We were woken by the telephone practically in the middle of the night.
Imagine telephoning somebody at half past eight in the morning, just after they have gone to bed.
Well our vet did exactly that, and we were not very awake, I can tell you.
She telephoned because they had found one of Lucy’s cats. Or rather, some irritating tourist – I really do not want to think any locals might have done it – had found it milling about behind the house, kidnapped it and taken it to the vet.
It has been milling about for the last few days, because it is in season and longing to fall in love. It has been mewing forlornly and wandering up and down the alley, hoping that some boy cat will come strolling past and find her irresistible.
Instead somebody decided that they would be helpful and spirited it off half a mile down the road, where the vet put it in a cage.
I do not understand our modern world, really I don’t. Cats are perfectly capable of finding their own way home, I do not see why anybody might imagine they need rescuing. Back in the Olden Days the world was full of cats getting on with their own lives and terrorising the local bird and rodent populations, there was even one on Coronation Street.
Obviously we had to rescue her once she was in the cage at the vet’s.
The vet took the opportunity to indulge in some hard selling, and told Lucy that it should be microchipped, and that she was breaking the law by not doing, also that they would sterilise it for a mere hundred and thirty quid.
When they are at home the cats do not go outside, so it does not matter, but in any case, Lucy is a police officer and knows perfectly well that this law does not come into force until next year. We scowled over the hard-sell, and rang her own vet, who turned out to be thirty quid cheaper.
She and Mark staggered into their clothes and went to collect the cat, which meant, to my irritation, that we had to keep the doors and windows closed all day to prevent a repeat performance. We just closed the doors to start off with, but after we noticed a fluffy shape steadily mountaineering across the conservatory roof having discovered the office window, we recaptured it and closed all the windows as well. We even tried putting Rosie’s collar on her, which has our phone number on it. Rosie was very indignant indeed about this, and followed the cat about for ages, trying to retrieve it. Eventually the cat, who was not at all pleased about being obliged to wear a horrible dog-scented item of bondage, fought her way out of it, and we gave up and returned it to Rosie, whose relief was practically palpable.
Fortunately Lucy is going home tomorrow, otherwise we would have to keep it shut in until the tourists changed over at weekend and the virtuous helpful one went home.
We went for a late-night dinner after work yesterday. The Indian restaurant across the road from us has begun staying open until the middle of the night, and we went there after Oliver finished work. I had become embroiled in a long job with a lot of traffic lights, and so I was late, dashing in halfway through the poppadoms, but Mark knows me well enough to order so it did not matter.
In fact I had had a thoughtful encounter with a customer who told me he was having a few days away with his friends because he was dying of cancer. His friends wanted to drink more than he did, so he was going home early.
Obviously I was fascinated, and fortunately he wanted to talk as much as I wanted to listen. It was a ten-pounds journey with traffic lights, so we had plenty of time, and we talked about dying of cancer all the way. I liked him very much, he was sensible and thoughtful. He did not want to die, but he was contented about it, and quietly letting go of all of the things he had thought were important, but which had turned out not to be in the end.
I suppose it is like that.
I hope it goes well for him.
