Howdo you go into a home and accidentally dye yourself?

Our intrepid catsitter is feeling a bit off-colour this week – quite literally

One of the worst things about spending so much time catsitting in other people’s houses, using other people’s possessions, is you don’t really know for sure what anything is.

For instance, I’ve poured salt in my tea before, scalded my fingers with a tap that inexplicably produced instantly boiled water, opened a communication channel with the local police while attempting to switch a light on, washed my hands in body lotion and, worst of all, dyed myself blue.

OK, that last one probably needs a bit of explaining, doesn’t it? How do you go into a perfectly normal home and accidentally dye yourself?

Well, feeling a little tired one morning at a customer’s house, and having to next collect a key from a new client just a few doors down, I splashed handfuls of cold water into my face in an attempt to wake myself up a bit, much to the incumbent household cat’s annoyance as he was trying to drink from the tap at the time. Groping around for towel, I could find only a thin cloth-like blue rag and so I rubbed my face vigorously with that.

I then walked off down the road, still half asleep, and knocked on my new customer’s door. I should probably have realised something was wrong when the lady who opened the door gasped and took two steps backward, a look of something approaching horror on her face… but people have often reacted like that when seeing me for the first time, so I thought little of it.

As I said hello, she continued staring at me aghast, finally asking, “Are you OK? It… it’s just you’re, well, um…”

“A bit tired, yes,” I finished for her, and then with a laugh, “I must admit I’ve been overdoing it a bit lately.”

“Yes, well, I can see that, yes,” she mumbled.

Bitrude, I thought, but carried on with my questions about her cat’s feeding requirements and list of unreasonable demands, while trying hard to ignore her unnervingly constant worried glances.

It was only when I reached out to ask for her door key, that I noticed the palms of my hands were bright blue. We both stared at my hands in silence. I was for a moment totally perplexed, but then as realisation took hold, I swung round and looked into a nearby mirror. My whole face was also bright blue. I looked like a giant fat Smurf.

I could barely force myself to turn away from the startling image in the mirror and face my client again. When I did, it was with a cringe and a fumbling apology and attempted explanation. I must have looked a very unhappy Smurf indeed.

It’s probably an indication of the sanity level of that particular client that she still gave me her door key. But then, I suppose there had to be something wrong with her – she’d already made the mistake of calling me in the first place.

Chris Pascoe is the author of A Cat Called Birmingham and You Can Take the Cat Out of Slough, and of Your Cat magazine’s column Confessions of a Cat Sitter.