Cat-astrophe

"Monty Cat won't be any trouble," said I to Mr and Mrs Nunn, who had kindly agreed to flat and cat-sit whilst we were away. "He's pretty low maintenence. A bit of dry food in the morning at 7, a bit more in the evening at 6, make sure he has plenty of water available, and tickle his tummy when you come in. Oh, and clear out his litter once a day. Just in case, here's the vet's number."

Mr and Mrs Nunn are not - by any stretch of the imagination - "cat people". Yet this was a simple task. We were all sure we could cope.

And off we toddled to Tunisia for a lovely, lovely time.

Fast forward three days and we return to the flat to a long note from Mr and Mrs Nunn. Monty Cat had decided to start urinating blood everywhere. Mostly on the furniture. Every five minutes there was a fresh puddle of cat blood. This - apparently - wasn't that much fun for Mr and Mrs Nunn, who clearly have no sense of adventure.

Off to the vet went Monty Cat on our return. His temperature was taken, antibiotics were injected. The whole thing cost me the best part of £70. Freeloading feline bastard.

Diagnosis? Stress. Our stupid fucking cat missed us, so decided his best form of protest was to panic us into never going away again. By bleeding from the bladder. Cats live approximately 15 years. We have had Monty Cat approximately 6 months. This means our next holiday will be 2033.

Shit.

Seeing the sites

I was - let's face it - still buzzing from the stupendous success of getting rid of the cold caller by telling him I was blind. It may have gone to my head.

Within ten minutes of being at our Tunisian hotel, we were being hassled - as is the Tunisian way - into taking various trips. Trips which we did not wish to take, as we were only there for the weekend, and our entire plans involved: sitting by the pool, sitting on the beach, sitting in the restaurant and sitting at the bar. Anything that involved sitting was good. Anything that involved moving was bad.

Strolling casually through the jasmine to our hotel room, planning on doing some good sitting, we were interrupted "Have you done quad bikes?" asked Simo. Simo the Knob as he became known.

I thought on my feet. "Yes, yes we have."

"When was that?" asked Simo.

"Last year. We were here last year."

"Camel ride? Have you done camel ride?" enquired Simo the Knob.

"No thanks."

"Ah, but camels are good. Is good ride."

"No, I don't like camels," I lied pathetically. Simo looked confused. "I mean, I'm allergic to them. I am allergic to camels."

"Pirate ship! You do pirate ship!" Simo was persistent, if nothing else.

"I'm blind!"

Fuck, I need to stop doing that.

La Tunisie: part un

"A long weekend in Tunisia," we thought, "how lovely."

A suitable four-star hotel was selected. A slightly odd driver called Mongi was booked to take us to said destination. Bikinis were packed. Aftersun was put in the case. We arrived at Gatwick with enough time for a Wetherspoons' breakfast and a wander round duty free. All was good.

"Tunisia," I smugly thought to myself. "Finally I get a chance to show off a bit. In South Africa TheBloke (TM) was all Afrikaans when he needed to be. Finally I can get my own back and swanny around in French, knowing he won't understand a word. I am so great."

We arrived at the hotel. Thoughts of travel luxury quickly evaporated as the first French I used was on the phone to reception about ten minutes after we arrived.

"Il y a beaucoup de fourmis dans la chambre." ("There are lots of ants in the bedroom")

Then, half an hour after we arrived, "Il y a beaucoup et beaucoup de formis dans la chambre."

Swifly followed by, "Maintenant les fourmis volent." ("Now the ants are flying")

This finally culminated three hours later in an admittedly slightly hysterical, "Non, ce n'est pas bon. Il est dangereux ici avec les fourmis." ("It's not OK. It's dangerous here with the ants.")

Which wasn't quite what I'd meant to say, and I did struggle not to laugh after I'd said it. I mostly meant the poisons they were using weren't safe and I just wanted to change room. This, however, wasn't possible until the morning.

Morning came, the wallet I left in my room was 10 dinars lighter, as the maid had obviously (correctly) surmised that we weren't the type to tip and had therefore decided to do the hard work for us.

We moved room. Into a room with a broken air conditioner. I called reception, still smug in my French, and expecting TheBloke (TM) to be well impressed with my linguistic mastery.

A bit of thought went into this one... I wanted to say the air conditioning was broken. Broken... "ne marche pas", so far so good. Air conditioning... I think it's "circulation". That would make sense.

Ten minutes later I told the befuddled man at reception that the traffic in our room was broken.

Tune in tomorrow to hear about:

- How I keep accidentally lying to people who try to sell me things

- How I managed to entertain three different members of staff whilst unclothed and TheBloke (TM) being elsewhere each time

- Flashing most of Tunisia whilst on a water slide

Evil eye

I think I might actually be evil.

I'm home from work ill, and feeling sorry for myself, and generally grumpy. My mobile rings with the caller display showing a freephone number. I answer it, there's no-one there. I hate that. I say "hello" a few times. I get grumpier.

Someone from India says hello and asks to speak to Miss Nunn. That's me.

He tells me he has a very special offer available for my mobile number. He asks me if I use a computer or a laptop. I decide to have some fun. Well, as much fun as a grumpy ill person can have at 4.42 p.m. I say, "No."

He says, "You do not have a computer or a laptop?"

I say, "No. I have a typewriter." I try to sound proud of myself.

"You have a typewriter?"

"Yes." I think I've won and he will leave me alone. Not so.

"I have a very special offer on laptops available for you. Would you be interested to get a free laptop?"

"No," I say. "I'm blind."

"Oh I am sorry to hear that you are blind," he says. "That is all. Thank you."

Quickest telesales EVER.

(How long before I start getting Braille junk mail?)

Schrödinger's racoon

Mrs Nunn calls me, very excited.

"We've found a picture on the internet that looks just like your cat! We think Monty is a Mancoon!"

"A what?" I ask.

"A Mancoon!"

I hear Mr Nunn in the background. "Oh," she says, "Dad says it's a Maine Coon."

"Yes," I say, "he's a moggy, but we think there's definitely a bit of Maine Coon or Persian in him..."

"You can totally see it," Mrs Nunn adds excitedly. "And it really explains why he likes water so much."

She has lost me. I never knew that Mrs Nunn knew so much about cats. I ask her to explain.

"Well, racoons love water, don't they?"

"What?"

"Now I know it, I can totally see that your cat is definitely part Maine racoon."

I laugh, thinking this is quite a good joke for Mrs Nunn. Then it becomes obvious she isn't actually joking.

"What?" she says indignantly whilst I'm laughing.

"Mum, cats can't breed with racooons."

"Yes they can," she says huffily. "More species than you'd think interbreed all the time," she says mysteriously. "A cat's wandering in the dense Maine forest one night and a horny racoon... walks past. Lots and lots of species interbreed."

"No, they don't," I say. "Name one."

"Lots," she says, as if this closes the matter. "Anything can be done with genetic engineering."

"Oh, so now a scientist has decided to cross-breed - for his or her own amusement - a ginger cat and a racoon?"

"Shut up," says Mrs Nunn.

"Are you sure racoons like water?" I ask. "Are you thinking of beavers?"

She goes quiet. It's the end of the call.

One for sorrow

Magpies. Let’s talk about magpies.

Mrs Nunn has always hated magpies. She knows that they steal and eat baby birds from local nests, and will eccentrically chase the black and white feathered ruffians from her garden at any opportunity. Having said this, she also lobs stones at the neighbour’s cat, with the infuriated words, “Sod off you tabby bastard!”

So perhaps Mrs Nunn isn’t the best judge of magpie sanity.

I read up on magpies. They sound brilliant. Not only are they an attractive looking bird (look closely and you’ll see their feathers gleam blue-green in the light), but they are highly intelligent. There are stories about magpies working together to lift an injured magpie from the road where it had been hit by a car.

Like crows and ravens, they can imitate, so could reproduce your telephone ringtone, or, like Gerald Durrell’s pet magpies in My Family and Other Animals¸ confuse the family pets by calling the dogs in their master’s voice.

They mate for life. And of course it isn’t fair to blame them for the hunting instinct that’s in their nature, any more than it’s fair to blame cats for catching mice, bees for collecting pollen or Gordon Brown for having a face like a cow’s fart.

However…

The last few days have been very warm and we’ve slept with the window open just enough to get a breeze, but not enough to tempt the cat to commit suicide. And we’ve both been woken at four o’clock every morning, unfailingly by a bastard magpie sitting in the tree next to the bedroom window.

You’d think that with the vocal ability attributed to them, the magpie might have a nice song. Indeed, if it put a bit of work into it, it might even manage to tweet a bit of Beethoven, or at the very least, Westlife. But no. Ack-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack, it goes. Constantly. Like a football racket on acid.

Yesterday morning, after listening to its incessant twattage for a full two hours, I got up and threw a stone at it. It’s hard to find a stone in a one-bedroom second floor flat, but I managed it. It flew away.

This morning at 4.02 I couldn’t get a line of sight to it. I banged on the window a bit, but it just acked a bit more at me. Then I noticed a neighbour’s cat in the tree, and thought that I probably wasn’t making a brilliant impression on the neighbours as it was; standing half-naked in front of my windows, throwing stones at a tree, so thought I probably ought to leave it, hope the cat ate it, and go back to bed.

No-one has seen the cat since.

If anyone knows a way to outsmart a magpie, please let me know. The best I can come up with is calling the council to chop the tree down.

Home is where the cat is

Four years ago when I bought my flat in Bethnal Green I vowed I would never never move house again. The endless boxes of crap - most of which didn't seem to neatly fit somewhere - were practically bottomless. To this day I have a drawer in my kitchen which contains:

- about 60 spools of coloured thread (I haven't ever tried to mend any item of clothing and have no idea where they came from)

- two pencil cases from my school days, stuffed to overflowing with protractors, long dried-up glue pens and highlighters

- a 2005 Yellow Pages

- a hot water bottle

Moving itself is a chore, lugging boxes up countless flights of stairs, and that's before you identify all the furniture you need, have to enlist someone to put it together for you (before, of course, finding Part C is missing and having to send off to Argos to get it and re-enlist the furniture-putter-together at a later date).

Then, once your boxes are finally empty, and the place is looking vaguely habitable (though of course you've not yet worked out how to operate the heating, meaning it's either sub-tropical or slightly below Arctic temperatures), you then have to work out how to badger the council into giving you a parking space, register with a doctor and change all your bank statements.

It is, in short, hell. Which is why, four years ago, I solemnly vowed never to do it again.

Long story short, some of this week was spent house-hunting.

Every property we went to, we were shown around by the vendors - i.e. the people whose house it is. I never thought I'd say this, but I think I've found a use for estate agents. People are stupid.

1. Vendor One: "It's quite quiet round here. Like a retirement community. The kids in the flat above spit on my balcony sometimes, but that's about it."

2. TheBloke (TM) to Vendor Two: "It looks quite quiet around here. We've got a cat; would the road be safe for cats?"

Vendor Two: "Oh yes, we've had lots of cats. In fact, three of them are buried in this garden." (points to tiny patioed patch). Vendor's husband chips in at this point, "Four of 'em! Not three! Four dead cats. Have to bury them deep though. You don't want to be digging up dead cat when you're planting petunias." This appeared to be their only selling point.

3. Vendor Three: "It's actually a benefit not to have double glazing as it means it doesn't get too hot in the living room."

4. Vendor Four: actually didn't speak as he was too busy chain smoking. The wallpaper was yellow and after just five minutes in the house, my clothes reeked of smoke.

The hunt continues.

Cab with a cob on

Today I had an angry cab driver.  In my old job I tended to get a cab at least once a week, but I do much less travelling with my new job, and that which I do do, I tend to drive.

But today saw a trip to Coventry, and a one-hour train journey, versus a three-hour car journey seemed the more sensible option.  Until, of course the tube strike was announced.  Then it became a Very Silly But Already Paid For Decision.

So I ordered a cab for 7.45, needing to get to Euston at 8.45.  Plenty of time.

Of course, with not a tube running, the traffic was shit.  Actually, scratch that.  The traffic was worse than shit.  If you imagine actual faeces running down the street, that would have been significantly more pleasant than 8.22 on Gray's Inn Road this morning.

Now my cab driver was a minicab driver - meaning we'd agreed a flat fee for the journey of £15 rather than a black cab where the fare would have ticked up by 20p every 48 seconds, meaning that I owed roughly the GDP of a small South American country by 8.32.  This made the cab driver angry.  Very angry.

I will concede there was a lot of traffic.  I will concede that it was frustrating.  But I also realise that when this is the case, most of the time you're better to sit in the queue you're in.  This cab driver had not yet realised this.  So every time there was a queue longer than three cars in front of him, he would tut and do an angry u-turn in the middle of a busy street, at speed.

Every time a traffic report came on the radio, he'd turn the radio up.  It was Magic FM (easy listening that's a bit easy listening even for me).  At the end of the traffic report, he'd uniformly forget to turn the volume down again.  Meaning that by 8.37 The Carpenter's Close To You was being played at a decibel level I bet it's never ever reached in the whole of human history before.

We arrived at the station at exactly 8.43, meaning I missed my train by slightly less than one minute.  London tube strikes - gotta love 'em.

Filth

An email from Mr Nunn:

"Just read your Plog.  I DO know what a rim job is, I just didn't hear you properly the first time."

Somehow this makes me feel worse, not better.

Dirty job

Monty Cat has still not given himself a thorough cleaning.  I was regaling Mr and Mrs Nunn of this fact earlier today by telephone.

We were all of the consensus that having to lick your own arse clean is a bit rubbish.

It was at this point I uttered the immortal phrase to Mr Nunn, "I'm trying to convince him to give himself a rim job, but he's not having any of it."

I then spent the next few minutes awkwardly explaining to my father what a rim job is.

Does this sort of thing happen to other people?

Litter lout

If you are of a delicate constitution, you may wish to skip this Plog.

The cat has had a runny tummy.  That sounds an awful lot cuter than "the cat smells like death", which is an equally true statement.

Luckily, Monty Cat has managed to confine his runny tummy to his litter tray, save for the occasional evil-smelling fart.  Cleaning the litter tray out last night made me gag twice, but I coped.  Life went on.

The problem is this.  Monty Cat is a boy cat.  This means his attention to personal hygiene is not that brilliant.  So Monty Cat currently has smeary cat poo over his bottom.  And doesn't seem to be making any effort to clean it.  Admittedly, if the only way I could clean my own bottom was by licking it, I might be a bit hesitant too.

I wanted to attack him with a wet wipe, but TheBloke (TM) says he has to learn how to clean himself, and he won't do that if we do it for him.  This might be true, but in the interim, Monty Cat smells like death and keeps sitting on things I own.  I am following him round with Dettol spray.

Would it be outside of our contractual agreement if I asked the cleaner to polish his bottom instead of doing the ironing today?