huge blobs of some cream or other onto my cheeks or hands. It was my hands she collared the other day, with the strict order “just rub it in and stop complaining”.

Well, that was easier said than done. No amount of hand rubbing would make it disappear. As I continued with my laborious task, my tortoiseshell Cat Jojo jumped onto my lap and demanded to be stroked. Obviously, this was something I couldn’t do while covered in sticky cream, but as her meows grew angry, I did so anyway, instantly regretting it.

One stroke and I looked like I was wearing a pair of wolf-man gloves, but one stroke was never going to be enough for Jojo, and realising she’d be getting no more, she turned haughtily on her heels and tail-flicked me in the eye. It was a spot-on strike. I grabbed at my running eye and was immediately stunned by the sting of two tons of hand cream plus fur.

Jojo, initially delighted to have caught me with a crafty hit, now jumped 3 feet in the air as l howled in pain, claw swiping me across the nose on the way down like a Kung Fu Panda ninja.

Now I was in a real mess, hunched over, bleeding from a gash across my nose, one eye wide open, the other half closed and streaming, like Quasimodo from the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Lorraine walked back into the room at that very moment and stopped in her tracks.

“The hand-cream,” I rasped, holding my outstretched hairy hands towards Esmeralda – em, Lorraine – who recoiled in revulsion. She’d only left me two minutes ago, and all I had to do was rub in some moisturiser.

Believe it or not, this type of horrific transformation has happened to me before. On a catsitting pre-visit to meet a cat named Henry, the owner left the room to make a coffee while Henry and I got acquainted. Within seconds my ridiculously excitable new feline friend thrust his head into my face so hard I saw swirling stars. Moments later, he claw-kneaded my neck with joyous ferocity.

The stunned owner returned to find an unrecognisable man with scratches around his neck and a rapidly blacking eye…

Chris Pascoe is the author of ACatCalledBirmingham and YouCanTaketheCat Out of Slough, and of Your Cat magazine’s column Confessions of a Cat Sitter.